Posts by Daniel Sobral

Scala daddy wraps his Java baby in Red Hat-ness

Languages and Languages

You mixed a lot of different things up there.

F# is .Net's version of OCaml, an old and traditional functional programming language.

Go targets mainly system programming. It is an alternative mostly to C.

Scala and Ceylon are JVM languages, though Scala released its first version 8 years ago, and it is now on version 2.9.0, with a proven record of success while Ceylon has yet to release its first version.

Node.js isn't a language at all. More like a Javascript framework, and Javascript has been about almost as long as Java.

Ruby is another language that is as old as Java, and has revolutionized web programming with Ruby on Rails... five years ago. There's a wide array of tools written in Ruby, and used in Linux and BSD servers -- FreeBSD's package tools have been written in Ruby for over a decade, for instance.

In fact, Python is not particularly older or more popular than Ruby -- it just attracts different crowds. So to call Ruby a "new" language and Python a "tried-and-tested" is non-sense.

So, my advise is that you actually learn a bit more about what's actually out there, before you even consider learning a new language.

As for learning a new language, it depends a lot on what you wish to accomplish and what your usual expertize lays.

If you are a .Net developer, you should definitely learn F#. Chances are high that interfacing with F# code will become common.

As a Java developer, the best bet is Scala and Groovy. Groovy is close enough to Java that it will hardly feel like learning a new language anyway, but while it is useful in some places, it can never replace Java.

If you do web programming a lot, learning ECMA Script (Javascript) and its frameworks is certainly valuable, as is Ruby on Rails.

If you are a Python developer, Ruby fits a similar niche, but is unlikely to be attractive if you think the Python way is the Right way.

And if you just want to stretch your horizons, learn Haskell.

Google cedes Belgium to Germany

Legal problems?

Maybe they are still upset about the legal problems they had in Belgium. :-)

Brazil bans the evil sold in EverQuest and Counter-Strike

Retail, Online and Playing -- Actual Information

Both retail and online selling have been outlawed. Playing, though, has not.

I find it curious that EA "has not been notified". Where they not involved in the lawsuit? It was a civil lawsuit, btw, brought by a branch of the government (maybe the brazilian FCC equivalent).

The judge is at the very least ignorant, and whoever initiated the lawsuit is a cretin. Me, I think both wanted media exposure. It's an election year, after all.

Anti-spammer fined $60K for DNS lookup 'hack'

ABSURD!

This is absurd! These are Internet Protocols. If you have an internet domain, you are required to support them. Well, the whois is supported by whoever you registered your IP range with. But a zone transfer is a requirement of the DNS protocol. You may configure your DNS to refuse a transfer, but you are required to provide software that, accepts, understands, and answers accordingly this request.

So how come use of something you have to provide is illegal?