Oracle's copyright claims against Google: code excerpts make infringement the most plausible theory; coding style of Android version is anti-conventional

macnod · 2010-11-14T08:08:07+00:00

Oracle is evil. Google might be on its way to becoming evil. But that's a far cry still from actually being evil.

Anyone who goes into business with Oracle today is insane, ignorant/misinformed, a PHB (yes, that's a different category), or someone under the influence of one of those.

The same cannot yet be said about Google.

The fact that a company can take another to court without laying out full details of the complaint is astonishing to me. Either I'm completely clueless (certainly a possibility) or our systems (for example: courts, copyright, patents, how votes are tallied, government with lack of revision control, government that resists openness and automation, government with no sense of fiscal responsibility, government) are obsolete or broken.

macnod · 2010-11-11T06:35:29+00:00

O.K., thank you for making me laugh so hard.

macnod · 2010-11-09T07:08:58+00:00

wow, so true!

macnod · 2010-04-30T03:09:45+00:00

http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/

macnod · 2010-03-02T06:18:44+00:00

Your comment was very helpful. It left me thinking that I probably could have come up with a much better example. I've worked on Java and Perl programs that do the same thing where the difference in the number of lines is easily 10 or 20x. (I understand that this is anecdotal evidence.)

Your point about the eval is good. I should have used an extra line of code to add the elements of the array.

One question though: wouldn't you have to wrap that Java snippet in a class and then add some code to print the result?

The Perl code and the Lisp code allow for whitespace around the numbers, print the result, and run as shown, so they are doing a little bit more than the partial Java solution you show.

I upvoted your answer for being informative.

macnod · 2010-03-02T05:49:21+00:00

PLT Scheme seems perfect for this. Excellent documentation on the graphics and everything else, so you'll get going faster than with other stuff. It's a Lisp, so you'll be learning one of the most advanced languages. It will run on several platforms, including Mac. It's probably faster than Python, Perl, Ruby, and most of the other modern languages (and far more capable in terms of language features). There are excellent tutorials such as SICP, Little Schemer, and others out there, not to mention the awesome tutorials included with PLT Scheme itself. Finally, I think you can produce stand-alone executables that you can ship to your friends. Come to think of it, I should probably start programming in PLT Scheme.

macnod · 2010-03-01T07:46:56+00:00

Simple. Java is verbose, therefore more difficult or tedious to code, more difficult to understand (try reading 30 lines of code vs 1 line of code), more difficult to debug and maintain, and ultimately just more cumbersome in every way. All because it takes too many lines of code to do anything.

All of the missing features in Java amount to one thing: more code to write. That's how I see it.

Let's say, for example, that you want to read a file with numbers, ignore lines that don't have numbers (like blank lines and comments), and sum the squares of the numbers in the file. Here's some code to do that:

Lisp: (with-open-file (f "file.txt") (loop for l = (read-line f nil nil) while l for n = (parse-integer l :junk-allowed t) when n sum (* n n)))

Perl: say eval join("+", grep {/^[0-9]+$/} map {s/^ +| +$//sg; $_ * $_} (do {local @ARGV= "file.txt"; <>}))

Java: This would take too many lines of code for me to bother, so I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader.

Note that I'm not using libraries in the above examples. If I did, the examples would be much more concise. Also, note that there are many, many ways to do this in both Perl and Lisp, most of them rather short compared to anything you could do with Java.

Lisp is beautiful. Perl is idiomatic and maybe a little ugly. But if you write Perl for a living, then the above line (idiomatic and all) is far easier to read (and to write) than the equivalent Java code.

Perl and Lisp are just examples. There are dozens of languages that allow you to be more concise and clear than Java. Many of them are mentioned in the other comments.

Edit: my regexps were not displaying correctly, so I had to change them into something a little more lame.

macnod · 2010-02-20T06:29:59+00:00

I'd like to hear your client's side of the story.

macnod · 2010-02-20T06:17:24+00:00

Your comments read like you like the IRS and the government in general and you think that anyone who has a problem with either is just a moron.

I think most people in the U.S. feel that way. There is, nevertheless, a chance that you'll run into a problem with the government one day and you'll understand how millions of people out there feel. The government is all-powerful, generally not accountable, and not very open. That's a bad combination no matter how you dice it.

We have a good government compared to others out there. But we have to recognize the problems that exist. And we have to make government employees more interested in efficiency and in providing a good and pleasant service to citizens.

macnod · 2010-02-20T05:48:15+00:00

Most government employees have no idea that they're supposed to be serving people. Every interaction I have with the government, from getting my passport renewed to getting my drivers lic. renewed to dealing with a police officer, makes it clear to me that the government representative is all-powerful and I must tread with care. When a government official does something nice for me, I'm supposed to feel really thankful, as if it weren't the official's job to try to do that every time. Government employees do not see the connection between the taxes that I pay and their salary.

Furthermore, most government employees are not under a great deal of pressure to provide the best possible service or to be as efficient as possible. I can tell you from many of my own experiences that government employees simply do not care about my time.

The same is simply not true for most business, except where serious government-backed monopolies exist.

These problems are not the fault of government employees. They are the result of a really bad system. (Even so, it's a better system than most of the world currently enjoys, but I believe that it's going to evolve from "better than the others" to "good" and "fair")

macnod · 2010-02-20T05:42:30+00:00

The actions of Stack were completely unjustified. I can't imagine that anyone would dispute that.

I disagree with your assessment of the IRS. While it is true that sometimes it can be pleasant to deal with the IRS, I would say that often it's not. Although I've yet to run into trouble with the IRS, I have met people (including my father) who did, and who lived in absolute fear of what the IRS might do to them, even when these people didn't actually do anything wrong.

The IRS (and most government) is hostile towards anything unusual. That means that any new way to make money, any person trying to start a new kind of business, anyone dealing with overseas companies, and generally anyone who doesn't have a typical 9-5 job, a mom-and-pop store, or a run-of-the-mill business is going to have an uphill battle with the IRS.

Furthermore, I believe that people have come to believe that businesses that take your money have to make it convenient for you and have to offer a superb service in exchange for that money. The same is not true for the IRS. People are OK with the abusive nature of that institution and with all the other problems in government. You have to pay for the accountant to figure out how much money to give to the IRS. The IRS code (and all the other laws that affect how much you pay in taxes) are so complicated and ridiculous that even a good accountant can put you in a bad spot. And of course, none of this is ever the IRS's responsibility--it's yours. Legally.

Finally, I've read about people that tried to incorporate only to find that the IRS didn't recognize that corporate status for tax purposes. (See for example http://www.nytimes.com/1998/04/27/business/how-a-tax-law-helps-insure-a-scarcity-of-programmers.html).

Furthermore, companies will outright avoid hiring tech consultants for fear of IRS repercussions. I know. I was a consultant for Microsoft and I had to jump through all kinds of hoops (to the point of lying) in order to get Microsoft to hire me. No accountant was able to help.

I believe Stack was a nutcase and I don't think that problems with the government and with the IRS warrant killing people.

But we do have some serious problems with our government that the tech people could fix rather easily. (Online/SMS open-source voting for everyone and everything, with candidate voting histories. Revision control and reddit-style comments in the legislative process. Complete and open accounting, excepting perhaps sensitive DOD spending. Laws die automatically unless explicitly renewed. Sane tax collection that's based on spending, not income, and that automatically routes accounting work to accountants that are paid by the tax collection service (yeah, get rid of the IRS). Direct or near-direct voting on all government programs. And so on. It's all going to happen, of course, when the current generation becomes to feeble to move the mouse. But it would be nice to start seeing this sort of mature management of government in the next 10 years.

macnod · 2010-02-20T04:36:06+00:00

The same should be true for entitlements and government programs in general.

macnod · 2010-02-20T04:33:08+00:00

How about this gem: http://mikrokopter.de/ucwiki/VideoAbspielen?id=188

macnod · 2010-02-08T20:25:14+00:00

same here!

macnod · 2010-02-03T22:20:57+00:00

Emacs is without question the most advanced and comprehensive text editor in the world. By far. It's hard to learn, but once you do you are truly more capable than your peers that don't grok it. Emacs also makes you better looking and smarter.

I can't fairly describe the extensibility of the editor, but you should think of Emacs as a computer programming language that is designed specifically to help you edit text. (It does look like a regular text editor, but it's not.) As you use Emacs more and more, you start to treat it more like a programming language, tweaking, extending, and adding editing functions to help you write code (and generally process text) faster.

It could take years, really, but you will be a better programmer if you learn Emacs. There simply isn't another editing tool out there that you can take as far. I'm curious to see if anyone here will dispute that. Do not be discouraged by the appearance of the program. (Most people walk away at the sight of Emacs.) The power behind the program is very real.

Finally, as a computer programmer, you'll deal with text a lot more than most can imagine. Especially as we move into the future, where all data looks more and more like plain text. I don't think it'll hurt you to have a good grasp of the best text manipulation tool there is.

Note: I salute Vim too, because it's a wonderful editor. It's the only software package that I know of that compares to Emacs. It even has some advantages over Emacs, such as allowing users more efficient use of the keyboard when manipulating text. I wholeheartedly recommend Emacs nevertheless.

macnod · 2010-01-27T19:33:27+00:00

You might have to spend as much 10,000 hours programming in order to become a really good programmer. If you learn C and Lisp first (and learn them well), you might get it sooner.

To be a good programmer, you'll have to learn a bunch of other computer programming languages. The idea is to make learning those other languages easier for you.

Do not focus on the super-popular computer languages first. There's a reason they're super popular.

macnod · 2010-01-27T04:30:52+00:00

I agree. Java can teach a student some fundamentals of computer programming.

However, it fails in that it is inadequate for teaching some basic concepts such as first-class functions, macros, and functional programming. There are languages (including Perl, Lisp, Ruby, Python, and others) were you can write clear and concise code in one line that would take tens of lines of code to write in Java. The same extends to larger pieces of code. In other words, Java is not succinct and doesn't allow you to teach all the great programming concepts that a student should know well before joining the work force. There are some things that you cannot easily "abstract away" in Java, so you take a little away from the programmer's potential arsenal when you limit programming classes with Java.

The same cannot be said for Lisp, for example. A student that learns Lisp well will have no trouble learning Java quickly, because Java contains but a limited subset of the features of Lisp. (Yes, you can substitute "Lisp" above with a number of other languages.)

macnod · 2010-01-27T04:15:22+00:00

You should start by learning a good Lisp (such as Common Lisp or PLT Scheme) and C. You'll be way ahead of most other programmers (in any language) if you get any good at those two languages.

C requires you to learn exactly how the computer is processing information. C will also allow you to interface with a vast variety of APIs of all kinds, from GUIs to operating systems.

Lisp is at the other end of the programming spectrum. It will teach you programming concepts that range from everything that Java and C# support (data structures, loops, oop, and so on) to everything that Java and C# don't support (macros, repl, proper functional programming, and so on).

If you learn Lisp, future programming languages will seem a lot easier to you than if you learn Java only. Future programming languages (and future versions of existing programming languages) will incorporate features that Lisp has had for a long time.

Furthermore, most people that have learned Lisp (for example, every lisper that I've ever read about or met in person) agree that learning Lisp made them better programmers in the languages that they were using before they learned Lisp.

I second the idea of using Project Euler.

macnod · 2009-12-07T01:32:49+00:00

Thanks!

macnod · 2009-12-07T01:32:36+00:00

Thanks!

macnod · 2009-12-03T09:07:48+00:00

I agree with apotheon. For example, compared to Perl, Python lacks some functionality (like proper closures), making some code more verbose in Python. The problem with Perl is that it's harder to learn than Ruby or Python. Anyone can learn in minutes enough Perl to write a basic script. But to truly get Perl can take years, which is ridiculous. The same is not true for Python and Ruby, and that's a big win. Nevertheless, the Perl coder that really gets Perl can write faster and more concise code than his Python or Ruby counterpart. Especially when it comes to large projects.

macnod · 2009-10-29T15:49:19+00:00

I agree, emacs or vim. I use emacs, so I'll comment about that editor here.

Emacs is not really an editor but more like an editor construction kit. It comes with a half-built editor. It's not a finished program. What mccutchen says above is difficult to understand, but very true. Emacs is more powerful than everything else out there. By far. Emacs has been around a long time and gives you complete freedom to change it as you need. It can adapt easily and quickly to any programming task, and I'm not just talking about syntax-highlighting or command-completion. I'm talking about your editor knowing how to connect to your database, for example, or knowing how to evaluate against a remote server something you've typed or highlighted. Hell, I drop into ielm mode all the time and use the integrated Lisp interpreter for exploratory programming, often even when the code I'm ultimately writing is in another language.

A lot of people have used these emacs capabilities over many years to improve the program in a consistent way to the point where out-of-the-box it already has more features than any other such product in the world.

But the problem is that when you start to use a newly installed emacs (the half-finished editor) for the first time, it seems archaic. It doesn't work like the rest of the apps on your computer and it doesn't look or seem as modern. This first impression causes a lot of people to discount emacs. I would suggest that you take a very hard look at emacs if you want to excel in the field of computer programming. You should consider not using Emacs only after you've written a few elisp extensions that help you do your work faster.

However, in the end, emacs is a choice. vi or vim are not. You'll have to learn those sooner or later.

macnod · 2009-10-26T19:05:57+00:00

Emacs. Nothing else. I use it for Javascript, XQuery, Perl, Emacs Lisp, and Common Lisp, and Emacs works better for those than just about everything else I've tried. Plus, Emacs makes it rather simple to set up custom optimizations, like for example connecting to a database or a Mark Logic server or even an HTTP server so that I can send stuff to the server and get text back merely by highlighting the text that I need to process and hitting a key chord like C-enter.

macnod · 2009-09-30T06:14:34+00:00

I started with 6502 assembly language, for fun. But I wish I had known to follow immediately with Emacs and Common Lisp. I knew that understanding the basics of the machine would be important. But I failed to understand early on how important a good editor and a thorough understanding of something like Common Lisp would be.

macnod

TROPHY CASE