h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm happy to produce graphics to order, as long as someone tells me what we need. You'll have to get them to Shazz a while before the post deadline to get them "blobbed", though...

I don't know what we need, talk it over with DoctorMO, youre the creatice team

Probably something as unintelligebly realted to computing as possible, so that only computer people will see the relation.


Dancer

talk with meeeeeee.....

-- DoctroMO --

* splat splat *

*knock* *knock*


Dancer

what the... thats not talking, if your just going to act childish you leave me with only one option, and that to join you.

$13,$10 &Splz dumb pof& $0

-- DoctorMO --

Time for a title change. I know where to put those apostrophies already (don't know how to spell them though )

Any Ideas for a new title?


Dancer

well i'm out of ideas.

-- DoctorMO --

What title in particular are we referring to here?

#! /usr/bin/perl -w

while(true) {
print "We are really poor conversationalists, aren't we?\n";
}

ah, some people may be. But others enjoy the advantages of listiening to their fellow man

Other than that...

D'you know, one of the best things about being ill, is being able lie in bed all day with a Simpsons dvd in your laptop and nothing to do

Well, I think ether people were just teasing or there realy didn't notice that I had changed the topic.

-- DoctorMO --

We are talking about the title of the conversation, and we ARE poor conversationalists, but I think this is the whole point


Dancer

Well, we are programmers after all.

Hi Maw,

Ever the devils advocate, I query your recommendations on learning Java.

Java? I'm not sure of the value of Java in the real world. From an academic point of view it allows transportable, platform independant code, which is a great concept.

In realty it would seem that in order to get the code to run with any decent speed, you have to compile it into native code which makes it machine specific thus defeating the point of Java at all. Surely Native compiled C++ (or visual equivalent) would produce much more efficient code.

Let's not fill our machines with bloatware. Whaddyasay?

Cheers

Well said! Right behind you! (a safe distance behind you that is )


Dancer

"...transportable, platform independant code..."

"Let's not fill our machines with bloatware..."

Sounds like an advert for Forth to me...

Java may not be the best language on the planet, I don't know as I've never learned it, but a lot of job ads ask for it. For some of them you try to think why on earth they'd want someone who can programme Java as there will be no way that you'd be using it, but they ask for it none the less. So learning it might help to get a job.

It just seems like re-inventing the wheel for the sake of it.

Javascript is also quite a joke the way that it's been implemented (ie: Different versions for different browsers). This was to replace VBscript with no obvious advantages.

::Gets soapbox out from under desk:

Unless these so called tools offer us better control, faster code or in fact anything new, why do people bother with them. Surely even Microsoft are driven by market forces?



Sorry about that. I feel much better now.

Cheers

One obvious advantage that I can see from JavaScript over VBScript, is that it's a darn sight easier to learn. Okay I'll admit that I haven't given VBScript a go yet so I'm pretty biased.
I will agree though that the way it's been implemmented is a joke. Although you just have to set up an include file that does the browser dection stuff and then sets variables up for the differences in code. A stupid long way round of doing things, which I do wish they'd make redundant by making JavaScript completely cross-browser.
Although the way that they may be looking at it now is that with the server side scripting becoming more, er, what's the word? funky? Well, with more gizmos involved, then JavaScript and VBScript are becoming a bit redundant in total. Especially with things like Flash becoming more widespread.