Except debuggers. Open source debuggers suck the ass, as I recently found out while trying to debug a python program. Holy hell was that a pain in the ass. Try to track a variable to see when it goes funky, and I ended up just going through the whole code path with a fine toothed comb and asking myself "could this be causing that?".
rizen
on Aug 22, 2004
Oh, yeah, and 100% of the programs I'm running are open source, but then, I do still play 2k4 all the time. I'm just not playing it now.
aegisknight
on Aug 22, 2004
Amen, brotha. Then again, there are only two debuggers I've ever used that have even been half decent: Visual Studio and Borland (this is the half decent one).
lordgalbalan
on Aug 22, 2004
Yeah really. OSS seems to be running circles around Corporate America in terms of software innovation. When you think about it, it makes sense. The only people working on this stuff are really, really smart, because only really really smart people program for fun. So all of those smart ideas from the smart hobbyist programmers that are going into software slowly at the workplace (courtesy of dominatory forces at work in corporate politics) can just explode onto the software scene through OSS just as soon as they are transcripted to code. The tireless, often unrewarded thoughts of the academic establishment seem to have found a place with OSS, too.
Capitalism is slowly but definitely disintegrating in favor of... something else? Here's a question... are the leaders of the commercial software industry, by virtue of their intellect, acting to sabotage not only their own companies, but also the ability of other companies to replace their own?
aegisknight
on Aug 22, 2004
You're forgetting about the stuff people don't work on for fun. Like printer drivers. And any drivers, really. And large automated test suites. And (often) documentation. Just because hobbyists do it doesn't mean it's automatically better. That kind of work introduces its own problems. I guess I'm just saying to be careful when generalizing.
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Strange how they tend to be so much... better.
Except debuggers. Open source debuggers suck the ass, as I recently found out while trying to debug a python program. Holy hell was that a pain in the ass. Try to track a variable to see when it goes funky, and I ended up just going through the whole code path with a fine toothed comb and asking myself "could this be causing that?".
Oh, yeah, and 100% of the programs I'm running are open source, but then, I do still play 2k4 all the time. I'm just not playing it now.
Amen, brotha. Then again, there are only two debuggers I've ever used that have even been half decent: Visual Studio and Borland (this is the half decent one).
Yeah really. OSS seems to be running circles around Corporate America in terms of software innovation. When you think about it, it makes sense. The only people working on this stuff are really, really smart, because only really really smart people program for fun. So all of those smart ideas from the smart hobbyist programmers that are going into software slowly at the workplace (courtesy of dominatory forces at work in corporate politics) can just explode onto the software scene through OSS just as soon as they are transcripted to code. The tireless, often unrewarded thoughts of the academic establishment seem to have found a place with OSS, too.
Capitalism is slowly but definitely disintegrating in favor of... something else? Here's a question... are the leaders of the commercial software industry, by virtue of their intellect, acting to sabotage not only their own companies, but also the ability of other companies to replace their own?
You're forgetting about the stuff people don't work on for fun. Like printer drivers. And any drivers, really. And large automated test suites. And (often) documentation. Just because hobbyists do it doesn't mean it's automatically better. That kind of work introduces its own problems. I guess I'm just saying to be careful when generalizing.
Are they? I don't understand the question.