Daily Bytes

Optimization should never be done until after you’ve run
real-world use cases on code with a profiler. Until then, one
should write code that clearly communicates its intent.

• Premature optimization is the root of all evil.

says Knuth, and Martin Fowler says

• “Any fool can write code that a computer can understand.
  Good programmers write code that humans can understand.”

Remember: Computers double in speed every 18 months, but
programmers stay just the same. If we want our code to live a long
and happy life, then clarity should almost always win over
speed.

Every platform has a culture you see. The cultures of Windows,
MacOS and Linux are distinct and different.

The Windows culture is one of rampant commercialism, I guess
because Microsoft was always a figurehead of capitalism and because
being dominant and without any distinct culture imposed on it by
Redmond, it adopted the culture of western/american society as a
whole. So you get apps that forcibly display adverts, practically
all the software is commercial, 30 day trials or spyware funded.
Hence the high piracy rates.

The MacOS culture is one of we pay over the odds, so we
demand absolute quality. I’m not a big fan of MacOS myself, in
fact I think it’s ultimately a harmful thing, but it is a pretty
high quality product, and Apple charge a premium for it. In turn,
having bought into the platform, the users tend to demand
everything be done the Apple Way. The Apple Way is the One True
Way, and woe betide any company that violates that. An example of
that would be focus on the gui, following the apple user interface
conventions etc (note that doesn’t necessarily equal very easy to
use). What Apple says or does must be correct, this is taken for
granted. There is similarly a lot of commercial software, but again
it tends to be less in your face for fear of disturbing the users
“experience”, for instance I think it was OmniWeb faded in free
trial over the web page instead of using annoying popup
dialogs.

The Linux culture is the most different. It is a culture of the
community above all else. A media player that cost £40 and whose
free trial inserted spyware into your system would not be
tolerated, period. A free version would be made, it’d be made
better, and that’d be the end of it. The whole setup and
technologies are oriented around this. For instance, the vFolders
menu system is category based, rather than company based like the
Windows start menu. Linux users also tend to dislike things that
don’t play by the rules. Closed file formats are seriously frowned
upon, simple shareware style programs don’t stand a chance. EULAs
are foreign to Linux, in fact RPM and DPKG don’t even support them
afaik.