Tech Heads Should Build Software for the Average PersonWritten by Jesse S. Somer
Being total opposite to a technical person, it is hard to imagine future Internet software advances. The techno-humans have come up with incredible ideas and subsequently their ideas have come to fruition. It seems like anything a human puts their mind to can be done. Our species has come such a long way, but I feel key to next part in our evolution of technology and consciousness is to integrate ideas of average person. Who do we build all this technology for anyway? I think it’s made for humans to have a better life. It’s time to start making technological advances in computing with non-computer-based people of world in mind. A famous American journalist Sidney J. Harris once said,“The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers.” Computer and Internet specialists have to realize that they have gone so deep into their fields that they now can no longer see what computer world looks like to a novice like myself. All this techno-jargon and hundreds of different types of software can be quite overwhelming to a normal person who just wants to take part in this new way of interacting with reality and society. We’ve got to simplify if we want this awesome force to be integrated into our lives in its highest form. I know Internet is growing at an incredible rate already. One only has to look at example of India to see incredible mark Information Technology has made. You can go into a tiny village that looks relatively same as it has been for fifty years; general infrastructure is shocking: broken traffic lights, decrepit buildings, power lines splaying out in chaotic patterns. But, something big has changed; each town now has a satellite dish, and an ISP connection (Internet Service Provider)! This is truly amazing. However I believe it is only beginning of a new revolution that will arrive when we simplify information and communication processes.
| | Choose your java wisely…Written by Shashank
Java has come along a long way. Many would agree with this. I did not until Java 1.5 “Tiger” hit me. The tiger had several new features, and more importantly, it has new syntax. Six major upgrades that tiger presents are certainly generics, enhanced for loop, autoboxing (unboxing), improvement on Typesafe enum, Static import and metadata. Out of these six, at least four would be used in my daily “programming” life. Of course there are many more, which can be found at java’s official site. From java 1.1 to 1.4, it seemed more like new frills were simply added. It felt like earning more brownie points when you downloaded newer version. But should I start using 1.5 immediately, maybe not.The developers and programmers (if you distinguish between them) are left with one great dilemma (me too). It certainly is as to which version to use when preparing software in java. This problem hides itself under carpet when you are programming for a specific client with a specific system where you can get it upgrade on site, but when app is going to be used by Mr. Williams from South Africa and Ms. Lee from Japan, you really have to give a thought as to whether your app is going to run on both systems (that is why java was made in first place, isn’t it?). I’ve always had latest version of sdk, yet I would try and target compiling in a lower possible version, so that even those people would be able to use apps, who were, well, frozen in time and didn’t go up “version ladder”. For e.g., ordinary applets, by me and my company, in most of cases would be compiled in java 1.1, so that no user ends up waiting for an hour before plugin for latest version is downloaded and installed (get yourself a coffee if your yawning). For e.g., once on a tour, I happened to visit some site in a cyber café, which said that I needed to install java plugin 1.4 to view page correctly (apparently, cyber cafes don’t bother much about upgrading java), and when I did, it turned out to be a stupid advertisement (Ahhh! What agony!). Of course, over a period of time, you expect users to have gone to a level of higher java plugin courtesy other company’s applets, but just to be sure…
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