Mountain Goat: Ubuntu on Apple Hardware

Just because Just because most current Linux users don't like Unity, that doesn't mean lots of refugees from the Other operating systems, won't think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Isn't this pretty much in line with what Mark Shuttleworth is trying for?

Also:

This kind of reminds me a bit of Mark Pilgrim (author of Dive Into Python, and of a rather good blog (DiveIntoMark), who suddenly dropped off the net a year or so back).

Quoting:This kind of reminds me a bit of Mark Pilgrim (author of Dive Into Python, and of a rather good blog (DiveIntoMark), who suddenly dropped off the net a year or so back).

I had never heard of the guy. But, this rant might explain why Mark's blogs are now 410.

He disappeared off the net because one guy didn't like his book and wrote a blog comment about it?

Strangely enough, the blog complains a lot about the book discussing ODBC, calling it "s*** technology even Microsoft won't touch", and "a piece of crap technology from the 90's". Unless there's some other ODBC out there, ODBC is a C language interface for accessing databases. According to the Wikipedia article, it was actually created by MS in 1992, and the most recent update was made in 2009 with Windows 7, which flies directly in the face of the ranter's comment that MS "won't touch" it. The article also doesn't contain any "criticism" section, as Wikipedia usually does with things that are widely criticized. I can't say whether it's a "piece of crap" or not, as I've never worked with it, but as the ranter's comment about MS is plainly wrong, I now have to doubt the rest of his comments about ODBC and the book too.

I think that's the first negative review I've ever seen about Dive Into Python.

I don't know why Mark Pilgrim decided to turn his back on his public, digital life, to the extent of essentially erasing his presence -- but I doubt puffed-up rants against his book played a crucial part.

Mark was definitely one of the more thoughtful, insightful and readable, bloggers out there. I, for one, appreciated his blog, and hope that he comes back, soon.

ODBC is still widely used throughout the industry. Yes, Microsoft did create it as an attempt to bring some sanity to SQL Database connectivity.

It worked, at least in part. The ODBC specification is largely about an API but most implementations follow a similar layout in terms of the way that they work.

There are two main issues with ODBC:

1) Each backend database implements different data types for data. ODBC has some common-denominator types and the ODBC driver supporting that backend tries its best to form a sane mapping between ODBC types and the backend real types. This is a source of much confusion and is a large source of a lot of the bugs arising for ODBC use.

2) One of the biggest portability issues is SQL language dialect. ODBC doesn't try to address this but it is a major pain when trying to target multiple backends using ODBC as a common connection medium.

Overall, I think ODBC does a good job of a difficult problem.

The ranter appears to have some idée fixée that Dive Into Python is/was meant to be/ought to have been "a goddamned book that purports to teach people programming". In other words, a book for newbie programmers. -- Not "this is how to program (using the Python programming language)", but "this is how you might do something in Python".

So he starts off from a clearly wrong assumption and strikes out, flailing wildly, in no particular pertinent direction, because instead of a highly structured book, formally arranged step-by-step on first principles for newbies, he tries to use a book based on real world examples aimed at experienced programmers

I hate to think what he'd say about The C Programming Language by Kernighan and Ritchie...

Quoting:I don't know why Mark Pilgrim decided to turn his back on his public, digital life, to the extent of essentially erasing his presence -- but I doubt puffed-up rants against his book played a crucial part.

I don't know that the rants played a crucial part, either. Like I said, I had never heard of Mark Pilgrim. This was just conjecture on my part.

Quoting:I hate to think what he'd say about The C Programming Language by Kernighan and Ritchie...

Can't speak to that, either, knowing almost nothing about the ranter. Evidently, Zed Shaw, the author of the rant, has published programming books of his own, titled Learn Python The Hard Way, Learn Ruby The Hard Way and Learn C The Hard Way. He also has a couple of "alpha" releases, titled Learn SQL The Hard Way and Learn Regex The Hard Way. Judging from the feedback on his Python book, it's pretty good.

Quoting:Judging from the feedback on his Python book, it's pretty good.

Or astro-turf.

It's simply a possibility one must keep in mind with online "reviews."

Quoting:Just because most current Linux users don't like Unity

Most? Has anyone done an accurate. comprehensive survey? A proper poll using proven methods? Or is it simply a counting the number of ranting blog posts that causes one to reach that conclusion? I find a lot of Ubuntu users like Unity just fine.

@djohnston

Hmmm, worth a look.

I notice that reviewers on Amazon put Dive Into Python almost equal to Learning Python The Hard Way (on the other hand, the O'Reilly Learning Python is rated pretty low, there, so I can't help but wonder how meaningful the Amazon ratings are).

Ratings and reviews anywhere are best taken with a grain of salt. They're better than no information at all, and certainly better than just relying on the marketing from whomever's trying to sell you something, but I wouldn't rely on composite (star system type) ratings to compare two things too much; sometimes it might be OK, but unless you're comparing two polar extremes it's not that useful. For instance, look at IMDB ratings; those are composites of all the ratings given by the thousands of users who bother to give ratings of a movie they've watched. I've found that generally, if something has a really low rating (like 3 or below), it's probably crap, and if it has a really, really high rating (like 8.5+), it's probably great. In between those two extremes, it's a toss-up, and many movies are such that some people really like them, and others really don't, so you might see one with a 5.5 rating that you really like, even though obviously a bunch of people didn't. But when you see something like Battlefield: Earth or Gigli or just about anything by Asylum with extremely low ratings, it's probably very safe to pass on that movie. But don't pass on something just because it "only" has a 6.3.

What's more useful is reading reviews that are thoughtful and well-written; then you'll have more insight into whether that item will be something you'll like or not.

@Khamul

Yep.