AF

I don't think so. Most people don't want massive screens and don't know how to effectively use more than one anyway.

Game developers are already having problems with the expense and time required to push out the artwork for today's games. There will come a point, and it might even be here with games like Spore, where the industry will focus more on gameplay than having the most advanced games possible. Regardless, there are quite a few laptops that can play Crysis without problem. I linked to one earlier, and it costs under $1300.

/And/ with more people playing games on consoles, the need for high end PCs just to play games is less important. I think there are many factors that are coming together to make desktops less useful.

Of course there will always be those hardcore fanatics that just need the speed that only a big desktop tower can push out, but those numbers are decreasing by the month I bet.

Don't be so sure either of those are that important.

You can get a laptop with comparable power to some of the more expensive desktops now for about the same price. Look at the Gateway p-6831.

Also more and more power will continue to be fit into laptops, and I think it is only a matter of time before a desktop tower is a waste of space for even most gamers.

Because projectors require a few things that TVs do not.

1. A dark room

2. Nobody getting in between the projector and the surface it is displaying on

3. Extra space

Don't get me wrong, projectors are cool, but there is a reason they aren't as popular as regular TVs.

Please be smart and go with the ThinkPad (parcticularly a T61p).

Right now they have a 25% off sale on them, not to mention you can get another 5% off if you have a Visa card, or are a student, or a number of other things. In addition to this there are usually other coupons you can use.

I was able to purchase a T61p (more or less the same specs as a Macbook Pro, including the same graphics card (same internally) for $1250 (this includes tax). I got that price because the discount ended up being some 40% or more.

To get about the same Macbook Pro would cost me another $400 at the very least, closer to $500, and I don't think that's including the upgrades I'd have to make to the Pro to get certain features (like a 7200 RPM HD).

I received the ThinkPad several weeks ago. It is very sturdy, and so far I have really liked it. I've had quality issues with Macs before, but I see no problem with this laptop.

If you want to save at least $500 for an equivalent machine and you don't need OS X or some other Mac-specific item, I would definitely recommend looking into the T61p.

How many books do you need for a web framework?

Django is pretty simple. There's already the official book in print. Not to mention one of the reasons Rails has so many books to begin with was due to really poor online documentation. Django doesn't have that problem.

Usually I think havings lots of printed documentation is very important, but in Django's case, due to its simplicity and quality of existing docs, I don't think it is an issue.

Kind of an old post, things have changed for both Rails/Django since then.

Though I'd like to comment on part of his article. He says that Django "is not as straightforward as Rails", and then goes on to complain about how Django requires you to pass variables between templates instead of just assigning them as instance variables in the controller and then automatically showing up in the template. I actually like Rails' behavior in this regard, but I think that Django's way of doing it is much more straightforward. You know exactly what is going on. Django as a whole is like that.

He's also trying to code Python in a Ruby or Java style. __methods just don't get used much in Python. Like Guido says, "we are all adults". And come on, having to use parentheses for a function call is bad? That's just lazy. But I've said for some time now, if you are looking for Rails in Python, it isn't Django you are looking for. Pylons is much more similar.

You can directly compare the speed of an application or a language.

It is not subjective to say 'C is faster than Perl' or 'Perl is faster than Ruby'. That is true, in almost every instance, C IS faster than the equivalent Perl code and the equivalent Perl code is faster than Ruby (whether that holds true for Ruby 1.9 we shall see).

On the other hand, what constitutes a 'strong' implementation of OO is purely subjective. Would you consider Common Lisp's implementation of OO 'strong'? It is completely different than how Ruby works. But it isn't any more or less OO, it is a different way of doing it. Now if we really want to get into subjectiveness, Smalltalkers would probably say that Ruby's OO is not 'strong' because Ruby resorts to not making conditionals actual objects, unlike Smalltalk, in which literally just about everything is an object.

You might even say that Python is more OO than Ruby because functions are objects in Python but methods are not similar first-class constructs in Ruby (note: I wouldn't actually argue this, but it is just an example of how the languages do something differently).

> It is increasingly dangerous to have a child past 30. The danger is most pronounced for older women.

Do you mind explaining? It seems like I see more and more people having children after 30, even 40 these days.

I don't mean this to come out as negatively as it might sound, but JRuby being faster than Ruby 1.8 isn't saying much; MRI is pretty slow.

Yeah he definitely didn't start Reddit. He joined up with the Reddit team in December '05.

You are right about GEdit's power. it is pretty amazing.

Also, Scribes isn't only a Python-editor, unlike what the title suggests (maybe I'm reading it wrong).

I don't see the point in this as a serious production language. As a project to just have fun, of course it is a cool idea.

Lisp systems moved to generic functions for a reason - Lisp dialects for some time used a Smalltalk-based message sending model, but it just isn't as flexible.

But if the desire is to get Ruby semantics with Lisp syntax, I think the much more reasonable approach is to run a Rubyesque Lisp on Rubinius (which the lead devs have already talked of doing). At least by doing that you get the advantage of piggybacking on an advancing VM and a language that already has libraries.

Establishing a new language is hard.