Punk languages, my ass

Something about this made me want to punch the guy in the face. I should be a sympathetic audience: C is always my second-favorite language (after the best available Lisp, whatever that is at the moment) and it's often exactly the right tool, because C is all about your being responsible for everything. (Kinda. Sorta. Less responsible for everything than you think, really.) But the argument here is so weak, and depends on such a weird view of what makes a language good, that my knuckles get to itching.

Also, assuming that there's something punk about C, anyone who thinks that ObjC (or, gods help us, C++) is punk too is the same sort of person who would call Green Day punk. Don't even get me started on f'n JavaScript.

Pushing square Java into a round hole

I don't know just what the Java gnomes were thinking the language would be good for, but it's clear that desktop applications was not on the list. One of my smaller complaints: the system/user preferences system is borked on Linux.

The general problem is that the JDK installer doesn't set up the preferences folder. There are a variety of symptoms and an assortment of cures posted around the intertubes. I don't know that I've completely solved the problem, but here's my best shot:

sudo mkdir /opt/sun-jdk-1.6.0.21/jre/.systemPrefs
sudo touch /opt/sun-jdk-1.6.0.21/jre/.systemPrefs/.system.lock
sudo touch /opt/sun-jdk-1.6.0.21/jre/.systemPrefs/.systemRootModFile
sudo chmod 666 /opt/sun-jdk-1.6.0.21/jre/.systemPrefs/.*
sudo chmod 777 /opt/sun-jdk-1.6.0.21/jre/.systemPrefs

I'm sure this could be smarter about security. Maybe in a later post.