X-Git-Url: https://codewiz.org/gitweb?p=wiki.git;a=blobdiff_plain;f=JuneBlog;h=25a39e21266847d1924f3d66515718496774d80f;hp=e20c345194546a8cbac5966e6538f19f95fe177a;hb=922803edb045d667b54f1fa5e4aed08d1363aa23;hpb=c698ea0514bd095f6f39743d93d50777e40689d3 diff --git a/JuneBlog b/JuneBlog index e20c345..25a39e2 100644 --- a/JuneBlog +++ b/JuneBlog @@ -1,5 +1,95 @@ == June 2007 == +The story continues in JulyBlog of course. + +=== Sat, 30th === + +==== Italian profanity ==== + +I just found out that "A Cappella" is how Italians say "in the style of the church". +It's used for music played by human voice instead of instruments. Yes, indeed. +Nobody could understand why I was grinning :-) + + + +==== Random Birthday Paradox ==== + +I'm writing you this from ChrisBalls's house. cjb for IRC friends. +Yesterday was his wife's birthday. And also the birthday of somebody +else too. That's where the title came from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_paradox . + +We're having a lot of fun and getting drunk very quickly. Someone +came with a box of Avocados with a picture of Avogardo saying: +"let's Party. arriba." It's the things like these that will make it +very sad for me to leave this nation. + +Food is vegan, and incredibly tasty if you ask me. There are people +from the office as well as other nerds from other places. One guy +showed up with a tee saying: "shut the fuck up and write some +code!". We're listening to TheSoundOfSilence from Xyzzy's (*) mp3 player. +That's one of my favourite songs, but I thought it was from the Beatles :-) + +(*) We'll call her Xyzzy 'cause she doesn't want her name to end up on +Internet. + + +Xyzzy: remember...all is not as it appears to be and the best place to hide something is in plain sight + +Bernie: hmmm... then I guess I'll hide at OLPC and the USCIS won't find me :-) + +RandomBirthdayParty.jpg +RandomBirthdayPartyHouse.jpg +RandomBirthdayPartyTv.jpg +RandomBirthdayPartyHall.jpg + + +=== Tue, 26th === + +==== Long time, no C++ ==== + +The title was inteded to be a joke on "long time, no see", because I've +not been updating the blog for some time. + +But this reminds me that, yes, indeed I've not been doing any C++ for a few +months now. That's probably irrelevant to most of you... but this is my blog +and I get to decide what goes in. Except when *you* edit it. Damn WikiWikiWeb! + +The reason we don't have any C++ in the OLPC is that, in the Linux world, +C++ never flied that much. The kernel hackers say it's not well suited +for kernel programming, and I partially agree. Of course, C++ can't be +used for glibc and POSIX system libraries. Even MicrosoftCompany uses C +for those. + +This leaves us with three more layers to exclude: windowing server, +desktop and applications. + +X11 is written in C for historical reasons. Since its internals mostly +deal with interfaces and specialization of interfaces, C++ would have +been very beneficial. + +Gnome also uses C, for no good reason. KDE is older than Gnome and +was entirely written in C++, although I clearly remember g++ 2.7.2 being +quite a painful experience. The GObject crap in glib and GTK is expecially +ugly, hard to use and error prone due to lack of good OOP support in the +language. + +And applications? Well, applications in the OLPC are written in Python +anyway, like many higher level applications in regular Linux distros. + +There's a few exceptions: Mozilla is written in C++ and eToys is written +in SmallTalk. I don't know about TamTam. + +'''rasky:''' in fact, with the raise of scripting languages and fully-featured +platforms (like Java's), using C++ for doing almost *anything* is the wrong +choice. As you said, system programming wants C for several good reasons, and +almost anything else can be done in scripting language. I think one last thing +that C++ is still good today at is high-performance libraries (eg: math +libraries), where you don't want to use C and you need a lot of performance. +But C++ is feeling more and more like a dead horse... + +'''marco:''' About writing kernels in C++: +http://okmij.org/ftp/cpp-digest/toy_OS.txt + === Wed, 13th === ==== Under pressure ====