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• "Best" language /architecture for browser-based app with ODBC and sockets? (subjective)

  - by mawg

  Sorry to ask a subjective question, but I would welcome some advice. I am an experienced programmer of embedded s/w, but haven't done much network programming, although I have done a fair bit of hobbyist PHP. Anyway, I have to develop what is probably a fairly general type of app, as shown in this crude diagram --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Browser / user interface Takes input from user form and writes data to d/b. | | Also gets data and updates browser contents when when d/b contents are changed | | because of info received over TCP/IP. | |________________________________________________________________________________| | ODBC | |_______________________________________________________________________________| | database | |_______________________________________________________________________________| | ODBC | |_______________________________________________________________________________| | Socket (TCP/IP) | | Send data out when d/b is updated from browser. | | Also, update d/b when data are received over TCP/IP. | |_______________________________________________________________________________| As I say, I imagine this to be a fairly typical architecture? Am I right? Then client is insisting on MSIE - unless I can show compelling technical reasons for FireFox or other then it will have to be MSIE (are there any compelling technical reasons?). So, with MIE (almost) a given, I had though to use PHP, since I know it, but the client seems awfully keen on Java (which ought to be OK since I am conversant with C++) it woudl seem to make sense to use the same language for the "upper" interface between the web pages (which that app generates) and the d/b, and for the "lower" interface between the d/b and the socket. (a single language means a single set of tools since text approach, etc) So, the (probably highly subjective) question is "which language shoudl I choose". As I say, the client is keen on Java. Any compelling reason why not? Is it generally a good choice for the sort of thing described here? Any other hints & tips gratefully appreciated (and up-voted): URLs, books, tool chain suggestions, etc, etc

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• Which language should I use to program a GUI application?

  - by Roman

  I would like to write a GUI application for management of information (text documents). In more details, it should be similar to the TiddlyWiki. I would like to have there some good visual effects (like nice representation for three structures, which you can rotate, some sound). I also would like to include some communication via Internet (for sharing and collaboration). In should include some features of such applications as a web browser, word processor, Skype. Which programming language should I use? I like the idea of usage of JavaScripts (like TddlyWiki). The good thing about that, is that user should not install anything. They open a file in a browser and it works! The bad thing is that JavaScript cannot communicate via internet with other applications. I think the choice of the programming language, in my case, id conditioned by 2 things: What can be done with this programming language (which restrictions are there). How easy to program. I would like to have "block" which can do a lot of things (rather than to program then and, in this way, to "rediscover a bicycle") ADDED: I would like to make it platform independent.

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• Is F# a good language for card game AI?

  - by Anthony Brien

  I'm writing a Mahjong Game in C# (the Chinese traditional game, not the solitaire kind). While writing the code for the bot player's AI, I'm wondering if a functional language like F# would be a more suitable language than what I currently use which is C# with a lot of Linq. I don't know much about F# which is why I ask here. To illustrate what I try to solve, here's a quick summary of Mahjong: Mahjong plays a bit like Gin Rummy. You have 13 tiles in your hand, and each turn, you draw a tile and discard another one, trying to improve your hand towards a winning Mahjong hand, which consists or 4 sets and a pair. Sets can be a 3 of a kind (pungs), 4 of a kind (kongs) or a sequence of 3 consecutive tiles (chows). You can also steal another player's discard, if it can complete one of your sets. The code I had to write to detect if the bot can declare 3 consecutive tiles set (chow) is pretty tedious. I have to find all the unique tiles in the hand, and then start checking if there's a sequence of 3 tiles that contain that one in the hand. Detecting if the bot can go Mahjong is even more complicated since it's a combination of detecting if there's 4 sets and a pair in his hand. And that's just a standard Mahjong hand. There's also numerous "special" hands that break those rules but are still a Mahjong hand. For example, "13 unique wonders" consists of 13 specific tiles, "Jade Empire" consists of only tiles colored green, etc. In a perfect world, I'd love to be able to just state the 'rules' of Mahjong, and have the language be able to match a set of 13 tiles against those rules to retrieve which rules it fulfills, for example, checking if it's a Mahjong hand or if it includes a 4 of a kind. Is this something F#'s pattern matching feature can help solve?

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• Scala programming language for beginners, is it a legend?

  - by ali

  Hi every one, I am Ali from Saudi Arabia. undoubtedly, Scala is one of the best programming language for any programmer to learn, but there is "good" problems that is faced especially by beginners, and what seems frustrating that these problems won't solve soon, so as a beginner and on behalf of beginners let me raise these "objective" questions: 1- why scala has no effective and stable development platform, in fact, it suffers many problems with Eclipse, Netbeat, and Intellij. 2- although I have looked for a clear,easy, and understandable explanation of how to get started with Scala, but fortunately, there was no article or guide that deserves to spend the time I have spent to read it. nobody could tell you clear steps that fit you as a beginner who wants to start his"HELLO WORLD" with Scala, while all other languages have its "HELLO WORLD" guides and books. thank you for your time, be sure that you read notes below. 1- I have no experience in programming language before. 2- don't tell me "not to begin with scala", simply, because I will do. 3- OS is windows vista home premium. 4- I hate excuses, such as Scala is new language......etc

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• Is there a language with native pass-by-reference/pass-by-name semantics, which could be used in mod

  - by Bubba88

  Hi! This is a reopened question. I look for a language and supporting platform for it, where the language could have pass-by-reference or pass-by-name semantics by default. I know the history a little, that there were Algol, Fortran and there still is C++ which could make it possible; but, basically, what I look for is something more modern and where the mentioned value pass methodology is preferred and by default (implicitly assumed). I ask this question, because, to my mind, some of the advantages of pass-by-ref/name seem kind of obvious. For example when it is used in a standalone agent, where copyiong of values is not necessary (to some extent) and performance wouldn't be downgraded much in that case. So, I could employ it in e.g. rich client app or some game-style or standalone service-kind application. The main advantage to me is the clear separation between identity of a symbol, and its current value. I mean when there is no reduntant copying, you know that you're working with the exact symbol/path you have queried/received. And intristing boxing of values will not interfere with the actual logic of program. I know that there is C# ref keyword, but it's something not so intristic, though acceptable. Equally, I realize that pass-by-reference semantics could be simulated in virtually any language (Java as an instant example) and so on.. not sure about pass by name :) What would you recommend - create a something like DSL for such needs wherever it be appropriate; or use some languages that I already know? Maybe, there is something that I'm missing? Thank you!

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• Static code analysis for new language. Where to start?

  - by tinny

  I just been given a new assignment which looks like its going to be an interesting challenge. The customer is wanting a code style checking tool to be developed for their internal (soon to be open sourced) programming language which runs on the JVM. The language syntax is very Java like. The customer basically wants me to produce something like checkstyle. So my question is this, how would you approach this problem? Given a clean slate what recommendations would you make to the customer? I think I have 3 options Write something from scratch. Id prefer not to do this as it seems like this sort of code analysis tool problem has been solved so many times that there must be a more "framework" or "platform" orientated approach. Fork an existing code style checking tool and modify the parsing to fit with this new language etc etc Extend or plug into an existing static code analysis tool. (maybe write a plugin for Yasca?) Maybe you would like to share your experiences in this area? Thanks for reading

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• What's the best way to handle layout issues with multi-language support in WPF/XAML?

  - by Tim

  I'm creating a standalone WPF app with multi-language support. I've found some great resources (mostly on SO) on how to store and access the strings as needed. This part is pretty straightforward and doable, but I'm fuzzy on how to take care of screen layout issues. I'm using some custom images to skin up my app for buttons, etc. For instance, here's a button with some text within: <Button Canvas.Left="33" Canvas.Top="484" Style="{StaticResource SmallButtonBase}"> <TextBlock FontSize="20" FontWeight="Bold" TextAlignment="Center" FontFamily="Helvetica"> Enter </TextBlock> </Button> Now here is the same button with text from another language: <Button Canvas.Left="33" Canvas.Top="484" Style="{StaticResource SmallButtonBase}"> <TextBlock FontSize="20" FontWeight="Bold" TextAlignment="Center" FontFamily="Helvetica"> Enterenschtein </TextBlock> </Button> So my question is: What is a good method to prevent this "overflow" situation. I'd like to have XAML take care of any font resizing or indenting that is needed automatically so that I don't have to tweak the UI for each language I'm supporting. Any insight is appreciated!

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• What is Quantum Computing? Microsoft’s video explains it in simple language

  - by Gopinath

  Quantum Computing is the next promising big thing to happen in computer science and its going to revolutionize the way we solve problem using computers. To explain the concepts of Quantum Computing to common man, Microsoft released a nice video which gives brief introduction to the concepts, explains the benefits and the work being carried out by Microsoft to make this technology research a reality. Check out this embedded video and visit Microsoft’s website for more details on Quantum Computing.

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• Microsoft F#

  - by Aamir Hasan

  F# brings you type safe, succinct, efficient and expressive functional programming language on the .NET platform. It is a simple and pragmatic language, and has particular strengths in data-oriented programming, parallel I/O programming, parallel CPU programming, scripting and algorithmic development. F# cannot solve any problem C# could. F# is a functional language, statically typed. F# is a functional language that supports O-O-Programming References:http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/fsharp/cc835246.aspx http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/cambridge/projects/fsharp/

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• How does cross domain authentication work in a firewalled environment?

  - by LVLAaron

  This is a simplification and the names have been changed to protect the innocent. The assets: Active Directory Domains corp.lan saas.lan User accounts [email protected] [email protected] Servers dc.corp.lan (domain controller) dc.saas.lan (domain controller) server.saas.lan A one way trust exists between the domains so user accounts in corp.lan and log into servers in saas.lan No firewall between dc.corp.lan and dc.saas.lan server.saas.lan is in a firewalled zone and a set of rules exist so it can talk to dc.saas.lan I can log into server.saas.lan with [email protected] - But I don't understand how it works. If I watch firewall logs, I see a bunch of login chatter between server.saas.lan and dc.saas.lan I also see a bunch of DROPPED chatter between server.saas.lan and dc.corp.lan. Presumably, this is because server.saas.lan is trying to authenticate [email protected] But no firewall rule exists that allows communication between these hosts. However, [email protected] can log in successfully to server.saas.lan - Once logged in, I can "echo %logonserver%" and get \dc.corp.lan. So.... I am a little confused how the account actually gets authenticated. Does dc.saas.lan eventually talk to dc.corp.lan after server.saas.lan can't talk to dc.corp.lan? Just trying to figure out what needs to be changed/fixed/altered.

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• Share and Deliver BI Publisher Reports in Multiple Languages

  - by kanichiro.nishida

  When you share your reports with someone who speak and read in different languages you want your reports to be shown in their language, right ? Well, translating reports with BI Publisher is not only easy but also reduces the maintenance cost a lot. Many of us in the BI Publisher product development team used to work in Globalization and Multi Lingual support, which enables Oracle products and applications to be used in many different languages and countries and territories.  And we have a lot of experience in this area. In fact, being a strategic reporting platform for Oracle EBS, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, Siebel, and many other Oracle application products, our customers from all over the world are generating thousands of thousands of reports, including out-of-the-box pre-developed reports from Oracle and customer created or customized reports, in their own local language everyday as they operate and manage their business. Today, I’m going to talk about this very topic, how to translate my reports with BI Publisher 11G. Translation Grows, not the Numbers of the Reports Most of the reporting tools, regardless if it’s traditional or new, always take this translation on the back burner. They require their users to copy an original report and translate the whole thing. So when you want to support additional10 languages you will need to have 10 copies of the original. Imagine when you have 50 reports then you will end up having 500 reports (50 x 10) ! Now you need to maintain these 500 reports, whenever you need to make a change in a report you need to apply the same change to the other 10 reports. And as you imagine this is not only a nightmare for IT managements but not acceptable especially for the applications like Oracle EBS that supports over 30 languages. So first thing we did was, very simple, we separated the translation out of the report and marry it to the report only at the report generation. This means, regardless of how many languages you need to support you need to have only one report and translation files for the 10 languages, which would contain the translated letters and words. So let’s say you have 50 reports and need to support 10 languages for those reports you still have only 50 reports and each report now has 10 language translation files. Yes, translation is the one should grow as you add more languages to support, not the report itself! And second, we provide the translation files in XLIFF format, which is an international standard XML based format to exchange and maintain translation strings. So once you generate the XLIFF files for your reports with BI Publisher then you can work with any translation vendors in the world to make a mass translation or you can translate the XML files by yourself by manually updating the translatable strings presented in this text file. Lastly, we made it easier to manage the translation process starting from generating the XLIFF files to uploading the translated XLIFF files back to the BI Publisher server. You can generate, download, upload the XLIFF files from the BI Publisher’s Web interface with your browser and you can see the translated reports right away without needing to shutdown or restart your server. While the translated reports are displayed based on your language preference setting you can also specify a different language when you schedule or deliver the reports so that they can be generated in your customer’s preferred language. What Can I Translate? When it comes to translation there are three things. First, report content translation. When you receive a report you like to see the content like report title, section title, comments, annotation, table column header, and anything that are static and embedded in the report. in your preferred language. We call this Reports Content translation. Second, when you open a report online you might want to see not only the report content being translated but also the report UI, such as report name, parameter name, layout name, and anything that would help you to navigate around the reports, to be translated in your language. We call this Reports UI translation. And this separation of the Reports Content and Reports UI translation makes it very useful especially when you want to navigate through the reports in your preferred language UI but want to generate the reports in your customer’s preferred language. Imagine you are English native speaker and need to generate and send a report to your customers in China. You like to see the report name, parameter name in English so that you can comfortably navigate to the report and generate the report output, but like to see the report generated in Chinese so that the your customers in China can understand the report when they receive it. And lastly, you might want to see even the data presented in the report to be translated. For example, you might want to see product names in an Order Status report to be translated based on the report viewer’s language preference. We call this Reporting Data translation. Since this Reporting Data translation is maintained at the data source level such as Database tables along with the main data, you need to prepare the translation at the data source level first. Then, you want to make sure that your query is switched accordingly based on the language preference setting so that the translated data will be retrieved. How to Translate BI Publisher Reports? Now when it comes to ‘how to translate BI Publisher reports?’ the main focus here is about the translation for the Report Content and Report UI. And I just created this video to show you how to create and manage the translation with BI Publisher 11G. Please take a look at the clip below.   In today’s business world, customers and suppliers are from all over the world regardless of the size of the company or organization. Supporting multiple languages for your reports is no longer something ‘nice to have’, it’s mandatory. BI Publisher is designed to support multi lingual reports from the beginning without any extra hidden cost of license or configuration like other reporting tools such as Crystal Reports. You can support additional languages translation at any time with the very simple steps shown in the video above. Happy translation! Please share your translation experience with us! 

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• Why does editor color scheme preference seem to vary by language?

  - by Carl Manaster

  I've spent most of my career in C++ and Java, and like most of my peers I have the editor configured to display dark (black with dark-colored syntax highlighting) on a white background. I spent a day this week with Rubyists, and they all seem to favor light text on a dark background. I've observed this before. Why is it? What cultural differences between the Java and Ruby communities explain it? Or is it as simple as these are the default settings for our respective editors?

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• How to add in Windows CE foreign language support?

  - by user33144

  How to add in Windows CE foreign language support? Computer - netbook. Thanks in advance.

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• How to add in Windows CE russian language support?

  - by user33144

  How to add in Windows CE russian language support? Computer - netbook. Thanks in advance.

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• Hype and LINQ

  - by Tony Davis

  "Tired of querying in antiquated SQL?" I blinked in astonishment when I saw this headline on the LinqPad site. Warming to its theme, the site suggests that what we need is to "kiss goodbye to SSMS", and instead use LINQ, a modern query language! Elsewhere, there is an article entitled "Why LINQ beats SQL". The designers of LINQ, along with many DBAs, would, I'm sure, cringe with embarrassment at the suggestion that LINQ and SQL are, in any sense, competitive ways of doing the same thing. In fact what LINQ really is, at last, is an efficient, declarative language for C# and VB programmers to access or manipulate data in objects, local data stores, ORMs, web services, data repositories, and, yes, even relational databases. The fact is that LINQ is essentially declarative programming in a .NET language, and so in many ways encourages developers into a "SQL-like" mindset, even though they are not directly writing SQL. In place of imperative logic and loops, it uses various expressions, operators and declarative logic to build up an "expression tree" describing only what data is required, not the operations to be performed to get it. This expression tree is then parsed by the language compiler, and the result, when used against a relational database, is a SQL string that, while perhaps not always perfect, is often correctly parameterized and certainly no less "optimal" than what is achieved when a developer applies blunt, imperative logic to the SQL language. From a developer standpoint, it is a mistake to consider LINQ simply as a substitute means of querying SQL Server. The strength of LINQ is that that can be used to access any data source, for which a LINQ provider exists. Microsoft supplies built-in providers to access not just SQL Server, but also XML documents, .NET objects, ADO.NET datasets, and Entity Framework elements. LINQ-to-Objects is particularly interesting in that it allows a declarative means to access and manipulate arrays, collections and so on. Furthermore, as Michael Sorens points out in his excellent article on LINQ, there a whole host of third-party LINQ providers, that offers a simple way to get at data in Excel, Google, Flickr and much more, without having to learn a new interface or language. Of course, the need to be generic enough to deal with a range of data sources, from something as mundane as a text file to as esoteric as a relational database, means that LINQ is a compromise and so has inherent limitations. However, it is a powerful and beautifully compact language and one that, at least in its "query syntax" guise, is accessible to developers and DBAs alike. Perhaps there is still hope that LINQ can fulfill Phil Factor's lobster-induced fantasy of a language that will allow us to "treat all data objects, whether Word files, Excel files, XML, relational databases, text files, HTML files, registry files, LDAPs, Outlook and so on, in the same logical way, as linked databases, and extract the metadata, create the entities and relationships in the same way, and use the same SQL syntax to interrogate, create, read, write and update them." Cheers, Tony.

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• Rewrote GNU GPL v2 code in another language: can I change a license?

  - by Anton Gogolev

  I rewrote some parts of Mercurial (which is licensed under GNU GPL v2) in C#. Naturally, I looked a lot into original Python code and some parts are direct translations from Python to C#. Is is possible have "my code" licensed under different terms or to even make a part of a closed-source commercial application? If not, can I re-license "my-code" under LGPL, open-source it and then use this open-sourced C# library in my closed-source commercial application?

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• How much freedom should a programmer have in choosing a language and framework?

  - by Spencer

  I started working at a company that is primarily a C# oriented. We have a few people who like Java and JRuby, but a majority of programmers here like C#. I was hired because I have a lot of experience building web applications and because I lean towards newer technologies like JRuby on Rails or nodejs. I have recently started on a project building a web application with a focus on getting a lot of stuff done in a short amount of time. The software lead has dictated that I use mvc4 instead of rails. That might be OK, except I don't know mvc4, I don't know C# and I am the only one responsible for creating the web application server and front-end UI. Wouldn't it make sense to use a framework that I already know extremely well (Rails) instead of using mvc4? The two reasons behind the decision was that the tech lead doesn't know Jruby/rails and there would be no way to reuse the code. Counter arguments: He won't be contributing to the code and is frankly, not needed on this project. So, it doesn't really matter if he knows JRuby/rails or not. We actually can reuse the code since we have a lot of java apps that JRuby can pull code from and vice-versa. In fact, he has dedicated some resources to convert a Java library to C#, instead of just running the Java library on the JRuby on Rails app. All because he doesn't like Java or JRuby I have built many web applications, but using something unfamiliar is causing some spin-up and I am unable to build an awesome application in as short of a time that I'm used to. This would be fine, learning new technologies is important in this field. The problem is, for this project, we need to get a lot done in a short period of time. At what point should a developer be allowed to choose his tools? Is this dependent on the company? Does my company suck or is this considered normal? Do greener pastures exist? Am I looking at this the wrong way? Bonus: Should I just keep my head down and move along at a snails pace, or defy orders and go with what I know in order to make this project more successful? Edit: I had actually created a fully function rails application (on my own time) and showed it to the team and it did not seem to matter. I am currently porting it to mvc4 (slowly).

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• Oracle PSRM V2.4.0 Portuguese UI Now Available

  - by Paula Speranza-Hadley

  This provides a Portuguese user interface (UI) language pack for Oracle PSRM v2.4.0  Please note, this language pack translates the PSRM UI (user interface) to Iberian Portuguese. Language Patch Download: To download the ESA language pack please log in to My Oracle Support http://support.oracle.com/. Select the Patches and Updates tab Type in the Patch number: 18916310 Click the Patch number Download using the yellow download button on the right hand side

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• How do I do a cross-platform backup/restore of a DB2 database?

  - by Pridkett

  I need to dump a couple of databases from DB2 for Mac and DB2 for Linux and then import the databases to DB2 for Windows. Unfortunately, when I try the standard backup and restore I get the following error: SQL2570N An attempt to restore on target OS "NT-32" from a backup created on source OS "?" failed due to the incompatability of operating systems or an incorrect specification of the restore command. Reason-code: "1". I've seen references to DB2 needing an IXF dump and import, but I can't find any solid information about how to do this without dozens of other steps. Any hints on how to do this in the least painful manner?

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• What is the scripting language available in Soundbooth CS4 ?

  - by George Profenza

  Had to edit this to make it more clear. In ExtendScript Toolkit I see a soundbooth object. It has only a handful of functions, one of which is called sendScriptToSoundbooth() which implies you can script Soundbooth(). What is the scripting language in soundbooth and how do you get started with scripting ?

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• What could be the Java successor Oracle wants to invest in?

  - by deamon

  I've read that Oracle wants to invest into another language than Java: "On the other hand, Oracle has been particularly supportive of alternative JVM languages. Adam Messinger ( http://www.linkedin.com/in/adammessinger ) was pretty blunt at the JVM Languages Summit this year about Java the language reaching it's logical end and how Oracle is looking for a 'higher level' language to 'put significant investment into.'" But what language could be the one Oracle wants to invest in? Is there another candidate than Scala?

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• How can I make the Windows 7 taskbar behave like a cross between the old Quick Launch and new Superbar?

  - by frumious

  I really like the taskbar in Windows 7, I think combining buttons to launch apps and the icons that show your running apps is groovy. However, because I like having as much space as possible, I've got small icons enabled and shrunk the bar down to one row. I've also told it not to group the running apps unless there's no space left (to save me having to work harder to find the particular window I want), which also means that they have captions, and are thus quite wide. The (admittedly small) problem this gives me is that I can pin all my favourite apps to the bar, which looks much like the old Quick Launch bar, but when I launch them the running apps because much wider, and the unlaunched apps get lost amongst them. I can manually change the order to fix this, but next time I'll launch a different app and I'll be back to square one. What I'd prefer is for small unlaunched icons to be kept on the left, and wider running apps to move over to the right, which for me would be the best of both worlds. Is there any way I can organise that? I'm aware that one can use the traditional quick launch bar in Windows 7, but that's not what I'm after; I generally prefer the Windows 7 way.

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• 10Gbe sfp+ Cross Over Cable required? Is there such a thing?

  - by dc-patos

  To preface, this is my first experience with 10GBe networking and I have encountered an issue which research does not seem to document a solution for... I have two servers (older DL580G5 and DL380G5), each with a HP NC522SFP 10Gbe dual sfp+ port adapter. I have purchased copper "passive" direct connect adapter cables (which look like twinax), which seem to work well when I connect them to the sfp+ ports on my Dell 5524 switch. However, if I directly connect the two servers with the same cable, the link doesn't come up. I am running WS2012 standard on each server. My intention is to use one of these servers as a home brew SAN and I would like to enable mutiple 10Gbe paths for iSCSI traffic. My question(s): Can I connect the two adapters to each other, such as I would with other less speedy generations of ethernet? If I can, do I require a crossover cable, or some type of other sfp+ cable solution to do this? My 10Gbe sfp+ switch ports are premium, but server to server connections are doable in small numbers for me and I would really like the multiple paths this would give me. Is there a simple solution?

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• Experiences with learning Chinese

  - by Greg Low

  I've had a few friends asking me about learning Chinese and what I've found works and doesn't work. I was answering a question on a mailing list today and I thought I should post this info where it might be useful to many. The question that was initially asked was whether Rosetta Stone was useful but I've provided much more info on learning the language here. I’ve used Rosetta Stone with Chinese but it’s really hard to know whether to recommend it or not. Rosetta Stone works the same way in all languages. They show you photos and then let you both see and hear the target language and get you to work out what they’re talking about. The thinking is that that’s how children learn. However, at first, I found it very frustrating. I’d be staring at photos trying to work out what they were really trying to get at. Sometimes it’s far from obvious. I could not have survived without Google Translate open at the same time. The other weird thing is that the photos are from a mixture of countries. While that’s good in a way, it also means that they are endlessly showing pictures of something that would never happen in the target language and culture. For any language, constant interaction with a speaker of the target language is needed. Rosetta Stone has a “Studio” option. That’s the best part of the program. In my case, it lets me connect around twice a week to a live online class from Beijing. Classes usually have the teacher plus two to four students. You get some Studio access with the initial packages but need to purchase it for ongoing use. I find it very inexpensive. It seems to work out to about $70 (AUD/USD) for six months. That’s a real bargain. The other downside to Rosetta Stone is that they tend to teach very formal language, but as with other languages, that’s not how the locals speak. It might have been correct at one point but no-one actually says that. As an example, Rosetta Stone teach Gonggòng qìche (pronounced roughly like “gong gong chee chure” for bus. Most of my friends from areas like Taiwan would just say Gongche. Google Translate says Zongxiàn (pronounced somewhat like “dzong sheean”) instead. Mind you, the Rosetta Stone option isn't really as bad as "omnibus"; it's more like saying "public bus". If you say the option they provide, people would understand you. I also listen to ChinesePod in the car. They also have SpanishPod. Each podcast is about five minutes of spoken conversation. It is very good for providing current language. Another resource I use is local Meetup groups. Most cities have these and for a variety of languages. It’s way less structured (just standard conversation) but good for getting interaction. The obvious challenge for Asian languages is reading/writing. The input editors for Chinese that are part of Windows are excellent. Many of my Chinese friends speak fluently but cannot read or write. I was determined to learn to do both. For writing, I’m talking about on a computer, not with a pen. (Mind you, I can barely write English with a pen nowadays). When using Rosetta Stone, you can choose to have the Chinese words displayed in pinyin (Wo xihuan xuéxí zhongguó) or in Chinese characters (???????) or both. This year, I’ve been forcing myself to just use the Chinese characters. I use a pinyin input editor in Windows though, as it’s very fast.  (The character recognition input in the iPad is also amazing). Notice from the example that I provided above that the pronunciation of the pinyin isn’t that obvious to us at first either.  Since changing to only using characters, I find I can now read many more Chinese characters fluently. It’s a major challenge though. I can read about 300 now and yet you need around 2,500 to be able to read a newspaper fairly well. Tones are a major issue for some Asian languages. Mandarin has four tones (plus a neutral tone) and there is a major difference in meaning between two words that are spelled the same in pinyin but with different tones. For example, Ma (3rd tone?) is a horse, Ma (1st tone?) is like “mom”, and ma (neutral tone?) is a question mark and so on. Clearly you don’t want to mix these up. As in English, they also have words that do sound the same but mean different things in different contexts. What’s interesting is that even though we see two words that differ only by tone as very similar, to a native speaker, if you say the right words with the wrong tone, you might as well have said a completely different word. My wife’s dialect of Chinese has eight tones. It’s much worse. The reason I’m so keen to learn to read/write Chinese is that even though the different dialects are pronounced so differently that speakers of one dialect often cannot understand another dialect, the writing is generally the same. The only difference is that many years ago, the Chinese government created a simplified set of characters for some of the most commonly used ones. Older Chinese and most Cantonese speakers often struggle with the simplified characters. This is the simplified form of “three apples”: ????   This is the traditional form of the same words: ????  Note that two of the characters are the same but the middle two are quite different. For most languages, the best thing is to watch current movies in the target language but to watch them with the target language as subtitles, not your native language. You want to know what they actually said, not what it roughly means (which is what the English subtitle would give you). The difficulty with Asian languages like Chinese is that you have the added challenge of understanding the subtitles when they are written in the target language. I wish there were Mandarin Chinese movies with pinyin subtitles. For learning to read characters, I also recommend HanCard on the iPad. It is targeted at the HSK language proficiency levels. (I’m intending to take the first HSK exam as soon as I’m ready). Hope that info helps someone get started.  

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• Is there a programming language with not a tree but tags idea behind OOP?

  - by kolupaev

  I'm thinking about tree structures, and I feel that I don't like them. It's like when you have a shop, then you try to put all products to tree-like catalog, and then you need to place one product to multiple categories, now you have multiple routing, bla-bla. I don't feel like everything in the world could be put to a tree. Instead, I like idea of tags. I would like to store everything with tags. With tags I could do much more. I can even simulate trees if I want. I want to have tag-based filesystem! But hey - modern OOP paradigm with inheritance is based on tree. I want to see how it is when you don't have such basement. Closest thing I found is mixins in some languages. Do you know what else is also about this ideas?

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