Re: Which is the Best cross platform language?


Randy Howard wrote:
goose wrote
(in article
<1166308189.114933.239040@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>):

there are equivalents for all desktop (and above in terms of power)
platforms.

I disagree. There may be programs that claim, or even provide
relatively similar feature sets, but there are few
cross-platform and truly-equivalent solutions doing something
like the high-end applications in those classes, not the mass
market consumer stuff.

The mass-market is where its at. For every high-end user of
a piece of software there are hundreds of home-users, amateurs,
sectretaries, business-people and accountants.

Your words "all desktop (and above..."), which is more than mass
market consumers. As the details get drug in, things seem to
always get drug toward the McDonald's response. Does McDonald's
make the best burgers because there are more of them sold? Are
McDonald's burgers "good enough" becuase a lot of people are
willing to settle for them?

That's my point, really. There are equivalents for /most/ people,
not all. The McDonalds software is just good enough for most people.
I thought I made that clear in my reply to JH.

The gourmet software users obviously won't settle for McDonalds
for various reasons in much the same way that gourmet eaters
won't settle for McDonalds for various reasons.

Yes, it's a silly analogy in a way,
but it also flies in the face of "millions of sheep can't be
wrong" argument too.

See "casual gaming" above. There is a reason I seperated
gaming into casual and hardcore; the casual gamers outnumber
the hardcore gamers by a large magnitude i.e. there are more
solitaire and minesweeper players than there are WoW players.

True, but probably because you're more likely to get away with
playing Solitaire at work than WoW. :-)

Standard claim example: The gimp is equivalent to Photoshop.

Thats not what I claimed.

I didn't say you did. In actuality, I said it was an example of
a standard claim in this type of debate.

Real Answer: Not even /close/ to equivalent. both manipulate
pixels, in radically different ways. That's about as
"equivalent" as you are going to get.

Sure; but the casual users of both outnumber the pro users.

The only casual users of Photoshop are running bootleg copies of
it.

That's irrelevent. They are still *casual users*, albeit /illegal/
casual users.

You don't buy a $700 program to casually play with
pictures, when you could use a free product like Picasa, or
iPhoto instead, and for the casual user, with far less of a
learning curve, even if the results aren't as good.

I assume that for the 'pro' user, even a fully functionally equivalent
application isn't going to cut it. Not a problem - there are fewer
pros than there are casuals.

It is a problem, for your original argument, rather than the one
your trying to cast it as now.

Well, my original argument was that there are usually equivalents
while noting that for some (like JH) there may not be.

I fail to see how my argument now differs.

Namely, platform lockin or
application lockin can be valid issue, rather than pawning off
as "everything has an equivalent".

But that's not all I said; see my reply about JH (it may even
have been the same post).


Try to pretend like OpenOffice is functionally equivalent to
Microsoft Office using the latest versions of each to compare
feature/by/feature.

The ratio of people for whom it *is* functionally equivalent to
the people for whom it is *not* functionally equivalent is also
a couple of hundred to one.

Make a point on something other than the lemmings, just one.

The entire point is lemmings; for most people, a fully functional
equivalent is necessary. They don't use all the functionality
and arcane nooks and crannies of the software.


To be perfectly honest I haven't
yet found, out of the hundreds of OO.org users I know, a single
OO.org user who finds that he cannot do the word-processing
he *used* to do in Word.

That may be. However, Office does more than Word.exe. In fact,
it does quite a few things that OO doesn't even try to do,
nevermind those that doesn't do as well.

Really? The only thing I can think of is incompatibility with excel
macros and VBA.


I've personally run into issues trying to get the OO spread***
to open complex .xls files. For one, Beancounter excel jocks
love to stuff bizarre macros and other tricks in there, that
regardless of file format compatibility, just flat out don't
work in OO. It's a real world problem, because the bulk of
Excel users aren't sitting at home counting tracking their DVD
collection in a spread*** or calculating their budget for the
month. They're doing business work. OO doesn't cut it there.
Don't even go down the whole Powerpoint versus OO angle, that's
just a joke.


I actually don't know how to respond to this. True, Office file formats
are incompatible to everything else. But many thousands of users
have been migrated off of Office onto OO - surely that shows that
OO provides more than enough for the average business?

Yes, I have seen beancounter excel jocks; they're the ones using
excel as a mini-database which incidently handles calculations very
well. They are also the ones that get their practice stopped the
minute the ICT dept. gets a request to enhance their "spread***".

There are also the excel macro magicians who use excel as it
was meant to be used i.e. as a spread***. They will have no
problem migrating to OO.

Pretend like Linux has /anything/ to offer even remotely similar
to Adobe Lightroom or Apple Aperture at the present time.

Why are you so bitter? I've not pretended anything;

I'm not bitter. It's also not the first time I've seen this
debate unfold.

I *do* maintain that for most people a functional equivalent exists.

Name a truly functional equivalent product to Lightroom for
Linux. Good luck.

You say "truly functional" and that rules out all comparisons.
For example, MS Office is /not/ a "truly functional" replacement
for OO. People moving from OO to Office will suddenly find that
some feature they had is now missing. Whether they actually
used it is a different beast altogther.

"Truly functional equivalent" is just a way to say that is *has*
to be $APPLICATION or nothing at all. Nothing is ever "truly
functional equivalent".


Try to find a decent game for OS X. How about 1.

WoW.

Whether or not WoW is a good game (as a game) we'll save for a
different forum, or never, but WoW on Windows runs better than
it does on OS X, I've tried it out. It's the only one I could
think of as even being in the running when I wrote.

Doom 3, Warcraft 3, Quake (all of them I think), unreal tournament,
Medal of Honour, Call of Duty.

And thats just of the top of my head. Most modern games developed
using OpenGL have been ported to mac by the developer.

How ironic
that we both had the same answer. So, there is one decent game
for OS X, 2 or 3 perhaps for Linux, and 10,000 or so for
Windows. Clearly, functionally equivalent platforms for gaming.
:-)

Like I keep saying, the gamers follow the games not the platform.
Hardcore gamers won't bother with the superior PC platform anyway
if the games they want are console exclusives.


Yes, you can find word processors for just about anything. you
can find spell checkers, you can find solitaire, you can find
spread*** programs. That's not what I was talking about.

But those are what *I* was talking about as the users of those
applications outnumber the specialist application users.

You didn't start carving up the market so carefully until I
disagreed with the broader original premise, interesting
nonetheless.

I did - see my reply to Toby WRT to JH.

You've been ignoring the fact that the argument you came prepared
with is not what I was saying at all.

It seems to always go down this same path:

Phase 1: You can find anything you need for any of the
platforms.

Phase 2: Millions of people can be happy with any of the
platforms and the rest don't matter.

Phase 3: Ok, yeah, people other than consumers, who actually
need to specific tasks or get business critical work done have
to actually pick and choose carefully, but they don't matter in
the grand scheme of things....


Not that they don't matter, but that they are in the minority
of a few percent at best.

Rinse, Wash, repeat until one or the other gives up.


Well, seeing as how thats the argument you came prepared
against, this thread must be a real dissapointment to you
as I've not gone down that path. I said at the very beginning
that JH sounds like he made a rational decision to use Windows.

Why did you ignore that and quote my paragraph out of context?

Another good example, not necessarily platform lock-in though,
but ISV lock-in for sure.

4. Pro audio recording, mixing, editing. Owned by Apple.

5. Movie production / animation / DVD mastering Owned by Apple
and OS X ISVs.


Pro *anything* is exclusive to (usually) one platform.

So much for the original theory, and I agree.

7. truly broad range of diverse development tools. Linux,
hands down.

Almost any *nix, really.

True. I've taken to using Linux as a catch-all for "all the
rest of the *nix" stuff, since it's close enough, unless you
want 3rd party apps, of which there aren't enough to measure.

8. Home-automaton software. Try to find truly equivalent
control software for AMX/Phats, Crestron, or Lutron gear,
touchpads, automated projector drop screens, dimmers, security
systems, HVAC control, etc., all controllable from any PC in
your house, as long as it's not running Windows. Goooooodluck.

I tend to build my own hardware for those, with PIC microcontrollers
or similar (hence I can make it connect to any platform I want to,
including all that I want to).

roll your own stuff is fine, but your favorite class, "the mass
consumer", doesn't build his own hardware to run things on.

True; this is one exception.


I honestly cannot think of anything else where an equivalent isn't
available on at least two platforms.

You're using "equivalent". You'll note that I used "true
equivalent". Like "All the people in this industry use Shake to
render complex motion video for movie production." Guess where
it runs, and only where it runs?

But the people who just want to make a rendered home-movie
(including the notorious bad quality that goes with it) will use
something like flash - more than one platform!

Or, they could use iMovieHD and iDVD, and make a DVD with custom
titles, chapter breaks and animated title sequences, for $0.00.
The picture quality will look like it came from blockbuster's
new releases shelf. Or they could have crap from flash.
Depends upon the platform choice.


No it doesn't, actually. Youtube provides ample refutation of that
statement (all videos seem to be flash (or stolen; the stolen ones
we can ignore) :-).

Pros in any field are fussy and will not use any old
application at all - some scientists I know are still using wp5.1 on
dos.

Don't disagree. Lawyers are still big word-perfect users too.
Something about functionality & consistency over animated
paperclips and "wizards" and such.

Sadly, they (Stalman, et al) are demonised to the point of ridicule.

Actually, Stallman does all the work by himself. He's in
effect, a self-caricature.

There's my point, flying high above your head :-)

I still fail to see how "demonised" is something you do to
yourself, at least in common usage, but ok. So either it flew
over your instead,

I'm not aware of anything happening to my instead :-)

or at least we agree on what's actually
happening in this case then.


Stallman can be antagonistic; however I fail to see
why you all crawl out of the woodwork whenever his
name is mentioned, only to spill vitriol at him, attack
strawman arguments and the like.

It's not vitriol. It's the same sort of reaction I would have
to someone that constantly came around trying to convince not to

But I didn't try to convince you of anything, nor convince you
*constantly* of anything. I can understand that holier-than-thou
attitudes of conversion annoy people, but I haven't done that.

mow my yard, because salamanders had been spotted in a similar
type of grass /only/ 130 miles away, and Salamanders have civil
rights too. Not that I don't like Salamanders for some reason,
but because the arguments are just plain stupid to get
attention, rather than to get the truth across.

Also, because I think he's done far more harm than good to his
cause, especially of late.

I won't dispute that (and never did actually defend him, only a
specific thing he said).

The older he gets, the more he heads
toward the left field wall. The LKML guys would as soon make a
dart bard out of him as have him over for dinner from what I can
tell.


True; although the whole novell/microsoft deal is making some of
them think twice about gplv3.

It used to be that the FOSS crowd was overly zealous
but in more recent years I see that the proprietry crowd
has become zealous to the point of fabricating arguments
to knock down.

I'm not part of the proprietary crowd, if that's what you're
thinking.

I apologise. Your arguments came across as the regular
clueless-drumbeater-against-FOSS argument, thats all.

I see good reasons for *both*, I'm against
software-patents in all but the most earth-shattering of
inventions (if any, can't think of a good example of one
offhand),

I agree, which is why I reply to both the FOSS-zealots as well
as the proprietry-zealots. I'm /slightly/ tilted in favour of FOSS,
but despair when some upstart wants to tell *me* about the
wondor that is FOSS and why I should make all my work
free. I'm equally annoyed when someone aligns me with the
opinion that "Programmers should not get paid!!11!!eleventeen"
(which you did above in your first response to me).

but one minute reading the gnu.org and I find things
like:

"Why software should not have owners"

"Free software is more reliable"

"Why schools should use exclusively free software"

"We can put an end to Word Attachments"

"Free But Shackled - the Java Trap". In fact, Java, X-Windows,
and a number of others are "traps" also apparently.

"Don't let 'Intellectually Property Twist Your Ethos"

"Did You Say "Intellectual Property"? It's a Seductive Mirage"

and similarly Astrologer/Poet sounding fringe stuff.

Buried in all that stuff are some good points, but they're
drowned out by the moony material scattered all over the top.
If you spend hours or days reading through it, you realize that
he seems to be trying to be outlandish and whacko on the surface
to get attention, in the dim hope that you'll stick around long
enough out of curiosity that some of the saner bits will stick.
If that is the goal, he pushes crazy too hard before closing
with the reality bits. Very few make it that far.

How would you regard someone if you mentioned Bill Gates in
a sentence and that someone pops up and says "Well, if
you can stand the fact that your documents all now belong to him
because of DRM, go ahead and use MS Office"?

I'd figure that they didn't understand DRM very well. In fact,
just yesterday I saw someone claim that DRM is what keeps
Apple's OS X from installing easy on a Dell computer, so
apparently, it's pretty widespread. Not sure if he was a kook,
or just uninformed.


Ok, so we have different views on this, with mine being harsher.

I do know what open source software is, and I also know that I
don't need Stallman to tell me what format my email attachments
should be, could be, or morally ought to be. Or hear his
opinion on kooky sounding like things like "Is Microsoft the
Great Satan?"


Does a sarcastic response to what was actually a harmless
reference to Stallman actually help? Does it make you feel
better that you flamed someone who may not even have an
opinion on The Great Satan?

Your response came across as knee-jerk hostility. I was being
more gentle than I usually am when I responded with "kook" :-).

That's not a rhetorical question - I'd really like to know. I'd
certainly
regard them as a usenet kook because it's pretty much the same
behaviour you exhibited. If I called you a kook, it's because
you acted like one ... sorry.

Well, if what I did was being a usenet kook in your book, I
don't see how you can possibly call Stallman as anything /but/ a
kook.

I never presumed to know that he wasn't kook-inclined. I /did/
say that some of his warnings in the past came true.

But you go to your church, and I'll go to mine...

He goes too far, and has hindered, not helped the open source
movement. I know for a fact that some of his comments have
scared the hell of some very large fortune 100 companies that
were looking seriously into OSS projects across a wide range of
things, and backed off because the lawyers freaked when they
read some of his "material".


That's not a problem; I freak out when I read their material :-).
Not only is it scary, it's also applicable to me.

But hey, why *ask* what it was that he predicted when you already got
an argument prepared. After all, the facts might derail your succint
preprepared strawman, right?

No, feel free and point out all the Nostradamus-like utterances
of the great prophet, who demonises himself to the point of
ridicule.


See why you get called a kook?

It's called exaggeration and sarcasm.

You missed hostility.

But, if you think
everyone that uses either is a kook, I'll happily accept that
your definition is just extremely broad. Certainly more than
broad enough to encompass Stallman as well.

As he is someone who has contributed more to software development
than almost any other single person,

That's an incredibly generous claim.

Not really. Just true.

We'll have to agree to disagree.


Sure.

goose,

.