virtualeyes

I couldn't agree more: as a self-employed software engineer with degrees in literature and psychology, I am living proof that now (not one day, right now) programmers are working for liberal arts "managers" ;-)

same deal, started in 2001 on LAMP stack

2 years ago woke up and started exploring, Groovy, Ruby, and then, bing, penny dropped, Scala.

New life at 40 ;-)

In the end you need passion. I would be shocked if I am not coding full-time at 60, nothing grabs me more...

uhhh, not sure what to say, I'm living in France.

In the SW part of the country, the surf region, there are loads of foreigners, many of whom have been here year-round for more than a decade; still, the accent is poor, the phrasing limited, and the non-native speaker element is absolutely evident.

You may immerse yourself in everything French, but unless you start early on in life it will be exceedingly difficult to attain native speaker type fluency. Language is not just speaking phrases, being able to read literature, etc., it's also being, language is being the being of another culture.

LMAO! Thank you.

It's the same for me when I'm in England, the locals just don't understand me.

"you know what I mean, right?", I say, and they respond with, "oh, royt, e means royt!" WTF is royt, can't these people articulate themselves properly? k-rist they invented the language and we had to improve it, god bless America, rush limpbag and everything that makes the homeland free of the brave.

"ave a pint yank, ave a pint"

Well, I'm not saying never leave the bedroom ;-)

I'm also talking about living abroad, not hooking up with a foreigner in NYC and she plays teach the American to butcher X language

I come to France in the autumn and spring, have been doing so for 5 or 6 years; studied French as a kid, and lived off-and-on in Montreal for about 5 years.

I would not consider myself anywhere near fluent; that is, compared to how I am able to express myself in my native language, Scala. Hah, how clever, I actually am a rank amateur in Scala, but its hot, maybe you'd like to hire me?

Anyway, the point is, I've met anglophones who have lived here full-time for several years and, wow, sometimes the accent is just painful, all the words are there, but the ability to articulate themselves in French just isn't happening.

Really, language acquisition has to occur at a young age, the earlier the better. Furthermore, building up a vocabulary is helpful, but you can't think phrases in your native native language and then speak them in another language without creating confusion on the part of your listener(s)

I'd really love to hear the C1s, I think I might have a good laugh -- Skype anyone?

absolutely agree, I would LOVE to hear the C1 French speakers demonstrate their savoir faire with la belle langue NOW, with further years of practice post-C1 mastery.

I can guarantee that: 1) you will sound nothing like a native speaker 2) I will laugh

5 months without living/breathing the language amongst native speakers, fluency, methinks NOT ;-)

I took 8 years of French growing up (10-18) and I understood nothing, literally nothing when I visited Quebec for the first time (that's a joke, do you get it?)

Anyway, the point is, fluency cannot be gained without living in the culture where the language is spoken. Book learning, reciting phrases, etc. will not give you the auditory queues that conversations with native speakers will. When you mispronounce a word or phrase, a raised eyebrow speaks volumes. Books do not raise eyebrows.

The best way to learn languages is to live abroad, in various places, watch loads of TV (really the more the better) and mingle with the locals.

Finally the absolute best way to learn a language is through your significant other; if he/she speaks the language you are trying to learn, and has no interest in speaking your native tongue, wow, spaceship language learning class of the highest order ;-)

Yeah, good point, live usb has been a life saver beyond os install and preview.

I've intentionally been sitting on the fence for over a year now. Once Fedora 14 goes EOL, going to have to make the move.

What I have now is a dream setup (gnome 2, gnome-do, compiz, emerald theme mamnager), so have been in no rush. Was hoping Gnome issues would get sorted out; i.e. they'd listen to the power users screaming bloody murder. Apparently not, or not entirely.

I'll take gnome 3 for a spin, it can't be thaaaat bad (I hope); if I'm appalled, check out XFCE, and then, if need be, KDE (KDE felt complex/clunky compared to Gnome 2 when I made the comparison a couple of years ago, maybe things have changed)

I do miss cmd-`, toggle through currently focused app windows from Mac, one of the few features that I did not get in my switch to Fedora 3 years ago.

Of course, so much more was gained, the point of no return has long been reached ;-) Now the question, to Gnome 3 or not to Gnome 3?

Am I going to freak out as a gnome-do + compiz + dual monitor (laptop + external) user, or, with time, one adjusts, and, like an arranged marriage, learns to love the other?

At some point I'm going to have to get off of Gnome 2, not looking forward to it.

Gnome 2 + Compiz + Gnome-Do completely and utterly rocks, particularly with a dual monitor setup.

KDE was a bit of a mess last I checked. Some people are saying XFCE is maybe somewhat Gnome-2-ish?

Wikipedia and CL largely serve static files, so no biggie there what the application server is, front end proxy (httpd, nginx, lighthttpd, etc.) does the heavy lifting.

Wordpress is an interesting one, I wonder if they aren't doing some C++ pre-compilation a la Facebook's HipHop? Maybe not, WP is pretty light code-wise (compared to the slow, bloated dog that is Drupal), and for the most part personal blogging sites are not handling Twitter level bandwidth last I checked.

@bad_user is a cool thinker @icebraining, no hot headedness to be found, he's just stating the facts in regard to industry trends for enterprise level applications: it's an M$ and JVM world.

Yes, you're correct, it was not an either-or proposition, I'm sorry, they dropped them both.

Seriously, I'm curious, what public facing, or any facing, components does Twitter use that is written in Ruby and/or Rails?

A Google search for "twitter rails" brings up the usual got dumped threads. A similar search, but this time, "twitter scala" brings up, as a first result "Scala School" for Twitter engineers, followed by a bunch of threads on the Twitter + Scala marriage.

Don't worry, Scala has its own issues (Yammer, for example, ditched Scala for Java due to, ironically enough, scalability issues).

oh, Twitter (Scala/Java), American Airlines (Java), Facebook (on HipHop in C++), Stackoverflow (C#), ESPN (Java)

I think by big that's a code word for enterprise.

The big sites you have worked on are comparatively small if Ruby is backing the show. That's not to take away from the ton of traffic that you guys were able to serve; it's just that there are few enterprise level Ruby backed sites running these days.

Github, I believe is one, but lately I've been getting the "unicorn is angry" icon when viewing repositories, so I wonder about scalability issues. For the record, I have never, ever seen a "unicorn is angry" icon on Twitter. Maybe switching to the JVM got rid of all the magic ;-)

Twitter did not think Rails was particularly adequate at serving up anything (for their extreme needs), so they dumped it for the JVM.

Charles Nutter is doing genius work with JRuby, btw, that's where Ruby has a future with the enterprise, on the JVM. Twitter dumping Rails for Scala was a major win for Odersky & friends, and a big hit to Rails (though Ruby/Rails continues to innovate, nothing has changed there)

Not sure why client-side applications take a second or 2 to render a page, but if that is the case, cached html on front end server would be dee way 2 go, just avoid hitting the application server entirely...

quite the contrary, pjax reduces bandwidth and, properly implemented, reduces total # of requests (since once html, css, js, images are downloaded, you just hit the server for the content that varies; usually the page's main content area and title)

can't get much leaner than that. IE 10 supports pushState(), so the future is looking bright.

I's all-in now, give poor ole' JVM beast a break, it might OOME on me if I actually put it to work...

Yes, agreed, generate static everything on first request; i.e. hit the application server just 1X for live data and generate static file(s) that represent the request on the front end server (httpd, nginx)

That leaves authentication and CRUD operations for the application server to work on; the rest lives in-memory (via google mod_pagespeed, for example) on the front end server.

I'm taking this approach as I like speed, and I don't yet trust the JVM enough to handle tons of live requests and OOME on me while I'm out surfing ;-)

I agree with the OP, pretty spot on, while bootstrap sites look good, they generally all look the same. For CRUD/admin, yes, bootstrap is a definite go; for public front facing, not for my clients.

Client identity should be based on a unique brand, and bootstrap, short of major tweaks, does not provide that.

To umm, boot, boostrap is a wee bit on the heavy side for my liking (80KB css minified), and the javascript features are not mind blowing (for example, would prefer flyout menus like in Foundation or HTML Kickstart).

I'm rolling with Skeleton and jquerytools (sadly behind the maintenance curve) on the front end.

If bootstrap becomes themeable, I'll consider using on the front end, but until then, differentiation is king in my book.

Same deal, but I left my iMac 2 years ago for a Linux laptop. In the same way that I had that warm glow of the post-Windoze-to-Mac conversion experience 5 years ago, I had the same feeling when I left OSX for Fedora, like coming home again ;-)

Sony Vaio F12: quad core, 8GB, SSD, 23" LG travel monitor (5.5 lbs, nice!), iRizer laptop stand. Cost: 1/2 MBP. Code warrior: I be

The only thing I miss from OSX is Finder; well, the window manager as well; let's not forget the spinning beach ball either ;-) People, Linux is a gift from above. OSX is great for consumers, and is de facto the best OS on the planet, but Linux is the best OS in the universe -- big difference...

Had an iMac for 2 years, loved it for the first few months, and then, over time I grew less and less enamoured with the OS.

1) Finder just plain sucks 2) Window manager is complete azz I guess I prefer Compiz keystroke-snap-to-grid style window management vs dragging windows to desired positions and generally having a cluster-fuch of windows all over the place 3) Spinning beach balls, fun, OSX, the new Windows 4) Overall a McDonald's Linux for the masses

Yes, hardware support is excellent, out of the box works fine, blah, blah; in fact, for those suffering in Windows, I always suggest they buy a Mac; however, saying that, if you are comfortable outside of the GUI, why waste another moment on OSX?

Absolutely stoked here on Fedora 14/Gnome/Compiz ;-)