Using Play as an end-run around manufacturers and carriers who are slack about updating devices. i.e. all of them.  Good thinking.

Location.  Well, people who actually get a chance to leave the house might care about that, so okay.

1 Thanks for the report - I'm glad I decided to skip it.

1. Readable code. Neither curly brackets and semicolons, those codependent blights on programmer productivity, nor bizarre unfamiliar syntax like Smalltalk.
   
   
2. Something like Ruby's blocks or Python's with - the cd function creates a context, as does the open function, and those contexts apply to the enclosed statements and are automatically cleaned up at the end. So the program changes its working directory to the data only for the code within the do...end block, without the programmer needing to worry about any details.

More significantly, while Julia is object-oriented, it is not class-based (as most object-oriented languages are). It uses multiple dispatch based on the arguments to a function rather than binding functions to an object.

That is, where in Python you might define an image object and a resize method, and call it like this:

In Julia you'd define the data structure of the object, and then define a set of functions that act upon that object. There might already be a resize function that acts on arrays or vectors or memory-mapped files (or a hundred other things), but when you call

Julia knows that you mean the image resize function, because it knows that the variable im is an image. Values cannot change their type, so the Julia compiler can bind to the right version of the function at compile time, unlike Python or Ruby, where dispatch is always dynamic.

And that matters because it means that Julia is about 20x faster than Python.*

What Julia doesn't (currently) provide is multi-threaded programming. It's supports coroutines, called tasks, that allow you to write your code in a logically multi-threaded way. And it supports message-passing multi-processing, so you can spin up multiple instances of your application on different CPUs and easily dispatch tasks to other workers and receive the results when they're done. But you can't have multiple processes sharing a common native data structure.

But then, neither (really) can Python or Ruby. Both support threading, but both have global interpreter locks - the infamous GIL in Python - that means that only one thread is working on native code or data structures at a time. Threads get unlocked when they are doing I/O, and in some C libraries, so you do get a speedup in real-world applications. So if all three languages are effectively still single-threaded, with threads largely a programming convenience, you'd go with the one that's 20x faster, yes?

Yes, except that Python has a huge and wonderful standard library and an even huger and wonderfuller ecosystem of third-party packages.

Except except:

1. You can embed Python in Julia, with two-way transfer of data and functions, using PyCall. You can just plain import your Python modules into a Julia program and use them:
   
   @pyimport pylab
   x = linspace(0,2*pi,1000); y = sin(3*x + 4*cos(2*x));
   pylab.plot(x, y; color="red", linewidth=2.0, linestyle="--")
   pylab.show()
   
   
   It's almost-but-not-quite Python on the Julia side (see the ; between the positional and named arguments in the pylab.plot call) but calling existing Python code from Julia is almost perfectly transparent.
   
   
2. You can access MongoDB from Julia. MongoDB isn't perfect** but it's the swiss-army chainsaw*** of NoSQL, at least since they fixed it so that it doesn't crash and destroy all your data every time a gnat sneezes.****
   
   
3. You can pretend it's Ruby and slap together web apps like there's no tomorrow using Morsel:
   
   using Morsel
   
   
   app = Morsel.app()
   
   
   route(app, GET | POST | PUT, "/") do req, res
       "This is the root"
   end
   
   
   get(app, "/about") do req, res
       "This app is running on Morsel"
   end
   
   
   start(app, 8000)
   
   
4. There's support for ZeroMQ, the lightweight queueing... Thing.
   
   
5. Also, Curl.

Full support for multi-threaded programming would make it even better, but since I don't really have that now, it's not a show-stopper. For mee.nu, I run five instances of Minx behind a load-balancing proxy, though we rarely need the performance. Julia provides plenty of ways to use multi-processor machines, just not that particular way.

And if it really delivers 10x the performance in practice, that's like getting 10-way multi-threading with zero software overheads and zero extra hardware.

So a cautious thumbs up so far from me.

* Or about 4x faster than PyPy, the Python JIT compiler. But since you can easily embed Python code in Julia (the PyCall package provides this) and PyPy still has a number of incompatibilities with common Python packages, there's an argument that Julia is a better way to go even for Python programmers.

1

I'm not sure I'd call Julia object-oriented, I'm not even sure I'd call it object-based (but I've really only dipped my toes into the documentation). It seems like someone got tired of Matlab's syntactic and semantic warts and interpretive performance* and decided to clean it up.  It's too bad SISAL never caught on.

* If the Matlab interpreter is where your code is spending most of its time, either you're doing it wrong** or you're using the wrong language...

** Ok, passing array arguments by value can be kind of expensive...

2 I'm not sure I'd call Python sane or healthy.  In fact, I'm pretty sure I'd call it a lot of four-letter words.  Which, actually, I do, fairly often, to the annoyance of my co-workers.

I'm nearing the point where I'm going to tell my boss that Python can go stuff itself, I'm retreating to c++.

3 C++?

It does depend on what you need to do, of course.  I have no love for C++, but there are plenty of tasks where it is the right choice and Python ain't.

1 But it doesn't actually show any game play. What's the point?

2

I always thought, based on all the info 2K Marin had released about the XCOM shooter (Which is now third person, instead of a FPS, to better manage squad ops.), that it would be a very good game - but it would not be a XCOM game.  I still think that it will be a very good game, but carrying, at the very least, a misleading brand as long as they keep it under XCOM.

(Firaxis XCOM' tactical battle game is also misleading, but in different ways.)

C.T.

3 Based on this trailer, however, it could just as easily be based on "Redneck Rampage".

4

 The latest trailer does not show much, but the material that 2K Marin had shown earlier (As in, before Firaxis' XCOM game was announced.) looked pretty good.

C.T.

5 He has a Pip-Boy!

6 I hate to do this, Pixy, but there's recently been a spam incursion upon The Pond.  Four or five in the past day or so.

I really like the trailer, and if the game is anything as drama-making as it, it'll be great stuff.  But it won't be X-COM.

7 I'm happy with it not being X-COM, as long as it's good.

I'll keep an eye out for your interlopers.  If they reappear, don't delete them, just let me know, and I'll nuke them from orbit adjust the training data for the Bayesian filters.

8

By the way, in the original XCOM one of the alien ship types was called a "Harvester" IIRC and it included an operating theater where they were dissecting a cow. (I fell off my chair laughing the first time I saw that. Cattle Mutilators!)

Does the modern XCOM include that visual joke?

9 Pixy, either you did something that worked, or the spamholes got scared, but I've not seen hide nor hair of 'em since I mentioned it before... either way, keep up the good work!  You're my hero, in a bloggy sort of way.

10 Steven - yeah, I remember that.  Don't know if it's in the new version; there's some things you can get away with at 320x200 that you can't at 2560x1600...

Wonderduck - I didn't do anything, but I'll gladly take credit.

11

 By the way, in the original XCOM one of the alien ship types was called a "Harvester" IIRC and it included an operating theater where they were dissecting a cow. (I fell off my chair laughing the first time I saw that. Cattle Mutilators!)

Well...The ship is now called an 'Abductor' (Though 'Supply Ships' are sometimes assigned to collecting specimens.).  There is nothing inside the ship - but if you find a landed UFO collecting specimens, you will find mutilated cattles immediately next to the ship, along with pods to store the 'samples'.

C.T.

1 Sounds like Brad Wardell has himself another winner.

2 Yep.  There are a number of competitors, including the free Classic Shell, but I know who Stardock are and their Windows add-ons have never caused me problems.  (I used ObjectDesktop in the Vista days, and still use Fences.)   

Five bucks converts the Windows 8 non-touch experience from constant aggravation to genuinely pleasant.  This is what HP and other OEMs should be bundling with their hardware, not the egregious Norton.

3 Also, it highlights the fact that Microsoft's work on the Windows 8 core is perfectly good - it's a solid improvement on 7 in many areas.  It's the remarkably ill-conceived intrusion of the tablet interface onto non-tablet systems that causes all the problems.

4 I've been able to recommend Win8 to people thanks to Start8.  When I built my new computer several months ago, I was able to pick up Win8Pro for something like $40.  Win8, IMO, is actually a much better OS than Win7 after you fix the stupid tablet interface.

5 Yes, Start8 is very good. Stardock also has a program (that I haven't tried) called ModernMix, which allows you to run Metro apps in separate windows.

6 Ben, in what ways is Win8 better?

7 My immediate observations are that the task manager and file copy dialog are better organised and provide more useful information. It's also supposed to boot more quickly and run more effectively on 4+ core processors, but I haven't timed the one and can't judge the other.

On the other hand, even with Start8 to fix the worst problems, Aero's gone. The Flat UI movement has set design back nearly 20 years. (Okay, it's alittlebetter than Windows 95.)

8 Other things:  internal events on timers fire less frequently whenever possible.  This allows the CPU to sleep longer and more often, conserving power.  Not necessarily useful for a desktop but supposed to increase battery life for laptops.
Microsoft had a blog, b8, during the beta, where they talked extensively about the new features.
Frankly, I mostly prefer the new flatter UI.  Every time I go onto a Win7 system now, it feels overly garish.

9 Hmm.  I've set my Windows 7 borders to a translucent grey (or blue-grey) tint; I can certainly see how bolder colours might seem garish.  Windows 8 seems to automatically pastelise everything.

10 Ahh, I found an example of what I was talking about in comment 8:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6355/intels-haswell-architecture/3

(Pixy, is there a way for me to change the displayed link text so it's not the URL, when using the link inserter?) I'm not sure if this will work or if Anandtech has hotlink protection. If it doesn't work, please edit my comment to remove it? is the specific thing I was trying to find. I don't know if anyone's tested how well this works but in theory it could cut power usage a good amount.

11 Huh, inserting the picture with an img tag by using the HTML link in the editor worked in the preview...but the image vanished when I posted.  Also, in Chrome, the Edit button just takes me back to the blog home.

12 And ugh, I forgot to mention--I wanted to include the second pic on that page, "Platform Activity Alignment."

13 Thanks.  As we get more and more cores in portable devices, being able to intelligently sleepify some or all of those cores becomes more and more important.  I spend most of my time at my desktop, connected to servers running 24x7...  But it matters there too - a 64-core server is rarely going to need all 64 cores at once, and the smarter it is about sleepivation, the lower our hosting bill.

14 Particularly when we have three racks full of such servers.

1 So we'll be expecting a report on Win 8 real soon now.

2 If you're hankering for a start menu, my favorite so far is ViStart (http://lee-soft.com/vistart/).

3 The Start Menu was crippled in Vista anyway, when they removed the expanding capability and constrained it to a small, scrolling rectangle.  I assert that the new Start Screen is a net improvement over the Vista/7 menu.
You can reorder things, make them appear or hide by default, and so on, and the hit box is MUCH larger than on the old menu.  Plus, if you don't like it you can mostly ignore it by pinning shortcuts to the taskbar or desktop.

4 The touchscreen-oriented not-Start screen has proven to be much less useful to me than any previous iteration, in part because I upgraded, which meant that 90% of my existing applications had to be found again and pinned, and also that the not-Start screen was cluttered with everything that it managed to find in folders that had applications, including dozens of Readme files and uninstallers. It was a very poor upgrade experience, especially when combined with the number of incompatible apps and drivers that made the machine unstable. It took me a week to get back to more-or-less where I was, and it's still a pain to try to fit everything onto the not-Start screen without having to scroll horizontally using the mouse or touchpad. (why upgrade from Win7 at all? To test the OS before too many people started using it at the office)

I have the same "meh" response to the OSX Dock, which has gotten progressively gaudier and less useful over the years. Long ago I bought a license for Overflow and have never regretted it.

-j

5 Yeah, the shortcomings of Windows 8 for desktop use are why I haven't upgraded, but for a tiny notebook like this, it looks like it might be more palatable (even without a touch screen).

We'll soon see.  I still have my eye on that Toshiba Kirabook, but better to spend $300 now to test the waters (and worst case, reinstall with Linux) thnt to drop $2000 on a shiny toy I never use.  (Looking at you, iPad.)

6 "The shortcomings of Windows 8 for desktop use," as far as I can tell, consist almost entirely of "I don't like the fact that it's different."
See also Vista, XP, 95.  I don't know if anyone complained about Windows 3 looking different, but I bet it did.
FWIW I haven't tried doing an upgrade, only clean installs, and I admit I did have to re-pin a handful of shortcuts but after that I am in the desktop all day long and other than the theme changing, it's just not that different.

7

RickC: The loss of the Start Menu is a pretty big annoyance (a start menu replacement fixes that, fortunately), but otherwise I mostly agree, but there are a lot of new annoyances.

I'm probably rare in that every laptop I've owned had touch and stylus support; Windows 8 is better at touch than Windows 7, but it's still a pretty lousy touch platform.

8 RickC - the problem is, for a normal desktop (non-touch) with a good sized screen, the whole Metro/Modern interface is a distraction, an annoyance.  It serves no purpose.  I always want to be on the desktop doing desktop things; anything that takes me out of the desktop needs to die.  From 95 through to 7, Microsoft never broke the normal workflow they way they have with 8.

Once you've slapped the Start Screen down, it does seem relatively functional, albeit a cheap downmarket clone of Windows 7.  But then, why bother with Windows 8 at all?


Now, if you have a touch-enabled device, everything changes.  Windows 7 is not touch-friendly.  Half of Windows 8 is.  Which is better...  Maybe?

9

Windows 8 does have Hyper-V (if your hardware has EPT)  and also makes a dandy network Hyper-V administration system--a lot cheaper than a Windows Server 2012 license.

Touch is improved outside of the Metro box but Windows 8 is still not a good touch UI. I don't believe anyone has yet built a UI good for keyboard, mouse, pen, and touch all at the same time; Microsoft's schizophrenic solution isn't a good solution.

10 Wow that was strange. I just wrote an extremely long comment but after I clicked submit my comment didn't show up. Grrrr... well I'm not writing all that over again. Regardless, just wanted to say great blog!

1

How often are the images changing?

When I first saw it, it was just two people sitting. The roll-over text said "wait for it" and I assumed after a while that he was trying to be funny with that, since the title was "time".

2 Seems to be changing every 30 minutes.

3

The thread about it on forums.xkcd.com has a couple instances of people collecting the images as they appear, and making non-world's-slowest animated gifs, or other website widgets, from them.

It has outlasted the main page's update ("Time" was the Monday comic, the Wednesday comic is up now, and "Time" is still updating), so no idea how many more half-hours it will last...

4 When I saw it late Sunday night, it was just a guy sitting on a piece of ground.  I should have expected that he'd do something more than that... now here it is late Thursday, and I'm only now discovering that it changes.

1 Speaking of holding a tablet in one hand, you do not happen to know of a tablet that has a narrow bezel on 3 sides and a wide area on 1 side (on the "bottom") so that a person can hold it comfortably? I have a Kindle Fire HD in 7" format and its bezel is relatively wide all around. In the same time it's not wide enough and my thumb creates false touch on the front.

2 Sorry, don't know of one like that.  Bezel placement is certainly something that needs improvement.

Wonderduck's suggestion brings to mind Lou Grant and Murphy Brown as possibilities as well.

If you haven't encountered Kairosoft, they're the creators of a line of little management sims on Android and iOS that are just insanely addictive.  They actually started out back in 1996 writing games for PC and DoCoMo phones - at a time when a 320x200 phone display was pretty much state of the art.  They've had something of a rebirth since porting their first game, Game Dev Story, to Android and iOS in 2010, where it became a bestseller.

Since then they've released 18 more games (plus two or three more that are on Android or iOS but still Japanese only), and have a catalog of 36 titles across all platforms.

1 Game Dev Story is quite entertaining - good airplane game for me. More or less plays itself, I just punch a button every so often and tell it "yes, this quarter we're making a Samurai Racing game. No, figure it out!"

The girlfriend has quite a few of them and enjoyed every one she's tried.

2 WKRP In Cincinnati: The Videogame.  Bonus points if they get Operation Turkey Drop involved.

3 Good call, Wonderduck!