Interesting how JS still doesn't live up to AS3. Everyone always discredits Flash... but if you're trying to make a Physics-based browser game, it still seems appropriate!
Well, the asm.js version of the benchmark is JS, and it outperformed AS3. Although as cpleppert said, perhaps an alchemy version for Flash would be faster than AS3, that would be interesting to see.
But, I'm not aware of an alchemy version of Box2D for Flash that is convenient to use from normal Flash (what presumably the rest of the game is written in), while for asm.js there is such a version (that is easily usable from normal JS), here's a demo
You could get even better performance if you directly coded against the alchemy VM instructions or used alchemy directly. This would be comparable to asm.js or coding Java against the unsafe memory operators.
One thing that struck me about this article is the poor use of punctuation. It really damages the credibility of the author when their language is so choppy. It might seem superficial, but this completely ruined the author's argument for me. Just one example: "At the current rate, 25 Bitcoins are generated every 10 minutes although; this will be continuously halved every four years...". That semicolon is so wrong.
While I agree with the author's general sentiment here, he doesn't offer any evidence for his claim (besides anecdotal). Many successful people do put work first, plain and simple.
I choose to spend time not working because I value things other than wealth/power/work (as most people do). But if you want to make a lot of money, working 100 hours a week is a pretty obvious way to do that, IMO.
Agreed. It looks like a lame coin you'd see on an online gambling site. The new B actually reminds me of a logo to a financial institution and is far more classy.
Does anyone else feel like Lehrer is receiving more criticism than he deserves? The fact that he defended the fabricated Dylan quotes is regrettable, but it's so trivial compared to lies we hear everyday from people we "trust" (media, politicians, bloggers, friends). And I don't give a damn about the self plagiarism. It was sloppy, not evil.
I personally wish we could forget about the whole thing. After this debacle, I'd trust Lehrer over almost any other science writer. If he ever writes Frontal Cortex again, I'm sure it will be the most thoroughly fact-checked journalism available.
The thing is that when somebody lies about trivial but pointless stuff -- not little white lies like "Ooh, I'd love to come but I'm booked that day" or "No, that dress looks great on you" but rather, "Bob Dylan said this" -- then you can't trust the rest of what they write.
People criticize Lehrer because they liked him and trusted him. Now everything they liked about him was cast into doubt, over something totally idiotic. It seriously calls his judgment and character into question. There was no compelling reason for him to fabricate what he fabricated. There was no enormous gain from that fabrication. It's a sign of either laziness, OR pathological lying.
Pathological liars are distinguished from the rest of us because they lie about pointless things, without a direct thing to gain from it.
We understand that politicians lie for gain… they are not, GENERALLY, pathological. Because they lie for gain, we can ferret out their lies because we can ask, "Gee, does xyz have something to gain here?" - and we understand them. That doesn't make it excusable, but that's probably part of why there's more uproar about Lehrer (we trusted him! WHY did he lie about THAT?!) than yet one more political lie.
Proposing that code should be simple, brief, and elegant is not insightful. This is like a lawmaker saying: "Don't worry about writing down laws, let's simply always be just! It's easy!" It's not that easy. The details matter.
Codification and standardization are powerful tools that our entire civilization relies on. They minimize variation, thereby easing communication between interacting parties. If everyone is on the same page, it's simpler to express complex ideas. That's the whole point of writing coding standards.
Coding standards minimize superficial variation (where do the curly braces go? how do I format variable names?) so that we can talk about things that matter (how should this algorithm work? what are the side effects of this function?).
Of course, the other end of the spectrum is important too. Variation promotes innovation and creativity. It's cliche, but I think you have to find the right balance between codification and individual intuition. In addition, you should be willing to modify coding standards occasionally (just like all standards are revised and improved over time).
