Just got back from CUSEC . I got an interesting view of the current state of the programmer subculture. It is much more social than in my day. There is a whole culture of meetups, *-camps, and little conferences. Ruby seems particularly cool right now. Almost everyone had a Mac. Doing open source counts a lot for street cred. Continue reading “Observations of programmers in the wild”
Speaking at CUSEC
I have been invited to speak at CUSEC. Looks like a fun conference, and some of the other speakers are interesting, like Dan Ingalls and Avi Bryant. My talk is Iconoclasm for fun and profit. Abstract: Continue reading “Speaking at CUSEC”
At this juncture …
I have spoken before of the need to rebrand Subtext. It is stereotyped as a Visual Programming Language, and as such will never command respect. Using a non-textual code rep violates everyone’s expectations for how programming is done, and even how we write about it. The really fundamental problem is that I have been trying to solve problems that people don’t know they have, or won’t admit they have. No one is willing to admit they aren’t smart enough to program with current languages. Continue reading “At this juncture …”
Why Chrome is Shiny
Looking at the Google Web Toolkit, I have realized that Internet browsers are a dead end, much like MS-DOS was. GWT attempts to extract you from the tar pit of browser Javascript by papering over the incompatibilities and limitations. Some examples of these problems:
Continue reading “Why Chrome is Shiny”
Truth in Researching
Just read a great paper about programming language design: The Origins of the BitC Programming Language. BitC wants to be a verifiable systems programming language, suitable for implementing OS kernels with provable safety guarantees and competitive performance. They share the lessons they have learned and opinions they have formed. They are commited to inventing something that is actually usable. It is all refreshingly honest and free of the obligatory posturing of academics, and therefore probably unpublishable. Some juicy quotes: Continue reading “Truth in Researching”