Pretty cool way of visualizing it.

http://gmarceau.qc.ca/blog/2009/05/speed-size-and-dependability-of.html

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Pretty cool way of visualizing it.
>
> http://gmarceau.qc.ca/blog/2009/05/speed-size-and-dependability-of.html
>
> --
>    Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
>    There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!

They left out assembler...

( me -> ducks behind my computer desk )

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Pretty cool way of visualizing it.
>
> http://gmarceau.qc.ca/blog/2009/05/speed-size-and-dependability-of.html

This is some finding!  Very interesting no doubt!

Python looks like a supernova!  Ruby is way off to the right!  LuaJIT spot-on as
one of the best scripting languages around.  and I have a soft spot for Ikarus
Scheme... :)

well, the chart speaks for itself.  best yet:

"Does introducing functional features kill performance?
No, it does not."

:)

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nemesis wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> Pretty cool way of visualizing it.
>>
>> http://gmarceau.qc.ca/blog/2009/05/speed-size-and-dependability-of.html
> 
> This is some finding!  Very interesting no doubt!

Well, you *do* have to read the comments.  Like the fact that it's almost 5 
years old now, which is half a lifetime in a lot of these languages.

I thought the visual representations were a pretty good idea, tho.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!

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Btw, one thing which people seldom take into account when comparing
languages, is their availability (tools, compilers, IDEs...), ease of use
(of those tools) and library availability for different platforms.

  I might be somewhat of a minority among programming professionals
because I assume that the majority of professionals only program for
one single platform. However, I have programmed professionally (ie. as
my payjob) for three rather different platforms, all of them with their
own set of tools and design principles: Sparc/Solaris, PC/Windows and
iPhone/MacOS X. (Naturally I have also programmed quite a lot as a hobby
in Linux, but that's not drastically different from Sparc/Solaris.)

  There are only two closely related languages which all these significantly
different platforms have in common: C and C++.

  These two languages are supported out-of-the-box in all three platforms.
(Ok, Windows doesn't support it by default, but it only takes downloading
and installing MS Visual Studio Express, which is rather easy.) They also
are used to create native executables which don't require exotic runtime
libraries to work (at least for regular basic programs).

  Java gets close, as it was designed from the start to be portable and
easy to use in a cross-platform way. Except that in this particular case
it fails because you can't develop Java apps for the iPhone. (Not that the
iPhone couldn't support it, but because Apple doesn't want to.) The same
could probably be said of many of the scripting languages (especially those
designed for web development).

  However, basically any other language, especially those fancy ones, and
you are in a rather hopeless situation. Availability is poor or non-existent,
and even when there is availability, you often can't create native executables
and instead have to rely on heavy-duty runtime environments or libraries
which are very uncommon in those platforms.

  Also sometimes it doesn't matter how fancy a programming language is,
if it lacks certain critical libraries and/or features, they are not very
practical. You can create some fancy quicksort-oneliners with them and do
all kind of "see how fancy and better this is than your" stuff, but when
it comes to implement something *practical*, they often fall short. Maybe
there's no good library support. Maybe it's something else.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
>   There are only two closely related languages which all these significantly
> different platforms have in common: C and C++.

And Javascript. :-)  I think Javascript is rapidly becoming one of the few 
languages ported to lots of places, because everyone wants a standard way of 
building a UI.

And objective-C, I thought? Isn't Obj-C what all the Mac stuff is written in 
at the system layer?

I'm wondering how that works out if you discount cross-compilers. Or if 
someone spent a fair amount of time building cross-compilers for other 
languages. Certainly FORTH would be trivial to put on any of these machines 
if anyone wanted it.

I've worked on a number of platforms that almost supported C, and which 
certainly weren't anywhere near what you'd call "standard" - no math lib, no 
stdio, no pointers to functions, etc. There are also chips that only support 
their own custom language, often based on BASIC or something.

But yes, knowing C is pretty much a prerequisite for working on any machine 
that doesn't come from the electronics warehouse down the road. :)

> and instead have to rely on heavy-duty runtime environments or libraries
> which are very uncommon in those platforms.

Given people are porting Linux to cell phones and set-top boxes, it seems to 
me it's way out of the "embedded" range. If your CPU has an MMU, you're no 
longer writing code for an "embedded" machine, but embedded code for a 
general-purpose machine. :-) Now get off my lawn.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!

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Darren New wrote:
> Warp wrote:
>>   There are only two closely related languages which all these
>>   significantly
>> different platforms have in common: C and C++.
> 
> And Javascript. :-)  I think Javascript is rapidly becoming one of the few
> languages ported to lots of places, because everyone wants a standard way
> of building a UI.

JS has no standard way to do UIs. What are you talking about?

> And objective-C, I thought? Isn't Obj-C what all the Mac stuff is written
> in at the system layer?

Objective-C is what you use to write Mac applications. I don't know if the
internals are in Obj-C. Probably low level things are in plain C (like
kernel :P)

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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
>> Warp wrote:
>>>   There are only two closely related languages which all these
>>>   significantly
>>> different platforms have in common: C and C++.
>> And Javascript. :-)  I think Javascript is rapidly becoming one of the few
>> languages ported to lots of places, because everyone wants a standard way
>> of building a UI.
> 
> JS has no standard way to do UIs. What are you talking about?

Javascript's DOM model, obviously. Don't be coy.

> Objective-C is what you use to write Mac applications.

Isn't it also what you use to write iPhone applications? I thought that was 
part of the appeal.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!

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Darren New wrote:
> Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
>> Darren New wrote:
>>> Warp wrote:
>>>>   There are only two closely related languages which all these
>>>>   significantly
>>>> different platforms have in common: C and C++.
>>> And Javascript. :-)  I think Javascript is rapidly becoming one of the
>>> few languages ported to lots of places, because everyone wants a
>>> standard way of building a UI.
>> 
>> JS has no standard way to do UIs. What are you talking about?
> 
> Javascript's DOM model, obviously. Don't be coy.

Well, then you're just saying web browsers are being ported to lots of
platforms...

>> Objective-C is what you use to write Mac applications.
> 
> Isn't it also what you use to write iPhone applications? I thought that
> was part of the appeal.

Yes, you use Obj-C there too, and most of the non-GUI APIs are identical.

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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> Well, then you're just saying web browsers are being ported to lots of
> platforms...

Right. And web browsers nowadays have javascript built in. You got it! So C 
and C++ aren't the only languages common on lots of platforms including the 
embedded ones. :-)  Altho on platforms with no UI at all, I'll grant you 
javascript is less likely to be there than C.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!

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Warp wrote:
>   Btw, one thing which people seldom take into account when comparing
> languages, is their availability (tools, compilers, IDEs...), ease of use
> (of those tools) and library availability for different platforms.

Simple. It's easy to measure precisely how fast language X can perform a 
quicksort, and exactly how many lines of code it takes. (Actually, these 
things are significantly *less* easy than you might imagine, but 
still...) It's rather harder to precisely and objectively measure how 
"portable" something is, how "reliable" it is, "how good the tools are", 
and so forth. Difficult to put a number on that.

Indeed, it seems to me the only way to find out this information is to 
spend some serious time using the language. Which, obviously, is going 
to take some serious time to do.

>   There are only two closely related languages which all these significantly
> different platforms have in common: C and C++.
> 
>   Java gets close, as it was designed from the start to be portable and
> easy to use in a cross-platform way. Except that in this particular case
> it fails because you can't develop Java apps for the iPhone. (Not that the
> iPhone couldn't support it, but because Apple doesn't want to.) The same
> could probably be said of many of the scripting languages (especially those
> designed for web development).
> 
>   However, basically any other language, especially those fancy ones, and
> you are in a rather hopeless situation. Availability is poor or non-existent,
> and even when there is availability, you often can't create native executables
> and instead have to rely on heavy-duty runtime environments or libraries
> which are very uncommon in those platforms.

Well, depends on what you consider to be "available". I know people have 
put Haskell on some pretty strange devices (in some instances by using 
cross-compilers, because the target platform can't host the compiler). 
But I'm not sure if "Dave did it one time" counts as "available". I 
doubt you'd get much *support*, for example. I also doubt it works 
flawlessly.

>   Also sometimes it doesn't matter how fancy a programming language is,
> if it lacks certain critical libraries and/or features, they are not very
> practical.

Agreed.

I think what it comes down to is using the right tool for the job. If 
you're programming a microcontroller for a toaster, you're going to use 
assembly (how complicated can a toaster possibly be?), or maybe C. I 
rather doubt you'd use C++, but I suppose you could. If you're trying to 
process large amounts of structured data, you're probably going to use a 
relational database and write your code in SQL. If you're building a 
complex website, you can basically write the backend in whatever the 
hell you like, because it only needs to run on one PC. And if you're 
writing end-user applications... yes, probably C or C++, realistically. 
(Although, say, Wings 3D is Erlang or something isn't it?)

Anyway, I tend to write crazy complicated programs where it's a 
challenge to even figure out what the algorithm for getting the correct 
answer is, never mind how to do that efficiently. Therefore, my language 
of choice is Haskell. (I'd also probably make use of Mathematica - you 
know, if it didn't cost upwards of 4-figures to use it.)

Of course, measuring the subtle strengths and weaknesses of each 
individual language in any kind of objective way is rather hard. So we 
get stuck with performance benchmarks. ;-)

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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> hell you like, because it only needs to run on one PC. And if you're
> writing end-user applications... yes, probably C or C++, realistically.

I'd say, probably more and more C# these days. Again due to better tools
available for easy money.

I kept thinking that C# is one of those typical Microsoft hypes. But since I
first did put my hands on it, I actually found that I do like it.

Not so much because of the language itself (which is probably about as good or
bad as the newest iterations of C++ or Java), but because of Microsoft's IDE
for it. Feels like they actually designed the language with this in mind.


> (Although, say, Wings 3D is Erlang or something isn't it?)

Yep.

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> And objective-C, I thought? Isn't Obj-C what all the Mac stuff is written in 
> at the system layer?

  I count Objective-C as an example only if Visual Studio Express supports
it out-of-the-box. Does it?

  (I'm using VS Express as the "standard" compiler for Windows because
it's the only one I know which is free and is very well integrated with
the system. I would like to count the various Windows ports of gcc as well,
but in my experience they are clumsy and awkward to install/use and don't
integrate very well with the system. No flamewars on this, please, it's just
an opinion.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:

>   (I'm using VS Express as the "standard" compiler for Windows because
> it's the only one I know which is free and is very well integrated with
> the system. I would like to count the various Windows ports of gcc as well,
> but in my experience they are clumsy and awkward to install/use and don't
> integrate very well with the system. No flamewars on this, please, it's just
> an opinion.)

I'm told things like the Watcom C compiler work well on Windows, but I 
can't verify this personally...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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On Tue, 02 Jun 2009 18:22:38 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

> I'm told things like the Watcom C compiler work well on Windows, but I
> can't verify this personally...

I can, used to use it to do NLM compilation for NetWare.  Worked great.

Jim

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Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Warp wrote:

> >   (I'm using VS Express as the "standard" compiler for Windows because
> > it's the only one I know which is free and is very well integrated with
> > the system. I would like to count the various Windows ports of gcc as well,
> > but in my experience they are clumsy and awkward to install/use and don't
> > integrate very well with the system. No flamewars on this, please, it's just
> > an opinion.)

> I'm told things like the Watcom C compiler work well on Windows, but I 
> can't verify this personally...

  I don't think it supports Objective-C.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> And objective-C, I thought? Isn't Obj-C what all the Mac stuff is written in 
>> at the system layer?
> 
>   I count Objective-C as an example only if Visual Studio Express supports
> it out-of-the-box. Does it?

Oh, I see. Not to my knowledge. I was more thinking one had to use Obj-C to 
program the iPhone, rather than it being an option alongside C++ and plain C.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Oh, I see. Not to my knowledge. I was more thinking one had to use Obj-C to 
> program the iPhone, rather than it being an option alongside C++ and plain C.

  Yes, if you want to make an iPhone program, you must have at least some
basic knowledge of Objective-C, as it's mandatory for certain things (eg.
the Cocoa API is in Objective-C, and you have to use it to create iPhone
programs).

  Fortunately (at least for me :) ) Xcode for the iPhone actually supports
Objective-C++ rather than plain Objective-C. This means that everything
that is not related to Cocoa can be written in pure C++ (and even the code
which interacts with Cocoa can have C++ in it).

  In other words, there's full support for C++ in the system. You can write
entire libraries in pure C++ (as long as it's standard portable code) and
use it in your iPhone apps.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
>   In other words, there's full support for C++ in the system. 

Cool. Good to know. One less fool language I'll have to learn if I ever get 
into Mac development. :-)


-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> >   In other words, there's full support for C++ in the system. 

> Cool. Good to know. One less fool language I'll have to learn if I ever get 
> into Mac development. :-)

  As I said, you'll have to learn Objective-C if you want to use Cocoa.
There's no way around it. It's just that *besides* Objective-C, you can
mix C++ into your program nicely, because Xcode supports Objective-C++.

  (The only alternative to Cocoa on MacOS (but not the iPhone) is the
older Carbon library, which is in pure C, but I really think you *don't*
want to use it.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Darren New wrote:
> Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
>> Well, then you're just saying web browsers are being ported to lots of
>> platforms...
> 
> Right. And web browsers nowadays have javascript built in. You got it! So
> C and C++ aren't the only languages common on lots of platforms including
> the
> embedded ones. :-)  Altho on platforms with no UI at all, I'll grant you
> javascript is less likely to be there than C.

I know of at least one lynx-like web browser with Javascript support :)

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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> I know of at least one lynx-like web browser with Javascript support :)

Lynx has a UI. :-) "Without UI" means things like anti-lock brake computers.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!

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>> hell you like, because it only needs to run on one PC. And if you're
>> writing end-user applications... yes, probably C or C++, realistically.
> 
> I'd say, probably more and more C# these days. Again due to better tools
> available for easy money.

Really? Even though this then requires your customers to download 250MB 
of data and install it before they can use your program?

>> (Although, say, Wings 3D is Erlang or something isn't it?)
> 
> Yep.

I get Wings, Blender and all those others confused quite frequently. 
Must have been a lucky guess. ;-)

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Invisible wrote:
> Really? Even though this then requires your customers to download 250MB 
> of data and install it before they can use your program?

Most machines already have it by now. "Really? People use Linux? Even tho it 
requires downloading...?"  Yes, really. If it's a problem, you put it on a CD.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!

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>> Really? Even though this then requires your customers to download 
>> 250MB of data and install it before they can use your program?
> 
> Most machines already have it by now. "Really? People use Linux? Even 
> tho it requires downloading...?"  Yes, really. If it's a problem, you 
> put it on a CD.

All I know is that we used to use one bit of software that required the 
.NET 1.1 runtime, which basically meant you had to wait 25 to 30 minutes 
for the runtime to install before you could install the actual program 
itself (which took about 3 minutes to install). I always wondered why 
the hell anybody would develop software this way...

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
> All I know is that we used to use one bit of software that required the 
> .NET 1.1 runtime,

So the fact they're up to 3.5.x doesn't signal that maybe something 
different is going on nowadays?  Damn, if everyone using Linux or something 
said "Gee, when I tried it 5 years ago, it was a PITA to install, so I never 
looked at it again" it never would have gotten off the ground.

.NET comes with Windows nowadays. If you don't have it on there already, 
chances are you don't have an internet connection fast enough to download a 
program, either.

> which basically meant you had to wait 25 to 30 minutes 
> for the runtime to install 

Wouldn't it have made more sense to put it on a CD and install it?

> before you could install the actual program 
> itself (which took about 3 minutes to install). I always wondered why 
> the hell anybody would develop software this way...

Because you only have to do it once, and it's a pretty nice infrastructure.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!

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>> All I know is that we used to use one bit of software that required 
>> the .NET 1.1 runtime,
> 
> So the fact they're up to 3.5.x doesn't signal that maybe something 
> different is going on nowadays?  Damn, if everyone using Linux or 
> something said "Gee, when I tried it 5 years ago, it was a PITA to 
> install, so I never looked at it again" it never would have gotten off 
> the ground.
> 
> .NET comes with Windows nowadays. If you don't have it on there already, 
> chances are you don't have an internet connection fast enough to 
> download a program, either.

Really? That's interesting. So how do you explain the fact that I keep 
having to manually install it?

Oh, wait - you probably meant it comes with Vista.

>> which basically meant you had to wait 25 to 30 minutes for the runtime 
>> to install 
> 
> Wouldn't it have made more sense to put it on a CD and install it?

I *did*.

The 25 to 30 minutes was just thrashing the HD back and forth.

>> I always wondered why the hell anybody would 
>> develop software this way...
> 
> Because you only have to do it once, and it's a pretty nice infrastructure.

In other words, it makes things easier for the developers, not the end 
users.

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
>> .NET comes with Windows nowadays.

> Oh, wait - you probably meant it comes with Vista.

That's pretty much what "nowadays" means, yes. Sure, if you're running an OS 
version that was released before .NET was, it makes it hard to come with.

> The 25 to 30 minutes was just thrashing the HD back and forth.

You just like complaining, don't you? :-)

> In other words, it makes things easier for the developers, not the end 
> users.

For both, really. Indeed, that's what the whole "one click" fiasco is about. 
And you get less malware and unexplained lockups when the software you're 
running is written in .NET, because it's checking for buffer overruns and such.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!

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>>> .NET comes with Windows nowadays.
> 
>> Oh, wait - you probably meant it comes with Vista.
> 
> That's pretty much what "nowadays" means, yes.

Does *anybody* use Vista yet? Still seems pretty rare.

> Sure, if you're running 
> an OS version that was released before .NET was, it makes it hard to 
> come with.

I thought maybe you were claiming that it was added by one of the 
service packs or something. (The Windows Firewall didn't exist before 
SP2, for example.)

>> The 25 to 30 minutes was just thrashing the HD back and forth.
> 
> You just like complaining, don't you? :-)

The Java runtime takes, like 2 minutes _maximum_ to install. Only the 
.NET framework takes 25 minutes.

>> In other words, it makes things easier for the developers, not the end 
>> users.
> 
> For both, really. Indeed, that's what the whole "one click" fiasco is 
> about. And you get less malware and unexplained lockups when the 
> software you're running is written in .NET, because it's checking for 
> buffer overruns and such.

Assuming there's no buffer overruns in the runtime engine itself. (I 
notice how as soon as I install .NET, a whole bunch of extra hotfixes 
show up as needing to be applied...)

Post a reply to this message

Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Does *anybody* use Vista yet? Still seems pretty rare.

  How many new PCs (desktop and laptops) are sold each year?

  In how many of those PCs is Vista installed by default? How many buyers
simply accept the fact (either because they want Vista or because they
don't know too much about computers) and go with the purchase?

  The vast majority of Vistas out there are not because people using XP
would go out and buy Vista to upgrade their system. The vast majority is
because Vista is installed by default on all new PCs (without even asking
the customer). It's not really a choice for most people (especially those
who know little about computers).

  (This is, btw, why Steve Ballmer bragging about how Vista is the second
most popular OS in the world is so irritating. Yes, it's the second most
widely installed OS, but not by customer choice! It's the salesman who
makes the choice for the customer. The popularity is not correlated to
any quality merit Vista might have.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

> Really? That's interesting. So how do you explain the fact that I keep 
> having to manually install it?
>
> Oh, wait - you probably meant it comes with Vista.

It's also an MS automatic update download for XP (and included in some XP 
SP) IIRC.  So if you're in a company and have the updates managed locally 
then it should be fairly trivial to push it out to all XP machines.

> The 25 to 30 minutes was just thrashing the HD back and forth.

Sounds like you were running low on hard disc space or RAM, how old was the 
machine?

> In other words, it makes things easier for the developers, not the end 
> users.

Making things easier for developers has a positive knock-on effect for 
users.

Anyway, I would guess that most people have some version of .net installed 
by now anyway so I doubt it's such a big issue as a few years back.

Post a reply to this message

>> Does *anybody* use Vista yet? Still seems pretty rare.
> 
>   How many new PCs (desktop and laptops) are sold each year?

No idea. Presumably not many compared to the number already set up.

Certainly where I work, we're intentionally not installing any Vista 
systems.

>   The vast majority of Vistas out there are not because people using XP
> would go out and buy Vista to upgrade their system. The vast majority is
> because Vista is installed by default on all new PCs (without even asking
> the customer). It's not really a choice for most people (especially those
> who know little about computers).

Especially since XP is no longer on sale...

>   This is, btw, why Steve Ballmer bragging about how Vista is the second
> most popular OS in the world is so irritating.

Yeah, well, I just ignore that stuff.

Post a reply to this message

>> Really? That's interesting. So how do you explain the fact that I keep 
>> having to manually install it?
>>
>> Oh, wait - you probably meant it comes with Vista.
> 
> It's also an MS automatic update download for XP (and included in some 
> XP SP) IIRC.

I beg to differ. Just yesterday I set up a brand new laptop, installed 
XP, installed SP3, installed all critical updates. I still had to select 
to install the .NET framework seperately; it is *not* installed 
automatically. (But IE8 is, interestingly enough...)

> So if you're in a company and have the updates managed 
> locally then it should be fairly trivial to push it out to all XP machines.

Yes. In fact, that happens here (now). Apparently .NET 3.5 SP1 includes 
an update tp the RDP client which we need.

>> The 25 to 30 minutes was just thrashing the HD back and forth.
> 
> Sounds like you were running low on hard disc space or RAM, how old was 
> the machine?

It was a brand new Dell OptiPlex 755.

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
>   How many new PCs (desktop and laptops) are sold each year?
> 
>   In how many of those PCs is Vista installed by default? How many buyers
> simply accept the fact (either because they want Vista or because they
> don't know too much about computers) and go with the purchase?

How many people buy an OS separately instead of assuming one will be 
bundled with the computer they get, and 'upgrade' when they get a newer 
computer?  Not me, at least.  I wanted to play around with both XP and 
Vista for a while after they were out, but waited to get a new system 
that had them on by default.

--
Tim Cook
http://empyrean.freesitespace.net

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Invisible wrote:
> Does *anybody* use Vista yet? Still seems pretty rare.

Lots of people like it and use it in the home environment. It's slower to 
catch on in the business environment, where people have more specialized 
tools they need to keep working.

>> Sure, if you're running an OS version that was released before .NET 
>> was, it makes it hard to come with.
> 
> I thought maybe you were claiming that it was added by one of the 
> service packs or something. 

No, but it was a WU update.

> (The Windows Firewall didn't exist before SP2, for example.)

Yes it did. It was just turned off by default. SP2 turned it on.

>>> The 25 to 30 minutes was just thrashing the HD back and forth.
>>
>> You just like complaining, don't you? :-)
> 
> The Java runtime takes, like 2 minutes _maximum_ to install. Only the 
> .NET framework takes 25 minutes.

I'm not denying it takes a while. Since you don't have assemblies or sxs in 
Java, it's easier to package things up into one big file that's faster to 
install. I'm just saying that of all the things for a professional 
operations manager to complain about in Windows, "it takes 30 minutes to 
install" seems kind of low on the list. :-)

> Assuming there's no buffer overruns in the runtime engine itself.

That's pretty easy. There's only a handful of instructions where you have to 
check it's right, and then everyone gets the benefit. It's not like every 
class has to get checked for buffer overruns - just the runtime system.

> notice how as soon as I install .NET, a whole bunch of extra hotfixes 
> show up as needing to be applied...)

Not every hotfix is fixing a buffer overrun. :-)

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   There's no CD like OCD, there's no CD I knoooow!

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Invisible wrote:
>>   This is, btw, why Steve Ballmer bragging about how Vista is the second
>> most popular OS in the world is so irritating.
> 
> Yeah, well, I just ignore that stuff.

And that's why later you say nobody uses Vista.

Post a reply to this message

>>>   This is, btw, why Steve Ballmer bragging about how Vista is the second
>>> most popular OS in the world is so irritating.
>> Yeah, well, I just ignore that stuff.
> 
> And that's why later you say nobody uses Vista.

Oh, I'm sure a few people use it. But not very many. That's my point.

I'm pretty sure *everybody* ignores marketing nonesense...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>>>>   This is, btw, why Steve Ballmer bragging about how Vista is the
>>>>   second
>>>> most popular OS in the world is so irritating.
>>> Yeah, well, I just ignore that stuff.
>> 
>> And that's why later you say nobody uses Vista.
> 
> Oh, I'm sure a few people use it. But not very many. That's my point.
> 
> I'm pretty sure *everybody* ignores marketing nonesense...

Everybody?

As unbelievable as it may seem, spam actually works, you know?

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