Re: Do programmers prefer Microsoft .Net ?

On Sun, 2005-11-27 at 22:05 -0800, Larry M. Augustin wrote:
<snip>
> Has anyone else observed this?  Anyone care to comment on the ease of
> development using Microsoft .Net?  How about Mono on Linux verses J2EE
> on Linux?

I have seen this as well.  It's for all of the "Right Reasons" for
start-ups to get off the ground, but they're ignoring the lack of
flexibility available to them later (which open source languages/tools
can help with).  Mono helps to ease the pain, but it's not a final
solution as MS's tools and infrastructure for developing software are
non-free and non-portable.

Java is significantly harder to develop with for various reasons (lack
of adoption by open source operating systems/distros, stupid decisions
by Sun, lack of cross-language-pollination in the development
community).  It's even harder to develop with on Windows (I've yet to
create or run across a factual argument for why Java apps, say Eclipse,
suck on Windows but run very well on my Ubuntu laptop).  My start-up
would have abandoned Java long ago (for PHP, Perl, Ruby), except that I
managed to build enough infrastructure up to make it viable for the rest
of my development team (PHP, Perl, and Ruby guys).  Java is hard to get
into, but provides alot once you're there.

C# doesn't have these issues and is easy to get into, but lacks the
polish that Java has.  However, it seems like a matter of time till
C#/.NET gets that polish given their community (that may take a while,
though, if developers scratch their itches on Windows with MS tools).

A question I would ask of these start-ups is where/how they develop

FOSS.IN

Open Source in India.

http://lwn.net/Articles/162669/

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[thaths <at> gmail.com: Re: [silk] FOSS.IN]

----- Forwarded message from Thaths <thaths <at> gmail.com> -----

From: Thaths <thaths <at> gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 23 Dec 2005 23:38:19 -0800
To: silklist <at> lists.hserus.net
Subject: Re: [silk] FOSS.IN
Reply-To: silklist <at> lists.hserus.net

On 12/23/05, Chris Kantarjiev <cak <at> dimebank.com> wrote:
> http://lwn.net/Articles/162669/

#include i-was-not-at-foss.il

My opinions:

1. Hardcore, technical topics (like Cox's or Welte's talks) tend to
draw bigger audiences in India because of the perceived potential
monetary outcome of knowing the skill being talked about. If one of
the lesser known Open Source people were to speak on a non-technical,
but important topic say, copyright term extensions, I would bet that
the talk will draw a significantly lesser crowd.

2. For most attendees, Linux is a skill (not that there is anything in
approaching it as a skill) and not a passion or lifestyle. In other
words, hackerhood is a relatively smaller phenomenon in India at this
stage. This is partially because the schooling system tends to drain
the passion out of students and makes them into automatons who
regurgitate memoried facts to gain higher marks. The pressures of
getting into a good college and getting a well-paid and steady job
drain whatever passion remains. Under these circumstanses, it is

Re: FOSS.IN

Eugen Leitl <eugen <at> leitl.org> passed on:

> #include i-was-not-at-foss.il
> [...]
> 4. IMO, FOSS.IL nee Linux Bangalore have concentrated more on the
> splash they make than the impact they have on young hackers. There is
> nothing wrong in this shock-and-awe approach. It just isn't the right
> one to foster more Open Source participation, especially in terms of
> code, from hackers in India.

I'm not on the original list where this was posted...but I'd be awfully
curious to know just where this opinion comes from.  If the event
organizers were really looking for splash, it seems to me they might
have actually put some effort into promoting FOSS.IN.  As it was, it was
almost a stealth conference, especially outside of India.

What I saw was a concerted effort to draw people into the process, with
a great many talks on how to participate and a whole set of dedicated
"BOF rooms" where people could get together and talk.  It was almost
like a boot camp for people who, if maybe not wanting to be community
leaders right away, at least want to work with free software.

There was apparently some weird politics going on before event; I think
we're seeing a remainder from that.

jon

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[thaths <at> gmail.com: Re: [silk] FOSS.IN]

----- Forwarded message from Thaths <thaths <at> gmail.com> -----

From: Thaths <thaths <at> gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 24 Dec 2005 11:09:36 -0800
To: silklist <at> lists.hserus.net
Cc: jaldhar <at> braincells.com
Subject: Re: [silk] FOSS.IN
Reply-To: silklist <at> lists.hserus.net

On 12/24/05, jaldharvyas <jaldhar <at> braincells.com> wrote:
> --- In silk-list <at> yahoogroups.com, Thaths <thaths <at> g...> wrote:
> > 1. Hardcore, technical topics (like Cox's or Welte's talks) tend
> > to draw bigger audiences in India because of the perceived
> > potential monetary outcome of knowing the skill being talked about.
> Ok, so?  Free software isn't against making money.

Perish the thought, Jalandar. Nobody is saying that one shouldn't make
money from free software.

> > If one of the lesser known Open Source people were to speak on a
> > non-technical, but important topic say, copyright term extensions, I
> > would bet that the talk will draw a significantly lesser crowd.
> The same applies to any conferences anywhere I think.  But the point
> is to increase awareness and just knowing there is an organized
> community for software freedom makes an impact.  You cannot expect
> political awareness to happen overnight.  Not in India, or the US or
> anywhere.  The important thing is to get the concepts out there.

I agree. I was addressing the OP's point that he saw large crowds in
the technical talks and was wondering why, still, the code

Re: [thaths <at> gmail.com: Re: [silk] FOSS.IN]

(My apologies if you get this twice, I had added a few people in cc the
first time I sent the email)

in infinite wisdom Eugen Leitl spoke thus  On 12/24/2005 03:36 PM:
> ----- Forwarded message from Thaths <thaths <at> gmail.com> -----

> 
> 4. IMO, FOSS.IL nee Linux Bangalore have concentrated more on the
> splash they make than the impact they have on young hackers. There is
> nothing wrong in this shock-and-awe approach. It just isn't the right
> one to foster more Open Source participation, especially in terms of
> code, from hackers in India.

I was there.

>From my perspective, the biggest draw of the FOSS.in was not the talks
themselves but the kickass Birds Of Feather and the after-event dinners
that we had.  These gave an opportunity for the people here to get to
know what problems the open source projects are facing and in which
parts they can help.  Rasmus pointed out that most people are afraid in
sending in their patches because they think that their code is useless
and will be criticized - but that should not stop anyone from sending in
their code.  I know for a fact that the dotgnu project (dotgnu.org) has
gained at least two hackers  during foss.in - and both of them got
inducted into the project not after hearing some talk, but by attending
the BoF session that one of the devs of dotgnu was holding.

I think that the best way to gain more code from free software
enthusiasts here are events like foss.in - which allow hackers to meet
face to face and talk.

Re: [thaths <at> gmail.com: Re: [silk] FOSS.IN]

Eugen Leitl wrote:

> ----- Forwarded message from Thaths <thaths <at> gmail.com> -----

> ...the schooling system tends to drain the passion out of students
> and makes them into automatons who regurgitate memoried facts to
> gain higher marks. The pressures of getting into a good college and
> getting a well-paid and steady job drain whatever passion remains.

Are these (supposed) phenomena more prevalent in undergraduate CS 
programs than in others? I think most English and psych majors know 
about bad instruction.

Undergraduate CS education as I experienced it was not all that 
conducive to hackerhood, but I blamed the school for succumbing to 
M$'s bottom-less pocket-book which floods schools with M$ developer 
software. See how passionate you are about coding if your first C++ 
experience is with some M$ "Visual" product! Worse yet, try to 
translate that experience into something that will help you with 
autoconf and gcc!

So, how much "educational" software has Bill Gates "donated" to 
schools in India?

--

-- 
Bob Bernstein

Today's mandatory Nietzsche quote:

"...deception, flattering, lying and cheating, talking behind the

Re: [thaths <at> gmail.com: Re: [silk] FOSS.IN]

Dice Raj Shekhar <rajlist <at> rajshekhar.net> que:
>> 1. Hardcore, technical topics (like Cox's or Welte's talks) tend to
>> draw bigger audiences in India because of the perceived potential
>> monetary outcome of knowing the skill being talked about. If one of
>> the lesser known Open Source people were to speak on a non-technical,
>> but important topic say, copyright term extensions, I would bet that
>> the talk will draw a significantly lesser crowd.
>
> Just out of curiosity, is this thing something peculiar to India or have
> the US/AU people in the list observed the same thing in the conferences
> being held at their respective country too.

I'm not US/AU, I'm MX, but anyways.

Mexico is rather low on hackers. In our conferences the highly 
technical topics tend to draw a rather low audience. I get the feeling 
that most attendants feel they're not up to the challenge. The biggest 
audiences are drawn to technical topics with a begginers feel to them. 
Thing such as 'get PHP to talk with MySQL'. I haven't been to 
conferences on any other country, but I get the feeling that at least 
in Brasil and India people are much more confident in their ability to 
participate and what keeps them from doing so is, in any case, the need 
for job security. Us in Mexico, OTOH, kind of feel we have nothing to 
give.

Have any of you seen such behaviour in other third-world conferences? 
Have you seen someone fighting it? I'd be interested to talk with 
someone who has, to see if there are some ideas I could borrow.

--

-- 

Re: [thaths <at> gmail.com: Re: [silk] FOSS.IN]

On Mon, 26 Dec 2005, Luis Rodrigo Gallardo Cruz wrote:

> I haven't been to conferences on any other country, but I get the 
> feeling that at least in Brasil and India people are much more confident 
> in their ability to participate and what keeps them from doing so is, in 
> any case, the need for job security.

I've given technical talks in Brazil, both in english and
portuguese, and the talks have usually been well attended.

The lack of open source developer jobs is the one thing
keeping Brazilian developers on other work...

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-- 
"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.
Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are,
by definition, not smart enough to debug it." - Brian W. Kernighan
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