Funny Caption for a Serious Matter

I think they are trying to be everything to everyone... why else have more then one OS?

Most people will install dual or triple boot for running their favorite applications which will run on one system but not on another. The key here is called "My favorite App will not run on..."

After all, learning to master the user-interface of a given application, might take up a lot of time - sometimes months, or even years

The same app will run differently under different OS's

I have firefox on both my xp & unbuntu boxes

Here on this site if I right click on a mispelled word in xp, a couple of nag boxes before I can correct. on the linux box immediate possible corrections.

some of my favorite widgits don't run in linux, like Itunes. I haven't found a player I like that will run on linux, xp & vista. Like you say, I'm used to the itunes interface & can't or won't spend the time to learn a new one

"...in xp, a couple of nag boxes before I can correct. on the linux box immediate possible corrections..." - That's pure ergonomics, or 'User-Interface' design.

Ergonomics is the 'why and how' of any design, be it mechanic or virtual. I think User-Interface design should be widely researched, established, and taught, way before teaching the 'art of programming' - logic and numeric systems, algorithmics, and program design and implementation.

Ergonomics is the 'why and how' of any design, be it mechanic or virtual. I think User-Interface design should be widely researched, established, and taught, way before teaching the 'art of programming' - logic and numeric systems, algorithmics, and program design and implementation.

That is the problem with education and the teaching of techologies of today........soemhow the actually fundamentals are if not lost,..........buried and has less of a priority. And by doing so fundamentals are being redefined.

p911

Totally agree. Most graduates these days, develop their own ergonomic concepts as they go - mostly by trial-and-error - instead of by taught methodology.

In civil engineering and architecture, some is taught, but not enough.

The key word here is "Taught".

'Acquired' and 'Taught' are not the same, because with 'Acquired', there is lack of accumulated knowledge and experience to be academically established - which amounts to be the main driver behind human technology through the ages

Duh yes of course it's ergonomics

I wish admin would pay more attention to the user interface [CR4], in an effort to have a unique interface, they've succeeded

a bit awkward & time consuming , but unique...

Most websites these days are created with all kinds of application-generators, so they are pretty much a kind of a pre-cast interface, with very little to tinker with.

CR4 however, was (to the best of my knowledge - we can ask mgaulin) created using Java, which is a high-level compiler. If it is so, it means, that a lot can be done and changed with, and about, the user-interface.

I had the opportunity to converse with him on private mail, and he seems like an open-minded fella, so that if you drop him a line or two, with your suggestions, he might take notice, and even implement - why not ?

I to have had plenty of enjoyable & productive exchanges with mgaulin,

Moose & Chris

I'm in the middle of one of my complaints. I drug mgalin down from your post & my font has been hijacked.

Everything has become a link

Inserting a smiley, copying some text from above or not highlighting all the text are the only ways I know to keep this from happening. not the end of the world, just an annoyance

Too many clicks for a post, with the option to edit, the need to preview could be considered redundant.

custom right click menu?

I hate the private mail [I still use it] too many clicks.

I think I'll start a thread on the feedback channel & see what other people have to add...

"...custom right click menu?..." - Wouldn't be helpful to Mac users, and even then, it might interfere with Windows' shell commands, yes, situated there.

Neutralising or messing with Windows shell is possible, but never advised, because windows is not best known for stability - as we all know...

...I think I'll start a thread on the feedback channel & see what other people have to add......" - Now, that's an excellent idea ! - each one of us might have at least one idea about the improvement of CR4's user-interface, although some CR4 users may have no clue of what this term means...

The promised new discussion

Link

Exquisite taste in automobile! I am sure.

Did they give up their superiority complex over Microsoft's new OS ?

Not Steve Jobs current mentality

this is not a bad idea.......MS users is a nice market to tap into.....and who knows.....maybe some will convert.

Convert from Apple OS to Windows ? Most PCs are cheaper than the cheapest Apple.

It seems best to have both hardware platforms, each with it's dedicated software.

Besides, Windows might have trouble implementing Apple's new multi-touch-point mouse interface, unless some serious convertion work is underway...

Could you elaborate on that ?

We know they charged each other in court for copyright infringements and that Bill Gates initiated buying a chunk of Apple in the nineties - but it's not like we know of anything beyond that

When Jobs came back to Apple, they (Jobbs and Gates) form an sort of alliance between the two (Apple and Microsoft) and stop having the mentality that one company will dominate.

With Microsoft (Gates) actually invested in Apple. Its also not what people think, Microsoft did not pull Apple out from the brink, Its actually was a good investment.

Thats what I mean by strange bedfellows.

As far as Copyright infringements hell thats been going on since the "80's", hell, MS collaborated with Apple to help Apple's development and stole applications Apple bought (stole, but still bought for a song because XEROX did not know what they had) from XEROX and created Windows.

Jobs knew and Gates as well the importance of those applications.

again strange bed fellows

p911

"...stole, but still bought for a song because XEROX did not know what they had..." - I guess you meant the Xerox workstation running 'Xenix' OS, leading to the development of that weird, not very efficient 10,000 $ "Lisa".

Well, they could hardly sell a dozen of these early 32-bit machines, because there were no serious applications to offer with that beast - which is why they went "Mac" as a cheaper version to replace the "Apple-II", right ?

Yes, the concept of windows application was there.....Like any thing under a development stage.....there will be stumbling blocks,,,,,,and MS was in some way assisting the development with apple (I have to look out in what way) but MS was also concurrently using and developing on thier own version which was first released in Japan.

And yes they introduced Mac, and that was Apples structure of consistantly developing

Multiple operating systems on a single computer are a good idea. Not all operating systems offer the same benefits. A lot of really good commercial software is available for only one operating system (in the case of Apple, getting access to some good Windows-only software can be beneficial, and possibly even increase market share). It all depends on what you want to use your computer for...

Windows- CAD, gaming

Apple- Desktop Publishing

Unix/Linux- Serious technical work

cwarner7_11:

Unix/Linux- Serious technical work

Whats serious technical work? Complex equations?

p911

SciLab replacement for Matlab (some serious linear algebra capabilities, signal processing, complex math, other data analysis applications, etc.)

Octave replacement for Maple (I don't use this much)

Finite Element Analysis

Computational Fluid Dynamics

NIST DataPlot (quick look at raw data to very sophisticated data analysis)

There are a number of applications available for things like protein analysis and modeling and other biological science applications which I have no use for personally.

There are a significant number of applications for astronomy- again, out of my realm of expertise.

Have a look at the apps available on the Ubuntu packages page, under Science or Math...

My experience with Linux for technical apps is that they are generally faster than running similar apps under Windows, because Linux is much less bloated at the operating system level (although this appears to be changing), and many of the technical apps are less cluttered with unnecessary eye candy, which is a fault with a lot of applications developed for Windows. When I say faster, I mean completing an analysis in 4 hours instead of eight to twelve hours...

Many years ago, I got turned off to Apple for technical applications, simply because there were none available. I do not know for sure if this is true today...

I see, and can understand with fluid computation and FEA, thanks

as far as eye candy for windows, would some of that be for the lower intellectual users...making it more user friendly?

Many years ago, I got turned off to Apple for technical applications, simply because there were none available. I do not know for sure if this is true today...

That is where apple stumbled and did not open its architecture for third party software development as MS did........ IMO, it also had a somewhat positive effect...less viruses, because what lowlife virus writer wants to write a virus on a lesser popular platform

p911

I would think that, since Apple's current OS's are Unix-based, there would be some possibility of extending into the technical arena...

"...Linux is much less bloated at the operating system level (although this appears to be changing)..." - Bloated (full of unnecessary, inefficient code) software has more to do with the quality of algorithms and the the programming language (or 'development package as it's called today) used, than the efficiency and attributes of the operating system used.

If your algorithms and development package compiles inefficient runtime code, the resulting application Will be slow and space-consuming, no matter how fast efficient your operating system be.

The fastest, most efficient applications, are written in assembly language (usually for the military or scientific), which practically overrides the operating system, to 'speak' directly to the CPU's 'interrupt-cue', by itself usually managed by the operating system. This is why in assembly, you have to provide for the in-out routines and memory management, done otherwise by the operating-system.

This by itself is an indirect proof for the relative inefficiency of the operating-system. It is justified, because the operating-system is a very generalised type of service-provider software, kind of mediator between the app and the hardware (CPU, RAM etc).

Operating systems get bloated as well...One of the things I like about Win98SE is one can do a "Custom Install" and cout out a lot of bloat from the beginning. Then there are programs like Startup Cop and CCleaner that can help you identify unnecessary apps running in the background that are not needed, but really eat up resources. Linux is going this way- have a look at how many apps are loaded at any given time on a typical Linux box! Maybe not as bad as Windows yet, but one sees a trend...

"...Operating systems get bloated as well..." - That is absolutely true because an operating-system is a piece of software, and someone wrote it with their algorithmic knowledge and their given programming language...

My case is that programming efficiency as a whole, deteriorated during the last two decades, because of a constant shift from highly compact low-level code-producers of the past (FORTH, first-generation CPP, Assembly) to today's high-level application generators, which compile a lot of unnecessary code, mostly related to the conversion process, rather than mnemonic instruction to the CPU

Hardly any one (commercial) today program in FORTH or Assembly, unless it's for critical system control such as the military or for research in the academy

because of a constant shift from highly compact low-level code-producers of the past (FORTH, first-generation CPP, Assembly) to today's high-level application generators, which compile a lot of unnecessary code,

More so to aid in writing the code not so much as run efficiency of the code, correct?

p911

Just about. In the past, there were two main types of programming languages: Interpreters and Compilers.

An interpreter wrote an intermediate code called "a program", and when you ran a program, you had to have a special command-interpreter, dedicated to that specific programming language, to let the hardware know which mnemonics to execute in Opcode and in what order.

This meant that the array of commands you wrote in your program had to be interpreted back and forth between the high mid and low levels of interpretation until a final command was given in Opcode, for the CPU to execute.

This is slow and wasteful way to execute a program, because a big part of the CPU and RAM power was dedicated to interpretation, instead of directly commanding the task in hand to the CPU.

- - -

A Compiler is also a high-level language consisting of abstracts, but after writing a routine or a "program" (a collection of routines) - Called 'Source-Code' - you sent it to a kind of a "meat-grinder" called the 'Compiler'. The compiler digested the 'Source-Code' and created an Executable-Code (also called 'Runtimes'), which was a list of direct machine-level commands in Opcode.

This was more efficient than Interpreter programs, but harder to write because each time you wanted to test the validity or viability of your routine, you had to compile it, and then test the resulted Runtimes. On an Interpreter, you could test your routines directly, while writing them. Each change or tinker with the program, had an immediate response.

- - -

Today's new generation "Application Generator Studios", are a convenient mix of Interpreters and Compilers and Linkers, arranged as a workbench filled with "Forms" (high-level abstracts, representing whole interface-creation routines).

This expandable library of forms is handed to the programmer as an array of ready-made objects, to be composed like a jigsaw-puzzle, in order to create a complete, encapsulated application.

This is wasteful, bloated code, because when it is finally compiled into Opcode, it contains a lot of non-direct, linkage commands - wasting a lot of RAM-space and CPU-time (called CPU-Cycles).

This is why programs got heavier and relatively-slower over the years, in spite of the fantastic increase in Hardware speed and RAM-space.

gwbasic and basica.....huh

This is why programs got heavier and relatively-slower over the years, in spite of the fantastic increase in Hardware speed and RAM-space.

There was a Cad program the AutoDesk bought up called Generic Cad, that I thought was programmed in assembly. And I was always wondering on some of the high level software if they would program it from scratch how this would effect the speed of todays desktops. I do know you would probally need an army of programmers with a facilitator to bring it together, but I think this would really put a crunch on the competition.

Forth is a fantastic language, but if one does not use it frequently, it can be difficult to work with...great for accessing the hardware features though.

It may sound strange, but FORTH is more of an attitude than a language, because if you know the generalised syntax, and you master (a specific CPU dialect) Assembly, you can create your own FORTH from scratch.

Moreover, in fourth (pretty much like as in Assembly), each compiled and named routine, becomes a new "mid-level" command or function, ready for further use, so it's pretty much a self-building language, and this was behind it's use as a "language for building other languages".

You are absolutely right about Forth being more an attitude than a language. Back in the days when I was using it (more experimenting than actual development, although I did some interesting things with interfacing to test and measurement equipment that just was not possible with conventional software- like getting in the the actual machine clock cycle for timing functions), I really enjoyed it, and learned a lot about how the computer actually manipulates data- something, I think, that is missing in current approaches to teaching programming. I have pretty much gotten away from Forth these days, however, since I have pretty much switched most of my computer work to Linux, and I am not working so much with the old data acquisition problems I used to face...I still like to play around with it on the lazy Sunday afternoon when I have nothing much else to do. It is lightning fast on my old Win98SE machine that won't run modern operating systems!

The fastest, most efficient applications, are written in assembly language (usually for the military or scientific), which practically overrides the operating system, to 'speak' directly to the CPU's 'interrupt-cue',

Thats what I have understood, because as I understand assembly is a more direct language. Having written "C" its assembly also not for the layman. But if you understand assembly you have a very good understanding of the operations of how computer actually works.

p911

Exactly. Assembly-written programs, must handle the hardware directly, and manage RAM stacks (real-time memory management) without the mediation of the operating system. In contrast, a high-level language, uses abstracts to manipulate the operating-system's kernel routines, already written in low-level languages (such as FORTH or assembly) and compiled into a tight and efficient runtimes-code. In the old Windows, this library of kernel routines was called "Library-Functions" and the library was called API (for 16-bit) or MFC (for 32-bit).

We would probably get a lot better code in any language if we required programmers to master assembly first. That's the level at which you really learn how a computer works...

You said it.

In israel, assembly is a mandatory language for robotics and control systems

The sad part of assembly sometimes is that you write a really slick piece of application specific code and your antivirus software doesnt like it. But that is a different environment from robotics and controls, since they are stand alone systems.