Georg Wrede wrote:

>> My first programming language ever was HyperTalk, believe it or not.
> 
> Not a bad language at all to start with. And an excellent one for somebody learning on their own. With HyperTalk one was up and productive in no time at all. (In 1985 I earned money doing HyperTalk stuff.)

It's still around "in spirit", even if Apple _slowly_ killed HyperCard:

http://www.runrev.com/, commercial products from Runtime Revolution Ltd
Even reads HyperCard: http://support.runrev.com/resources/hypercard.php


Just haven't had any reason to use it, as people tend to prefer to have
their development done using the inferior products available elsewhere ?

Same reason why I am not doing development with WebObjects or OPENSTEP.
And a big reason why I prefer Open Source, as it is less likely to die.

--anders

Free Software uses a different business model - I should know, I used to be quite involved with it.  The idea is to make money from the service, not from the product.

In other words, instead of charging $80 per license and spending huge amuonts on piracy prevention and litigation, give it away for free.  If your software is worth using, you'll have ten or a hundred times as many users.

Then, you charge for support - say, $50 a year.  This seems more fair. Other people cannot pirate service.  There's much less legal (but it's always still there.)  People keep paying, even if they stay with older versions.

Search Google for "Why free is better".  It's down at the fifth result now unless you use quotes, but you can read more of the idea there.

So, I have to respectfully disagree.

-[Unknown]


> Interesing point. I think the "Free Software" model is flawed. Programmers need
> to get paid. Apple with OSX have shown that people are willing to pay for a
> decent integrated experience - at a reasonable price. eg iLife and iWork are
> $79. A decent biz model would be the os(kernel and desktop) is free with the app
> suites paid for. With as much as the source code as possible available for
> viewing to keep the techies happy. Quite franky i find it reassuring that the
> company that makes things i use has a biz model - and can survive in the
> longterm.
> 
> 

Anders F Björklund wrote:
> 31b     hello.sh (script)
> Hello, World!
>         0.01 real         0.00 user         0.00 sys
> ...

Hmm, sounds like fun. Same tests for bourne shell, C, C++, and D (GDC) on linux x86 (ubuntu dapper)

code    size     real    user    sys
sh      31b      0.016   0.010   0.006
                 0.017   0.007   0.009
                 0.018   0.011   0.006

C       6.8K     0.003   0.002   0.000
                 0.003   0.000   0.002
                 0.003   0.000   0.002

C++     8.3K     0.127   0.005   0.001
                 0.007   0.003   0.003
                 0.006   0.001   0.004

GDC   426.5K     0.014   0.002   0.002
                 0.004   0.001   0.002
                 0.005   0.002   0.003

I kinda wonder how dmd does? I would have tried it but it links to libstdc++.so.5, currently I have libstdc++.so.6 and didn't feel like installing the old libstdc++ on this machine (I have others with older versions that run dmd).

Unknown W. Brackets wrote:
> Free Software uses a different business model - I should know, I used to be quite involved with it.  The idea is to make money from the service, not from the product.
> 
>> Interesing point. I think the "Free Software" model is flawed. 
>>

I somewhat agree with both points. I see the value of open source and how it can work as a service, but it doesn't always seem to work this way. Maybe someone can clear this up for me... or maybe I'll just muddy the waters. Does it work in these cases?

This one I'm not sure about, but what if I make an innovative new software product and release it as open source. Some business comes along and likes my product, so they have their developers (who are paid) to make enhancements to my original. Then they decide to support clients who use this software (as they bundle the software with their product). And since this company is bigger in the market, most people that need the support go to this company. How do I make money from that?

Secondly... games! This is where open source doesn't fit in my opinion. I make a game and release it, who will pay for support. Users will think it's a bad game if it doesn't work or if it's buggy. And gamers won't pay to add things (unless it's maybe like $5), and instead choose to try to do Mod's.

So it seems...
Business/Education = Linux
Home/Entertainment = Mac/Windows

Hmm...

Lucas Goss wrote:

> C++     8.3K     0.127   0.005   0.001
>                  0.007   0.003   0.003
>                  0.006   0.001   0.004
> 
> GDC   426.5K     0.014   0.002   0.002
>                  0.004   0.001   0.002
>                  0.005   0.002   0.003

That's with a dynamic lib for C++, right ?
(i.e. like when you run "ldd" on the binary)

> I kinda wonder how dmd does? I would have tried it but it links to libstdc++.so.5, currently I have libstdc++.so.6 and didn't feel like installing the old libstdc++ on this machine (I have others with older versions that run dmd).

Don't you have a compat-libstdc++ or similar pkg ?
(run that on Fedora Core, for DMD's old binary...)

--anders

Anders F Björklund wrote:

> Of course, then you also need to make sure that the receiving end of those programs have the correct version of runtime library installed, something that is a Huge Pain for distributing C++ programs on Linux...

void fix() {
  if (user.experiencing == HugePainWithLibraries) {
    auto GentooLinux = download(www.gentoo.org/stage3);
    try {
      user.install(GentooLinux);
    }
    catch(TinyEmergeProblem p) {
      GentooBugzilla.report(p);
      wait();
      emerge(sync);
      continue install;
    }
  }
  // done, user happy
}


-- 
Jari-Matti

In article <dvpatk$mtg$1@digitaldaemon.com>, Lucas Goss says...
>
>Anders F Björklund wrote:
>> 31b     hello.sh (script)
>> Hello, World!
>>         0.01 real         0.00 user         0.00 sys
>> ...
>
>Hmm, sounds like fun. Same tests for bourne shell, C, C++, and D (GDC) on linux x86 (ubuntu dapper)
>
>code    size     real    user    sys
>sh      31b      0.016   0.010   0.006
>                  0.017   0.007   0.009
>                  0.018   0.011   0.006
>
>C       6.8K     0.003   0.002   0.000
>                  0.003   0.000   0.002
>                  0.003   0.000   0.002
>
>C++     8.3K     0.127   0.005   0.001
>                  0.007   0.003   0.003
>                  0.006   0.001   0.004
>
>GDC   426.5K     0.014   0.002   0.002
>                  0.004   0.001   0.002
>                  0.005   0.002   0.003
>
>I kinda wonder how dmd does? I would have tried it but it links to libstdc++.so.5, currently I have libstdc++.so.6 and didn't feel like installing the old libstdc++ on this machine (I have others with older versions that run dmd).

How do you like Ubuntu, say, compared to Fedora Core 4 if you've used that?

(I'm past the stage where I want to compile kernel modules, etc. to install a *nix system, so how is the setup routine?).

Thanks,

- Dave

In article <dvpdvd$qpk$1@digitaldaemon.com>, =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Jari-Matti_M=E4kel=E4?= says...
>
>Anders F Björklund wrote:
>
>> Of course, then you also need to make sure that the receiving end of those programs have the correct version of runtime library installed, something that is a Huge Pain for distributing C++ programs on Linux...
>
>void fix() {
>  if (user.experiencing == HugePainWithLibraries) {
>    auto GentooLinux = download(www.gentoo.org/stage3);
>    try {
>      user.install(GentooLinux);
>    }
>    catch(TinyEmergeProblem p) {
>      GentooBugzilla.report(p);
>      wait();
>      emerge(sync);
>      continue install;
>    }
>  }
>  // done, user happy
>}
>
>
>-- 
>Jari-Matti

You wouldn't happen to have a system like this would you:

Gentoo Linux 2005.1 stage 3, gentoo-sources-2.6.13-r5, Reiserfs

Running a P4?

If so, please e-mail me at godaves #at# yahoo #dot# com. I'm trying to isolate some odd problems that I can't reproduce anywhere else.

Thanks,

- Dave

"Roberto Mariottini" <Roberto_member@pathlink.com> wrote in message news:dvof2n$2i65$1@digitaldaemon.com...
>>This portability isn't the result of a VM, it's the result of cleaning up all the undefined and implementation defined behaviors in the language.
> I still think the VM has its own part. Think to having backends for IA32,
> IA64,
> AMD64, PowerPC, SPARC, ARM and so on. They will have their bugs and
> special
> cases acording to the underlying architecture.

So do the VMs. Write once, debug everywhere. <g>

> Sure, this will make D highly portable.
> But I think the VM will win anyway. Because I am lazy.
> I don't want to buy/download, install and test 4 different
> (cross-)compilers for
> my 4 systems. And I don't want to compile my program 4 times.
> If one compiler can do it, with acceptable performance, I will use the
> one-compiler solution.

With VMs, you have a lot more platforms to test, because you cannot control which version of which VM your customers will be using.

Back in the early days, Microsoft shipped a linker with MS-DOS. Great, I didn't have to write a linker for my compiler, just use the MS one everyone had. Unfortunately, MS shipped version after version of that linker. Some worked, some didn't, and soon the number of different versions grew into the scores. I had disks full of different versions, and started keeping logs of which worked and which didn't. Even worse, when customer X had a non-working linker, I couldn't ship him one that worked, as I had no license to. It was so bad it became clear that I had to come up with our own linker.

Essentially, I learned that if you are supporting an application, and you need to be in control of your support costs, you have to be able to control the generation of the executable. That's impossible with a VM.

But also, really, what is the difference between relying on a JIT compiler for each platform, and a native compiler for each platform? Why should the JIT compiler be more reliable? There's no technical reason it should be. If the language has portable semantics, and the compilers implement those semantics correctly, it should be write once, run everywhere. There's no technical reason a VM is required to make that happen.

Anders F Björklund wrote:
> That's with a dynamic lib for C++, right ?

Of course. But why would you statically link the whole stdc++ lib :)

3.3 MB static linking (g++ -ohellocpp -static -lstdc++ hello.cpp)

> Don't you have a compat-libstdc++ or similar pkg ?
> (run that on Fedora Core, for DMD's old binary...)

There is a libstdc++5-3.3, I just didn't want to install the old... well, ok...

      size     real   user   sys
DMD   207.0K   0.004  0.002  0.002
               0.004  0.001  0.002
               0.004  0.001  0.002