GeoffWozniak

I have tried. And I can't. It's just too slow when working with tons of output (which is common in my work). (term-mode is no better.)

Emacs is one of my favourite tools on a computer. I love Lisp (even Elisp, which is getting closer to Common Lisp as time goes on) and I love the interaction, but Emacs is not good for serious terminal/shell work and it, sadly, is pretty annoying as a tiling "window" manager.

Maybe with multi-threading it will get better, but until then, I can't see a compelling reason to work exclusively in Eshell.

What I didn't mention in my post was that I did use SQLAlchemy Core to write some pretty complicated queries. It's actually quite good. I like it.

There were some spots that things got hairy though, and the code was pretty hard to follow. I don't fault SQLAlchemy here, but I wrote the query in SQL and it was simpler to work with.

SQLAlchemy is absolutely on the right track, but using the core doesn't diminish the fact that you need to know SQL to use it effectively.

I agree with your assertions that just an ORM is not enough, raw SQL is hideous, and that raw SQL spits in the face of programming language advancements. Sadly, it's the assembly language of databases and, unlike CPUs, doesn't have a good abstraction model.

> What if someone went around the entire country and put every book into a huge safe.

Assuming "every book" includes books I own, then that constitutes theft.

Saying the PDF reader on Playbook works is like saying a bucket of cold water works for having a shower.

I actually enjoy reading on a Playbook more than an iPad or a Kindle. But the PDF reader is abysmal software.

> Where RIM went wrong was underestimating the importance of software and the surrounding ecosystem.

RIM is quickly discovering that it is not a software company -- and never has been. They are also discovering that software is hard and is the future of mobile.

I say this as someone who was happily employed there a little as three weeks ago (I left to join a startup -- and yes, I absolutely loved my job at RIM). They have some good people but the majority of upper management is lost without a map.

They opted to create another mobile OS/ecosystem. The talent is certainly there, but the time is quickly running out. Apple has been working on iOS for years. Microsoft has been in the OS business for decades. Android is based on Java which has countless man-years behind the tools. RIM is working from QNX which is nice, but is not a full-blown OS/toolchain. There's a lot of work to do there; they've really only been at it for less than a year.

And let's face it: BBOS was something only its mother could love.

Taking into account the snark, it doesn't change the fact that you're presenting a false dichotomy.

Ungar isn't saying that we have to give up determinism. What he's saying is that to take advantage of massively parallel systems, determinism comes at a high cost.

Clearly, we can write programs on current architectures that are deterministic (well, perceived as such, at least) and we don't have to forgo that. But there is no reason to believe it has to be the only architecture. Ungar is looking at what happens when you try to do computation in a highly networked environment with low latency (like say, a brain).

Also, if you don't see it helping for the practitioner, perhaps practitioners aren't asking good (or enough?) questions.

Or the SVN repositories of binaries that are 4G just on the trunk branch. The HDD basically never stops.

"It's not the language, honey, it's the runtime." (apologies to Indiana Jones)

> "A big corporation ripping off small businesses and independent artists is wrong."

That's pretty specific. Why not "Ripping off is wrong"?

I wonder the same thing when I hear "Violence against women is wrong". I tend to think "Violence is wrong".

The first step in saving my coder eyes is to not use light text with a dark background.

This sounds analagous to governing by polls.