You wont go wrong with either. Javascript is good for in web pages verses python being the server side to produce dynamic pages. You'll find you probably use both in a web project anyway.
Learn one, then learn the other - start where you want to.
Education might be the stated aim of the project but its not the limit of the device. This is a device similar to an Arduino except for the fact its got HDMI, USB, is about 700 times faster and in the order of 256 million times more RAM and its only 25% more expensive. Its a hardware hackers delight and a desktop capable computer. It is also a very real competitor for nettops which sell in the millions at a price point 5-10x higher than this.
It may very well be used by students to code, but that will be a niche it falls into right behind becoming the cheapest desktop capable computer ever built that isn't locked down. This could very well start a revolution in portable desktop computers that are really cheap. I personally think it is an exciting device but let down by the narrow vision of its application.
I agree with everything you have said about the potential of the Raspberry Pi. My surprise was at the tone of the reaction on this thread. That these people have spent this long on such a worthy project and have produced something that is probably truly exceptional. We should be grateful and excited. I don't think it has been let down at all. We will all get one, just maybe not immediately.
Right now no one knows when the release will be. What we have here is a limited beta release to 10,000 people or so, not the actual product launch. That will be coming at an unknown point in the future, probably. People are frustrated by this realisation because the makers claimed it would be the real release. But I think its been obvious for at least 2 months that it would exactly what it is today (no one expected the website to die of course but the product selling out in seconds they predicted correctly).
They deserve criticism for getting the launch wrong. Until the hardware gets tested we don't know if that works. My fear is that the hardware shows the same lack of attention and it doesn't work very well. It needs to be called what it is, a potentially great product with a disastrously bad launch.
They got the product right and there was absolutely no way in hell that they could have done better than this at launch day. If they had sold 10 units I'm sure you would have had your criticism ready as well and to extrapolate from selling out in 10 minutes flat to 'fear that the hardware shows the same lack of attention and it doesn't work very well' is simply stupid.
If you want to criticize the RasberryPi folks then I suggest you show us all how you will do better. I'll be cheering you on, even if you sell out on day one.
They ignored a lot of experienced advice given to them freely to get to this point. Its a shame really as this could have been a magically moment where they shifted a million devices in a week. Instead we are looking at 404 pages and there are no devices available if you do get through. A lot of potential customers have just been gone and will never return.
Or it could tarnish their reputation and kill the whole product. Lets hope the engineering of the actual product is a little better than the sales process. But I still think its kind of important not to give your potential customers a 404 as your first interaction or you run the very real risk of having zero conversions from all that homepage traffic.
> you run the very real risk of having zero conversions
> from all that homepage traffic.
Dear God. Don't use web-y start-up lingo in situations where none of the platitudes apply. R-PI faces demand severely outstripping demand, which is the polar opposite of what conversion rate-optimizing Bla-ly companies experience.
The one thing you can say about incompetence is that its ignorant of its own condition.
This does not bode well to the quality of the product itself, the lack of basic skills and forethought is frightening. After all that "we know what we are doing" talk I guess we can now point and laugh.
They're a charity, they're not obliged to do anything for any one.
They anticipated the launch issues so they brought on two distributors who have networks and infrastructure in place to distribute these sorts of products to customers all over the world.
The problem is (and judging by their website design) these distributors probably don't get that much traffic on a day to day basis. Their products seem very niche.
The distributors were warned and this is what happens.
Yeesh, relax. Have you been injured by this? When they say they know what they're doing that's written from their perspective. It's not a declaration that they're going to live up to the expectations of every manchild who feels entitled to one of these devices.
One intel X25-M 80GB SSD. According to the SMART information 10% of its write life has been used over 1.5 years. Still going strong in a work machine used day to day.
Two OCZ Vertex 2E's 120GB (separate machines). Had both for 6 months and both are working reliably with no signs of problems or performance degradation.
Developers do a lot of 4KB operations. Source files tend to be small as do database updates.
The current market leader in this is the OCZ Vertex 3, a considerably faster drive than the Intel 510. Indeed intel's X25-M is better at 4KB operations than the new drive.
The 510 is a disappointment, get an OCZ Vertex instead, its cheaper and faster for the sorts of operations that matter. See anandtech for more details:
Avoid OCZ. I had a Vertex 2 SSD fail after about two weeks. What's really a big gotcha is that it fails 100% immediately; there are no warning signs as there often are with a hard disk.
I looked into it: I believe that there's actually an assertion that got hit in the OCZ firmware, and then it goes into a lock-down mode. However, there's no way for an end-user to exit this mode and recover any data (it simply won't respond to SATA commands), nor are OCZ willing to unlock it for you.
Sure, just sharing my personal experience. The pathological failure behaviour due to a software bug is not something I'd previously considered when choosing a drive.
It's a very common problem with certain levels of firmware. Fortunately, OCZ has been very good for replacing bricked drives for us, almost no questions asked, so yes, keep backups.
Drives fail. SSDs are no exception. That doesn't mean it doesn't drive me crazy when they do, however. :-)
This is not specific to SSDs. Drives fail. Usually very early (infant death) or very late, google for 'bathtub curve'.
Spreading FUD about a specific vendor isn't fair unless you can back it up with data. The failure rate that is commonly cited for sandforce drives is around 2% - regardless of vendor. If you have different data then I'm curious to read about it.
I think there's a bigger problem here - this isn't just normal bathub-curve component failure. What seems to be happening is that the firmware panics due to an assertion being hit, and what could be a hiccup that requires a reboot becomes a total data loss event.
"gamble" suggested above that this is related to power-saving modes. That fits with our different experiences (laptop vs server). Think about how you would feel if you rebooted your server, it went through a different power mode as part of shutdown, and when it came back all eight of your presumably nicely RAIDed drives were dead. Of course a lightning strike could do the same thing, but you have a surge protector that guards against that. How are you protecting against your SSD's firmware? That's my real concern.
As to whether it's SandForce or OCZ, I'm just going to go Intel next time. You're free to go with OCZ or a non-battery-backed ramdisk - it's all the same to me :-)
this isn't just normal bathub-curve component failure
What part of "unless you can back it up with data" didn't you understand?
How are you protecting against your SSD's firmware?
Just like against any other hardware fault: By having backups and redundancy. Bugs happen. You're making it sound as if this was somehow specific to OCZ - which remains bullshit until you provide data beyond anecdotical evidence.
And FWIW I'm neither affiliated with OCZ, nor emotionally tied to the brand. We also run X-25s in production, my Mac Mini has an X-25 and my Macbook has an OCZ.
Straight from the horse's mouth, here's OCZ's patch log for v129, which describes a fix for a software-induced data-loss issue:
"Fixed rare corner case that could cause the drive to reset and clear user data"
http://www.ocztechnology.com/files/ssd_tools/OCZ_SSD_v129_Fi...
That was less than a month ago. Maybe this was the last bug; I'd guess not. I'm sure all the SSD vendors have firmware bugs, but my personal choice is not to go with OCZ in future. As you point out, it seems likely that other Sandforce vendors will share similar issues, so my understanding is that basically leaves Intel (?)
In future, before aggressively going on the attack, I think you should consider the possibility that you may not be as correct as you believe everyone else to be wrong. Let's keep things civilized around here.
In future, before aggressively going on the attack, I think you should consider the possibility that you may not be as correct as you believe everyone else to be wrong. Let's keep things civilized around here.
I don't see where I went "aggressive". On the contrary I consider it agressive to spread FUD about a vendor based solely on anecdotical evidence.
I'm sure all the SSD vendors have firmware bugs, but my personal choice is not to go with OCZ in future.
Exactly. All vendors hit these bugs from time to time. That's why you should refrain from writing posts "Avoid $FOO" when all you have to contribute is a single datapoint.
"I had bad luck with OCZ" would have been more appropriate.
My strategy from now on is to to mirror the SSD to a traditional HDD. That way, in the case of a SSD failure, we can accept the performance hit and still be able to run smoothly from the platter.
Check out Facebook's FlashCache: they use SSDs as a cache on to traditional HDDs. You can have a read-cache to keep 'hot' data fast, and (if you want to) you can have a write cache that will buffer writes on SSD before flushing to HDD.
I don't know whether it's ready for general (non-Facebook) use yet, but it is definitely one to watch.
My only concern with OCZ SSDs are initial quality. Just look Newegg's reviews, there a whole bunch of people who received DOA units or they fail after a month.
I've had two OCZ ssds (granted, they were early models) that worked for a combined total of 2 weeks. My intel ones, though, have been solid. I keep looking at OCZ, thinking that they're a pretty good price for the performance, but not wanting to go down that rathole again.
One of the reasons software gets released in scripts rather than packages is because the root package installation mechanism is root accessible only. Most companies restrict root access and package installation is blocked by proxies. The combination of which means that scripts that can be downloaded separately and run are much easier for enterprise developers to use and get started with.
Until the average enterprise realises that packaging and installation needs to be done better we will always have the need for mechanisms that hack around the problem that system admins cause for the users of the servers.
I agree, but developers have enough on their plate and knowing how to administer your workstation isn't the same as administrating a server.
That said, allowing user system wide installation could be possible. I think, at least under Linux, combining selinux and cgroup to provide sandboxed system wide user install could be possible but you'd possibly need to bypass classic unix directory ownership and permissions. That might require to much work or not even be impossible.
Anyone here with enough knowledge to confirm or refute my feeling ?
In industry you often get to set the estimates yourself. Missing the deadline has less severe consequences because its unlikely you'll get fired for missing the deadline by a day. But on your course its a fixed date and a big fat 0 awaits those who miss it.
Its worth mentioning that estimates are not plans to deliver. Make sure that as you give them in units that represent the amount of confidence you have. Industry recognises things aren't perfect and so often deadlines are a bit more fluid.
If someone else is setting your deadlines and estimating on your behalf its best to treat those with the contempt they deserve and provide your own estimate. Its a sad fact of our industry that this happens so frequently, but its best to nip it in the bud.
In general things are a lot more fluid in industry, the requirements need detailed understanding and the estimates are never right. The pressure is normally less severe, but it really depends on your boss and your dynamic with him/her. In a startup its self imposed pressure so you get to choose how severe it is and how hard you end up working.
Its important as a young developer to make sure you learn the things you are working with well. You need to avoid spending too much time at work so you can get in the necessary reading and practice that makes a better craftsman.
The modern IDE is chock full of features. So many that many less common edits are automated if you know the right keystrokes. It takes years to master all of the features and those features are constantly expanding month on month.
An IDE like Eclipse can take 1 GB of RAM to run on a decent sized project. Not only that but it will happily consume 4 CPUs as it verifies the code, and it'll only reach its full potential of resource usage on an SSD. But 1GB of RAM is less than £20, a quad core around £80 and a decent dev SSD for less than £200. Compared to the time cost of learning another tool this is absolutely nothing. Those tools in your IDE are there to save you time and a bit of hardware to be able to use those features quickly is worth every penny for the hours they save you.
Learning your IDE well matters, the resource constraints are easily fixed with minimal cash outlay. The difference between a MB and a GB for your editor is irrelevant when the difference is such a vast array of features and plugins which can save a lot of time.
Emacs and vim have a place in the world but an IDE is a vital part of a modern development set-up because of the productivity it brings. If you are going to develop software seriously make sure you buy hardware capable of doing it so you can use the best tools at hand.
Learn one, then learn the other - start where you want to.