frownie

The process is the purpose

try matrix multplication. I mean a real matrices, say 10000x10000. And once you're there, try a LU decomposition of matrix, with proper numerical erro handling. You'll soon get to the point where you fell it's harder than you tought. And BTW, matrix multiplication or LU decomposition are super fundamental stuff when solving equations (which in turn is super fundamental when you want to compute bridges, constructions, aerodynamics, etc...)

No clear winner...

I'd say there is a winner : Linux. Isn't it interesting that a software developped by a team of hacker (I'd say a chaotic, huge and ever growing) can make a monster like Ubuntu and get performances that don't pale against another OS which is designed by a very organised, super funded, super focused team of carefully selected programmers...

Ok, I assume a rather romatic view of linux development, but I'd bet I'm not that far from reality :-)

Just my own experience here. I commute every day, it's a 1 hour train trip in both directions. So I get 2 hours a day just for me. There I work on a side project. It means 8 hours a week. That's not much and a lot at the same time. The intersting thing is that I had to get used to it. Now I just do those two hours no matter what happens. It has become a routine and it's not that exhausting. Also, since 2 hours a day is not much, I have become very picky about my tools. In a one hour trip, I cannot aford to have my Eclipse to be up and running in 3 minutes => I changed editors. I cannot afford to spend 10 minutes trying to understand code I've written months ago, therefore I write my comments as I should, I write things as simple as I can. Since I only have one hour on a trip, it means I must solve my problems in that hour (if not, the time to start the task becomes too long). Therefore I choose my problems before getting in the train and I use a lot of "BUG", "FIXME" notes to put aside non urgent matters. I also don't have any web access in the train => impossible to get distracted (but then I need very good documentation to help me out when I need some information). The biggest hurdle to me is that moving from prototype to production-level takes a huge amount of time => sometimes a I set to work in the week end in order to have say 2-3 hours in a row to solve issues spanning across the whole code.

About choosing tools. I've selected ruby first, but ruby + Qt is not stable enough (I cannot afford to look for a strange bug in a C++ binding). So I moved to Python where things are better in that regard. I started with Eclipse (because it had a good and free Python IDE) but it takes too long to boot => now I'm in emacs. So although I prefer Eclipse or Ruby, I've deliberately chosen other tools to shave a few minutes here and there. (3 minutes is 5% of the time I have so that's important)

my ten eurocents

Opps, type : : "(as far as the compilation goes)"

However this doesn't proove that clang produce error-free (was afar the compiklation goes) executables.

Think of it this way : what is your social contribution (what do you give to other) with your work/time ? Do you think it is worth the effort ?

I think entrepreneurs are a bit more selfish : their prime motive is their own good, the social good is just a consequence. I don't think it is bad per se, ut I recognize I don't like it much.

Another point of view is : our society is based on employment (and other stuff, that is). Those who create employment are therefore seen as more useful, better.

But again, is giving employment to people to make cigarettes or junk food a real benefit to the society ?