Android—Why Dalvik?

[Nasser M. Abbasi]

What did you think technology was about?

Good question. I guess I must keep forgetting that solving
differential equations is a techology. I thought it
was like math and physics and such thing. But may be
these are technology also.

Is “pointy and clicky†synonymous with “technology†to you?

Another good point. Ok, you are correct. Engineering must be
a technology.

--Nasser

 

[Joshua Cranmer]

No, what you mention are themselves just technologies, not domains.
Engineering is just a collection of technologies; finance is technology
(insofar as it is mathematically-based); health is nothing without
technology these days; same with education, aeronautics, etc, etc.

Health is just technology? Then go analyze this brain scan image for me
and tell me if the patient has a brain tumor or not.

Or try chemical engineering. I've taken organic chemistry courses, so I
could probably (given a lot of time) tell you how to synthesize a simple
compound. How to actually make it in kilogram quantities I would have no
idea--that's how different chemical engineering is from the purer
theoretical chemistry.

 

[Gene Wirchenko]

[snip]

but, the point of the above comment was not x86 vs ARM, but rather
peoples' persistent use of "Intel" to describe all x86 chips, which is
not really the case if people are running chips from another manufacturer...

I am sure that Intel's marketing department loves the mindshare.

it is much like if one used the term "Windows" to describe every OS,
including Linux and MacOSX, rather than a more generic term, like OS...

Yes, and I bet that happens, too.

Macs have windows, and if running the right -- or wrong depending
on your preference -- software, Windows.

[snip]

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

 

[Gene Wirchenko]

[snip]

actually... sadly much of what I know of the topic came from an older
smoking lady in one of the classes I was taking and who happened to ^^^^^^^
develop apps for iOS and OSX and was rather vocal about the whole matter.

Tobacco or beauty?

[snip]

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

 

[Gene Wirchenko]

And this, dear reader, is a wonderful example of something that probably
made sense to him while it was still inside his head, but came out as
complete gibberish.

What did you think the “point” was, if not the portability of languages?

Finding one example does not disprove that something is rare.

For example, you can find one Gene Wirchenko. AFAIK, I am the
only one on the planet. One in six billion (or whatever we are up to)
is a rarity.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

 

[Gene Wirchenko]

yeah, yeah, nice ad-hominem. Since you're going to be obnoxious, kindly
tell me how many different architectures are in *wide* use today?

Irrelevant. The question should be how many architectures are in
use for the particular app area. A widely-used architecture might not
be used in a particular app area.

Sure, there'll be exceptions to the rule... but...

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

 

[Gene Wirchenko]

What do you think most Dell PC's run, bozo?

(Yes, you can order certain models with Linux, but most Dell PC's aren't
sold with Linux.)

So, you weren't being coy... you were being stupid.

Mr. Sobol, I would like to compliment you on your excellent
manners.

As soon as you show some, please let me know, and I will
compliment you.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

 

[BGB]

[snip]

actually... sadly much of what I know of the topic came from an older
smoking lady in one of the classes I was taking and who happened to ^^^^^^^
develop apps for iOS and OSX and was rather vocal about the whole matter.

Tobacco or beauty?

errm... tobacco... she usually had to take at least 1 cigarette break
each class (class goes on, after a while she heads on outside for a smoke).

so, she was like 40-something and had smoker voice...
but, also talked a lot, and loudly...

not really attractive either, but generally I don't really take much
interest in females who are in a similar age range as my parents...


or such...

 

[BGB]

[snip]

but, the point of the above comment was not x86 vs ARM, but rather
peoples' persistent use of "Intel" to describe all x86 chips, which is
not really the case if people are running chips from another manufacturer...

I am sure that Intel's marketing department loves the mindshare.

it is much like if one used the term "Windows" to describe every OS,
including Linux and MacOSX, rather than a more generic term, like OS...

Yes, and I bet that happens, too.

Macs have windows, and if running the right -- or wrong depending
on your preference -- software, Windows.

this kind of thing is annoying though...

if one is running Linux on an AMD chip, they are running Linux on an AMD.

as is BSD on a VIA...

[snip]

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

 

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

Health is just technology? Then go analyze this brain scan image for me
and tell me if the patient has a brain tumor or not.

How did you get that brain scan?

Or try chemical engineering. I've taken organic chemistry courses, so I
could probably (given a lot of time) tell you how to synthesize a simple
compound. How to actually make it in kilogram quantities I would have no
idea--that's how different chemical engineering is from the purer
theoretical chemistry.

Guess what you would need to do so.

 

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

Finding one example does not disprove that something is rare.

I provided several examples—large ones, too.

 

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

The fact that there exist platforms on which there is no JVM, indicates
that porting a C (or C++) program to a different platform is not simply
a recompile. There is actually a big effort involved.

There are thousands of open-source C/C++ programs that can indeed be “simply
recompiled†across a wide range of hardware platforms.

C is very portable, yes, if you're writing a single-threaded,
non-networking console application. If you want the program to be
actually usable in practice, you need platform-independent libraries for
the networking, the threads, the GUI, the XML processing, etc.

Most of which are already available, and written in portable C/C++, right
all the way down to a portable OS kernel.

 

[H.J. Sander Bruggink]

There are thousands of open-source C/C++ programs that can indeed be “simply
recompiled†across a wide range of hardware platforms.

Most open-source application use a lot of #ifdef's for the
system-dependant code. So that is not a refutation of the claim that
there is a big effort involved.

Most of which are already available, and written in portable C/C++, right
all the way down to a portable OS kernel.

Even choosing only the GUI library will in general severely limit the
platforms the application will compile on.

groente
-- Sander

 

[BGB]

Most open-source application use a lot of #ifdef's for the
system-dependant code. So that is not a refutation of the claim that
there is a big effort involved.

yep, there is this...

however, if done well, the cost of getting the thing working on various
targets is much less than that of writing the app to begin with, as
generally the system-dependent code is a relative minority of the total
codebase.

Even choosing only the GUI library will in general severely limit the
platforms the application will compile on.

at the same time though, there are only a small number of platforms
which "really matter", so one can ignore most of the others and call it
"good enough"...

 

[Arved Sandstrom]

No, what you mention are themselves just technologies, not domains.
Engineering is just a collection of technologies; finance is technology
(insofar as it is mathematically-based); health is nothing without
technology these days; same with education, aeronautics, etc, etc.

No. You're missing the point. Unless you've got an artificially broad
definition of technology, the domains I refer to are real-world
processes, problems, solutions, procedures, techniques etc. Domains are
real-world environments that are a mishmash of science, engineering,
technology, human knowledge, human emotion, community conventions and
mores and standards, conventional wisdom, habits and entrenched interests.

A business or application domain (_you_ might want to read up on domain
driven design to understand what a domain is) is what you are trying to
model in your software. While some of the existing processes that you
are modeling may use technology, those processes themselves are *not*
technologies.

I can also assure you of one incontrovertible fact: it's not possible
for a programmer to think the way you do unless they have never moved
away from tools and toy apps.

AHS

 

[Martin Gregorie]

Yes, and I bet that happens, too.

Too right. I remember some boob on the UK Y2K newsgroup who refused to
believe that there were any computers still in use in 1999 that weren't
PCs. I don't think we ever convinced him that mainframes and UNIX
servers, let alone Macs, were in daily use, but at least he finally shut
up and vanished.

 

[Andreas Leitgeb]

I don't think we ever convinced him that mainframes and UNIX
servers, let alone Macs, were in daily use, but at least he
finally shut up and vanished.

Maybe you finally just stopped feeding him?

 

[Michael Wojcik]

Using MSVC brings its own share of problems. I remember on the Python
group, if you wanted to build a C/C++ extension for Python, you had to
compile it with the exact same version of MSVC as was used for that
version of Python, otherwise it wouldn’t work.

There's no "C/C++" language. C and C++ are very different languages.[1]

Relevance being?

Your claim, as stated, describes an attribute of a nonexistent entity.
Since the entity does not exist, its attributes demonstrate nothing
about the real world.

But that would be true of everything built with MSVC.

No, it is not true of everything built with MSVC.

Are you saying that
MSVC is making “improper use of the C runtime�

A ridiculous argument, even for you.

Since Python itself provides most of the memory management for objects
created by extensions, it’s hard to see how this can be made to work in any
practical sense.

Then that's a failure of the Python extension architecture, not of MSVC.

There are many things wrong with MSVC, but the particular one you
appear to be trying to describe is not one of them. Mixing MSVC
runtimes is (unnecessarily) complicated; it is not impossible.

 

[Martin Gregorie]

Maybe you finally just stopped feeding him?

Oddly, he didn't seem trollish and I don't remember anybody calling him
one. He came across as ignorant of anything but PCs and profoundly
unwilling to learn that he might be wrong.

 

[Gene Wirchenko]

I provided several examples—large ones, too.

Several might not be enough either.

And you might not have to prove <not-rareness> but <in general
use> or <in general use in one or more niches>.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko