There was a surprising pattern in the response to my talk during my recent road trip. I think of my work as trying to make programming more human-friendly. Yet the people most concerned with human factors had a common reaction: it just isn’t possible to reinvent programming languages from scratch. I was instead expecting negative reactions from the formal methods and analysis people, but some of them seemed to be quite entertained by my work.
Why Syntax Must Die
Roly Perera offers a critique of Subtext: Why syntax won’t go away. It’s great to get this kind of feedback. I like Roly’s visionary thinking – I hope grad school doesn’t pound it out of him. Overall, we are in violent agreement on many issues.
Continue reading “Why Syntax Must Die”
OOPSLA Gossip
OK, this is what everyone wants to hear.
Continue reading “OOPSLA Gossip”
Galactic Premiere of Subtext 2
Here I am live-blogging myself at OOPSLA. I guess you know you have arrived when you get heckled by Guy Steele. Actually the talk seemed to go over pretty well.
I have posted a video of essentially the same talk. As always, comments welcome.
Beautiful Code
O’Reilly just published Beautiful Code. I was invited to contribute, but I just could not go along with the premise. I disagree that beauty is a guiding principle of programming. Here is how I responded. Continue reading “Beautiful Code”