Do you suggest me using IDE when I'm learning JAVA

[Arne Vajhøj]

I read that as "might not enforce" as opposed to "has no permission to
enforce".

That make more sense taken as English out of context.

But given the context the last interpretation fits better.

Arne

 

[Arne Vajhøj]

What it looks like, if we're examining Table 8-5 in that document, is
that "Very High Level of Automation (circa 2000+)" gets a tool rating of
0.83 as compared to 0.91 for "High Level of Automation (circa 1980+)".

So yes, approximately 10 percent better for 2000+.

But look at what they are including for even 1980+:

CASE tools
Basic graphical design aids
Word processor
Implementation standards enforcer
Static source code analyzer
Program flow and test case analyzer
Full program support library with configuration management (CM) aids
Full integrated documentation system
Automated requirement specification and analysis
General purpose system simulators
Extended design tools and graphics support
Automated verification system
Special purpose design support tools

When was the last time you ever saw - let alone worked in - a shop that
did even a substantial fraction of all of that? Particularly back in the
'80s? It would have taken a very good operation indeed to be using most
of those tools back in, say, 1985. Whereas if we examine the 2000+ list:

Integrated application development environment
Integrated project support
Visual programming tools
Automated code structuring
Automated metric tools
GUI development and testing tools
Fourth Generation Languages (4GLs)
Code generators
Screen generators

there is a much better chance, IMHO, that a larger fraction of that list
is in play for even moderately good organizations.

Worst case (and a fairly common one) we're really comparing text editor
(1980+) to IDE (2000+). Good case (and also a reasonably common one)
we're comparing most of the 2000+ list to very little of the 1980+ list.

So I think in reality the productivity gains for most organizations,
based on tools, have been considerably greater.

I believe a lot of their input is DoD projects. They tend to
spend a lot on quality - the cost of launching a nuclear missile
due to a software bug is a bit high.

The 10% sound very reasonable to me.

If we just compare text editor to IDE and we assume that
an IDE is 10 times faster than a text editor and that
a developer on complex projects only spend 5% of the time
actually writing the code, then that part can only contribute
4.5%. And 10 times faster is a rather aggressive assumption.

Arne

 

[Lew]

Fortunately "may not" is one of the modal negatives that has a fairly
unambiguous meaning, as in, "not allowed". That doesn't mean that a lot
of people don't use it incorrectly, though.

"Correctly" according to you. I've heard "may not" to mean "might not" my
entire life.

"That may not turn out the way you expect."
"There may not be enough for seconds."

You may not be correct in your assessment of correctness, at least regarding
common usage.

In any case, assuming that the spec writers were using English
correctly, they meant "has no permission to enforce".

Since "may not" is ambiguous, they should not have used that phrasing.

Because of the ambiguity of modals, especially "may" and "might", my
opinion is that technical specifications should never use them. A lot of
W3C specs have a terminology specification which defines "may" as
referring to optional features, which is all well and good, but this
provides no guidance for the meaning of "may not", which incidentally is
not the same thing as "might not".

It may be the same thing.

The fact that we could (and do) spend
significant time arguing over meaning when using some of these modals
means, IMHO, that we shouldn't use them in specs.

Your conclusion is correct. Not all your assumptions are.

 

[Lew]

On 05/02/2010 01:41 PM,

That make more sense taken as English out of context.

It is just as ambiguous in context.

But given the context the last interpretation fits better.

I disagree. I see only ambiguity.

 

[Eric Sosman]

"Correctly" according to you. I've heard "may not" to mean "might not"
my entire life.

"Mom, can I use the car?"

"You mean `may'."

"Sorry. Mom, may I use the car?"

"No, you may not."

 

[Arved Sandstrom]

"Correctly" according to you. I've heard "may not" to mean "might not"
my entire life.

"That may not turn out the way you expect."
"There may not be enough for seconds."

You may not be correct in your assessment of correctness, at least
regarding common usage.

I think I'm correct. I pointed out "That doesn't mean that a lot of
people don't use it incorrectly, though." In fact I'd say that the
majority of people use it incorrectly, which is why you've heard
incorrect usages all your life.

Since "may not" is ambiguous, they should not have used that phrasing.


It may be the same thing.


Your conclusion is correct. Not all your assumptions are.

That's the main take-away point. It would be so simple for the spec
writers just to say "are not allowed to", which is pretty hard to
misinterpret.

AHS

 

[Arved Sandstrom]

I believe a lot of their input is DoD projects. They tend to
spend a lot on quality - the cost of launching a nuclear missile
due to a software bug is a bit high.

The 10% sound very reasonable to me.

If we just compare text editor to IDE and we assume that
an IDE is 10 times faster than a text editor and that
a developer on complex projects only spend 5% of the time
actually writing the code, then that part can only contribute
4.5%. And 10 times faster is a rather aggressive assumption.

Arne

Rightly or wrongly, with the state of software engineering being what it
is I'd guess, based on observation, that many (if not most) developers
spend more like 50 percent of their time - time which can be directly
tracked against a software project - buried in their IDEs. Often it's
higher than that. I've seen any number of junior and intermediate
programmers over the years who are not tasked with anything but coding,
in which case they are north of 75%.

With those numbers then just a 2x speedup in using a IDE over a text
editor is significant.

AHS

 

[Lew]

"Mom, can I use the car?"

"You mean `may'."

"Sorry. Mom, may I use the car?"

"No, you may not."

Your point may not have been clear here. What are you trying to say?

 

[Lew]

I think I'm correct. I pointed out "That doesn't mean that a lot of
people don't use it incorrectly, though." In fact I'd say that the
majority of people use it incorrectly, which is why you've heard
incorrect usages all your life.

It is your terminology "correct" vs. "incorrect" that is incorrect. The
dictionary definition of "may" includes the notion of "possibility" or of
"permission" depending on context. Either usage is "correct". The same holds
for the negation.

Some people, according to the dictionary, consider the affirmative definition
to mean "might" as incorrect, but that is a prescriptive restriction not
commonly followed.

Now if by "correct" you mean "unambiguous", I agree with you, but as for it
being incorrect English usage to use "may" or "may not" in the sense of
"might" or "might not", you're just plain wrong.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ten_things_you_may_not_know_about_Wikipedia>
<http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2010-04-21-braingames21_ST_N.htm>
<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/18/business/18digi.html>
and perhaps most tellingly,
<http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/proctors/info/pam/section9.shtml>
"... late entries may not necessarily be accepted."

I think we can probably take Oxford University's usage as "correct".

 

[Eric Sosman]

Your point may not have been clear here. What are you trying to say?

That your mother may not have taught you good grammar?

"May (not)" does indeed have the meaning Arved describes,
some of the time. "You may have another piece of pie" and "You
may not use the car" and "He may not make any move that puts or
leaves his King in check" are expressions of permission (or lack
thereof), not of possibility or probabality. "You may not have
heard the news" and "I may have known her, long ago" and "He may
have been color-blind" are expressions of possibility, not of
permissions. And sometimes it is not clear which sense of "may"
may or may not be intended.

 

[Lew]

That your mother may not have taught you good grammar?

My mother is a retired English teacher. I assure you she taught me good
grammar. You know, bringing up someone's mother is considered rude in some
cultures.

"May (not)" does indeed have the meaning Arved describes,
some of the time. "You may have another piece of pie" and "You
may not use the car" and "He may not make any move that puts or
leaves his King in check" are expressions of permission (or lack

No one disagrees with that.

thereof), not of possibility or probabality. "You may not have
heard the news" and "I may have known her, long ago" and "He may
have been color-blind" are expressions of possibility, not of
permissions. And sometimes it is not clear which sense of "may"
may or may not be intended.

That is true, and not at all different from what I've been saying. It is
Arved's point about correctness that is not correct.

 

[BGB / cr88192]

Probably. But is was in response to this long-since snipped paragraph of
cr88192's:


I object strongly to this notion of a de facto Windows hegemony amongst
programmers. There is doubtless a majority, but it's not a monoculture.

this was originally partly intended as irony, but the sense of irony was
lost...

but, granted:
the majority of developers develop on Windows;
the majority of those developers, in turn, either use MS tools (MSVC or MS
Visual Studio), and very often, an MS technology (such as C# or VB.NET, or
they may use J# as their preferred Java implementation).

admittedly though, there is a bit of a Schism, where the majority of
open-source development is on Linux, and is also under GPL (vs MIT or BSD or
similar).


but, anyways, Windows is enough of a majority that one can easily get by
with using editors like Notepad, with the line-ending issue fairly rarely
showing up.

I used Windows for years, during the '95 and 2000 eras. From a programming
perspective, it was an improvement on the MacOS 9 which i'd been using
before that. But OS X and Linux are a *huge* improvement on Windows.
That's my experience. Does that count as religious fanaticism?

I used Linux as my main OS during the Win95 and Win98 eras, but ended up
migrating back to Windows (during the Win2K era), since at the time Linux's
app and HW support was fairly poor.

I guess it is a bit better now (now most typical HW actually works...), but
I have ended up using primarily Windows as it still has much better app and
games support, and is still the dominant OS among end-users.


granted, personally, Java is not my main language (which would be C,
followed by C++ and ASM), so I can't say as much what are the statistics
among most primarily-Java developers.

I suspect Linux use may be a bit higher, since a much much more of the
development AFAIK is targetted at servers and embedded-systems, so there is
much less holding one to Windows for sake of the end-users...

and other factors, such as lower tendency to crash, and being free, are
likely to help some WRT servers, whereas app and games compatibility, ...,
is a much smaller concern.


personally, I haven't really ever used OS X.

 

[Lew]

but, granted:
the majority of developers develop on Windows;
the majority of those developers, in turn, either use MS tools (MSVC or MS
Visual Studio), and very often, an MS technology (such as C# or VB.NET, or
they may use J# as their preferred Java implementation).

I strongly suspect that hardly anyone is using J#.

 

[BGB / cr88192]

Emacs is pretty close to an IDE.

But I don't know how good its Java and C# support is though.

personally, IMHO, I find that Emacs is just horrid and prefer to stay well
clear of it...


sorry, going off on a tangent here.

Notepad2 and Notepad++ is usable, and for some things I have been using
Visual Studio, and also some Eclipse, but personally I have found I am not
as fond of Eclipse in some ways (mostly it seems to hard-code a lot of
stuff, ...).

(although IME VS seems to be more customizable than Eclipse, but admitted I
haven't really dug into the details in Eclipse that much...).


the main thing I like about using the commandline and more ad-hoc tools is
that one is more free to customize the build environment to do what they
want (rather than being forced into the project-management and build
strategies the IDE developers had in mind).

for example, one can choose the type of editor they want, have a lot more
control over the build process, and can create their own tools to perform
various tasks (typically processing source code in specialized ways, or
automatically generating source-code from custom textual formats, ...), or
use GUI-based tools for other tasks (such as GIMP, or wysiwyg GUI forms
builders, ...).

as well, anymore, the OS-provided shells (be it bash or the windows command
shell), typically provide a lot of nice editing features, so a command-line
interface is nowhere near as bad as back in the days of DOS (where, if you
wanted to repeat a sequence of prior commands, it was generally needed to
re-type them, ...).

admittedly, Bash and CMD are different enough to where moving from one to
another can be disorientating at first (since they handle differently, have
different notations, ...).


similar, there are plain text editors with support for things like
autocomplete, ...

so, it is not exactly like forsaking an IDE is going into some barren land
of unusability or anything...

 

[Arne Vajhøj]

personally, IMHO, I find that Emacs is just horrid and prefer to stay well
clear of it...

I am not particular happy with Emacs either.

But just because it does not match my personal taste does not
mean that it is not a good IDE.

Arne

 

[Arne Vajhøj]

I used Windows for years, during the '95 and 2000 eras. From a
programming perspective, it was an improvement on the MacOS 9 which i'd
been using before that. But OS X and Linux are a *huge* improvement on
Windows. That's my experience. Does that count as religious fanaticism?

If you do not realize that it is your personal preference and
that the majority of developers seems to think otherwise then YES.

Arne

 

[BGB / cr88192]

I strongly suspect that hardly anyone is using J#.

fair enough...

I don't personally use J# either, FWIW, but had thought probably some did,
oh well...
(checking, yeah, it seems the version of Visual Studio I have installed
doesn't support it either, oddly I hadn't really noticed...).


I mostly used Visual Studio for C#, and mostly text-editors and the shell
for C and C++, and Eclipse for Java (although, I also use plain text-editors
as well...).

I tried using Eclipse for C/C++, but found this somewhat disappointing (more
so, since I couldn't tell it to use MS's compiler as a backend, or figure
out how to configure much of anything else related to building).

 

[Arne Vajhøj]

the majority of those developers, in turn, either use MS tools (MSVC or MS
Visual Studio), and very often, an MS technology (such as C# or VB.NET, or
they may use J# as their preferred Java implementation).

Practically no one has used J#.

After all a Java 1.1 source code compatible language is not
that cool a decade after the Java world moved on.

Arne

 

[Arne Vajhøj]

Your point may not have been clear here. What are you trying to say?

That "may not" can have a meaning as "absolutely not".

Arne

 

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 05/02/2010 01:41 PM,

It is just as ambiguous in context.


I disagree. I see only ambiguity.

In the context of "If A then it may ... if B then it may not" is seems
obvious to me that may not should be interpreted as "under no
circumstances" because if "may not" actually means the same as "may",
then it could have been abbreviated to "It may ...".

Arne