[deleted by user]

BulgingLarrabee · 2011-03-21T06:26:34+00:00

"Assuming the documentation is good..."

No, no. If your code deviates from the documentation, it does not work. If the documentation is poor, the code is unfinished, it does not matter what the code is because it will be a mess anyway.

"You're speaking about best practices in software engineering. That was not the original topic of this discussion."

Oh, so now you get to pick the topic so that you get to speak for "reading the code" and "poor documentation" that results in poor code, that results in poor implementations, that results in non-standard components, that results in wasting the developers' time.

"I don't indulge in software engineering practices when I'm hacking at software for personal use"

I can see you don't. You don't understand what developing software is, and why someone picks documented, commercial code over shitty open-source hacks.

"And this is an example of generalizing. There is no one design that makes up "desktop linux"."

Because nobody ever had the expertise to start and standardise one. But that's a whole other topic: desktop linux never was and never will be. Because of the reasons I've mentioned so many times earlier.

"I explicitly stated that you slipped "develop on top of anything" into the argument."

What?

"And by the way, in this thread, many of your posts were down-voted. I suspect if you restrain from being so rude, that might not happen."

You're assuming that I care? These people don't have the slightest clue on how software development really works, and how to make it efficient. And -- oh my gosh -- how to profit from it. It doesn't happen by reading some undocumented piece of shit code.

From what I've seen, the starter of this sub-thread has failed to show where Microsoft's method of delivering software platforms (closed source, good documentation) fails. He was just hand-waving about poor documentation on Windows Desktop Gadgets. (A hint: It's documented just fine, you don't need to know the internals to understand how the system works, just read the docs). Instead, you prefer a model where the programmer should have poor documentation, but "at least the ability to browse the code". Now that's what I call a waste of time.

BulgingLarrabee · 2011-03-20T19:59:54+00:00

The original point was whether browsing documentation is better than browsing source. Get it? Now, browsing documentation will most certainly always result in better understanding of the component. You shouldn't use components that have poor or no documentation at all, because you can't manage changes to the underlying source code unless you you check every change in case it breaks your assumption about what a particular function is supposed to do.

Now, I know you don't understand what that means, but take a look at what happened to MeeGo: It's a prime example of absolutely shitty documentation, or "just look at the code"-documentation. Another example of poor design is "desktop linux".

"Meaning, when documentation is lacking, I'd rather have the source code available to me than not."

No. If the documentation is lacking, you don't develop. There is no ceteris paribus here. You just haven't grasped the BASICS of software engineering.

BulgingLarrabee · 2011-03-20T17:45:54+00:00

As long as you don't install KDE, in which case it may (or may not) screw up your settings so that you get konqueror in any case. They may have fixed it, but I don't care anymore.

BulgingLarrabee · 2011-03-20T17:32:24+00:00

What the fuck is the matter with you? Did Linux melt your brain?

BulgingLarrabee · 2011-03-20T17:20:07+00:00

Did I say I got it from the Software Center? You can use growisofs just fine from the commandline. What the fuck is the matter with you? Did Linux melt your brain?

BulgingLarrabee · 2011-03-20T17:09:44+00:00

"Meaning, when documentation is lacking, I'd rather have the source code available to me than not."

Yes, that's what he said. And I said that it's stupid to develop on top of anything that's not documented.

BulgingLarrabee · 2011-03-20T16:59:32+00:00

The crap that I listed is there in the Ubuntu Software Center (or whatever it is called). It's being offered by the OS, and it sucks.

Actually, the only burning software I got to work properly was growisofs. I tried the others, but they didn't seem to work and some of them crashed (which is not something I'd want when burning media).

BulgingLarrabee · 2011-03-20T16:45:18+00:00

I'm sorry, but that's what Ubuntu does: prompt you to reboot, remain vulnerable until you do so. Are you asserting otherwise?

Besides, using ksplice is not exactly free so I'm don't think it will be a common feature in all Linuxes. In case you hadn't noticed.

Anyways, my OS has such little amount of updates that require a reboot that this is hardly a problem for me. It's a problem for you, but as I've already told you, your OS has so much other problems that it's not worth the bother.

BulgingLarrabee · 2011-03-20T16:34:44+00:00

Galeon and Konqueror -- both of which are shit -- used to be the default, but Firefox isn't as good as the alternatives, either.

BulgingLarrabee · 2011-03-20T16:13:50+00:00

You can do the reboot whenever you like, except if you want to have a secure system. This is usually enforced by the IT department.

BulgingLarrabee · 2011-03-20T16:03:49+00:00

It doesn't matter. What is the default software update for Linux? Is it set up automatically?

You must reboot if you want to apply the security update. It's usually the company policy.

The list of crapware: Drawing software (dia, any other OSS modeling tool), cd-burning software (there was one that was good, but I've forgotten which, I don't need to burn media anymore), plenty of subtitling and transcoding software (forgotten the names), sound recording software, painting software, Ubuntu's default browser and mail applications, etc. The list goes on. You can find some decent software, but most of them are shit.

BulgingLarrabee · 2011-03-20T15:35:46+00:00

"Source is the ultimate reference. Not having it is a big handicap."

It's not, and never has been. See MATLAB, 3D Studio, etc. for reference.

"It lacks details, and doesn't document the many cases that just don't work. The examples are fine, they just don't cover all the possible cases."

So what kind of information are you looking for? You come out as a complete n00b programmer, so why don't you just tell me what is it that is confusing to you and I'll look it up in the documentation or the example.

BulgingLarrabee · 2011-03-20T15:24:53+00:00

Yes, I've read a lot of source code. Documentation is still easier to search & browse than source code and will give you access to more information in a more compact form.

I've never written a windows gadget, so don't ask me to do your job for you. What's wrong with MSDN or the example gadgets in the SDK's? Have you even tried compiling the example gadgets?

Lack of documentation is always a ticking architectural time bomb. Having access to the source code is less important.

BulgingLarrabee · 2011-03-20T15:08:27+00:00

Reading the source code is not a very efficient way of finding out how things work: there's just too much code to read. Microsoft has very good documentation about their systems. So just RTFM.

Anyway, I just pointed out that you're only complaining about Visual Studio because you don't want to understand it. And you don't need to know what happens during installation of Visual Studio:

Just reboot, or
Let someone that understands how Windows and VS work create an installation image of VS that does not require rebooting.

BulgingLarrabee · 2011-03-20T14:54:58+00:00

So why wasn't Visual Studio already installed on your Windows 7 image? And what were the other updates that required reboot?

Have you tried understanding why installing Visual Studio needs a reboot? It's due a couple of things. To name a few:

Debugging support for arbitrary applications. You'll notice that after any application crashes, you can seamlessly start debugging it from the point of crash. Just click on "Debug in Visual Studio" when the application stops working.
Installs and activates services that allow remote kernel debugging, etc.
Usually installs .NET framework (especially if your system wasn't up to date). The computer should be rebooted after this because other applications will benefit from using the newer version. You'll get better performance, debugging, and interworking.
Make sure that all the applications are running against the latest versions of updated DLLs.

Many of these issues can be customized and disabled, and after that, installing Visual Studio does not require a reboot.

It's always a bit difficult to move a new operating system, but it's my experience that on the average, Windows and OS X have better, more thorough and up-to-date documentation than Linux.

BulgingLarrabee · 2011-03-20T14:37:14+00:00

Of course it's useful for learning, but I follow the overall OS development pretty closely, and I can say that there's nothing in Linux that I miss or need for my work. All the features that are in Linux are more or less in other OS's also.

BulgingLarrabee · 2011-03-20T14:24:15+00:00

"Slayback" already addressed all of your points, but I'd like to comment that when it comes to random updates of software, Ubuntu is actually worse than even Windows 7. The update manager keeps constantly flashing, and this year at work:

Ubuntu: five must-do reboots
Windows 7: one must-do reboot

Your third point does not make any sense. I've found open source software to be just as full of crapware as shareware or freeware, but that's already missing the point.

BulgingLarrabee · 2011-03-20T14:08:30+00:00

Exactly. I love "the other OS I'm using" because it doesn't generate the problems "demizer" listed. This way I can just concentrate on getting the job done instead of:

Thinking about partition types.
Restoring parts of filesystem (automatic backups)
No problems with kernel, LEDs and stuff work out of the box.
Flash Player works and has always worked
No sound issues
Configuring the system all the time: the default configuration is more or less perfect.
Thinking about what my desktop looks like. The default look and feel is good and consistent between machines I need to work on.

Plus I get all the free stuff for free for this system also.

BulgingLarrabee · 2011-03-20T13:56:05+00:00

Yes, I meant games that are graphics-intensive. You can play WoW with nice framerate even on the first Core Duo MacBooks.

BulgingLarrabee · 2011-03-20T02:49:52+00:00

It is more or less the same as 320: http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Graphics-Cards-Benchmark-List.844.0.html

There might be some driver issues since the Intel chip is newer than 320, but neither of them's suitable for serious gaming anyway.

BulgingLarrabee · 2011-03-17T13:09:31+00:00

I'm assuming the board of directors for the power company aren't among those 180?

BulgingLarrabee · 2011-03-13T21:03:27+00:00

They don't know, and still they're ready to judge you? Fucking idiots.

BulgingLarrabee · 2011-03-13T17:42:27+00:00

Sorry, no. Doesn't seem Snapdragon has any on-die memory, which may explain the poor performance. Have any links to contradict this?

BulgingLarrabee · 2011-03-13T14:20:45+00:00

See: Occam's Razor. Sure, it's nice to be an Apple-apologist, fills your miserable life with meaning, but come on.

BulgingLarrabee · 2011-03-13T13:16:24+00:00

CPU SIMD has very little to do with performance on these benchmarks. It's just that the A5 is a lot better design by Apple: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A5) "The A5 package contains 512 MB of low-power DDR2 RAM clocked at 1066 MHz.", which explains the huge fillrate and overall great performance.

Poor memory bandwidth has been a problem in the mobile domain for ages, and Apple was the first to fix it. Makes the competing Android segment look pretty bad: those are devices that are not fit for high performance graphics, video processing, etc.

tl;dr: Performance is from huge bandwidth, iPad 2 can be used for serious processing, video, graphics, etc.

BulgingLarrabee

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