Crossing-the-chasm for laggards

Via James Robertson:It's Time to Fix Tech Marketing - Computerworld: "'How many consultants does it take to make your software work?'"

Darn, more MBA update required.

Disruptive Programming Languages

Spotted in Bill Clementson's Blog

In that presentation, he used Clayton Christensen's excellent book The Innovator's Dilemma to illustrate how even entrenched programming languages such as Java and C could lose dominance and market share when confronted with disruptive changes in technology

I used "The Innovators Dilemma" for "Open Source in Software Development" in my MBA dissertation, so I am a real sucker for this type of analysis. It is interesting that more and more presentations on new languages seem to be popping up; dissatisfaction with the main languages is growing, or is this a quest for more research grants? My bet is that it is the former, and a language radically different from C/C++/Java will emerge ( hopefully sooner rather than later).

Good luck Bill

Good luck to Bill Clementson: Spotted in Bill Clementson's Blog Sometimes unplanned career changes really help - I hope this is the case for Bill and the many other PeopleSoft folk.

Crikey ! Jolly good!

Graham Glass, etc.: School Disco

MDA Limitations?

Forrester Report Shows Developers Reluctant To Adopt MDA:
When companies hear about MDA, they are superficially interested, but when they realize what it entails, they back away. They fear MDA is rigid, is slow and will be difficult to implement

Awesome indeed

Spotted in Lemonodor

" "I became interested in Lisp-like languages mostly from hearing Python programmers look for x in the language, "because Lisp has it". So about two years ago, I armed myself with ANSI Common Lisp, and dived in. Since then, PAIP, The Little Schemer, The Seasoned Schemer, Lisp in Small Pieces, SICP, On Lisp (dead-tree version), EOPL, CLtL, etc. And I haven't looked back; it's over a year since I coded a program more than 100 lines in something other than CL/Scheme. As has been put in more eloquent ways on the RtL highlight reel, all other languages just look fundamentally wrong and unwieldy by comparison. More importantly, from c.l.l and p.l.o traffic, it seems that we're growing in number "

Awesome. "

Mid-rank nerd

Via WebMink:Wx Plotter Fun Tests - Nerd Quiz: "
"

How do I feel about this? Obviously WebMink is happy to be a Nerd - not sure I would be. But then perhaps it would be better to be totally unNerdy....

Don't compare the Mac Mini to the usual PC

Macintosh: It's a User Thing: "The Mac Mini is a game changing system. This thing is so small and cheap, it's opening up new possibilities. Put a Mac wherever in the home it would be handy to have a computer. The Mac Mini is a wonderful example of Apple thinking different that's going to be very profitable for them, and grow their market share significantly. It's the best thing they've done in computers since the iMac. Hell, I never did like the iMac that much. Possibly it's the best thing Apple's done in computers since the original 128K Mac. Despite Apple's perennial lagging in the Java and office software spaces, I'm more bullish on Apple than I have been in a long time. It's a great time to be using Macs or selling Mac software."

"The real problem with this, and dozens of similar posts and articles I've seen around the Net, is that they aren't comparing oranges to oranges. Instead they're comparing tangerines to grapefruits. A Mac Mini is not equivalent to a $499 Gateway PC or white box. It is better than these boxes. Size and design matter. "

I've just got to see one of these things - and I'm someone who puts together computers for th home - erhaps I'm jus getting lazy!!

Open Source Rexx

Catching up on James' blog:The Rexx Language Association - Press Release: "IBM Contributes Scripting Language to the Rexx Language Association"

I used to use Rexx ages ago, and a very good scripting language it was too.

But am I going to look at ObjectREXX now, after so much water has flowed under the bridge, and new languages, especially Python, seem to fil this spot now? Life is too short to investiage every new language......

How do you know want you want, if you don't know what is available?

Spotted in Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants

I seem to remember Paul Graham making this point in "Hackers and Painters"; languages train you to think in their terms. Looking at a new language isn't enough - you have to get in there and try things out, otherwise you won't see the new; instead, look at what other exponents are doing and see whether it helps you - if it does how would you do it in your "normal" language?

Lip macros are a classic - hard to see why you might want them, especially if your language already has something clalled macros.

New Blog: Jean Bezivin

Jean Bezivin: U-Languages or M-Languages; more stuff on UML vs. DSL

The New Analysts

Since James was kind enough to comment on this blog, here is a pointer. A supericial skim shows something interestin. deli.cio.us pointer added for follow-up.

Spotted in WebMink

How to drive up your blog traffic!!

Jacqueline Mackie Paisley Passey: Blogger myths and facts!: "I frequently blog naked!"

PS: I don"T BTW!!

Via scoble

Apple iProduct homo[u]r

iProduct

Apple Haters

I laughed and laughed!!

Boing Boing: More on anti-Alzheimer's curry ingredient: "Interesting reply to my earlier post about the Alzheimer's fighting effect of curcumin, a chemical found in turmeric:

David Soleimani-Meigooni sez: Curcumin also has many other clinical properties such as anti-cancer/anti-tumor, anti-inflamatory, and anti-oxidant properties."

Boing Boing: An "information wants to be free" record label

Sound good ; where can I get thm in the UK?

Whiteboard UML /= UML 2 ?

Quest in Time: Unwanted Modeling Language: "That UML 2.0 is so geared towards Model Driven Architecture (MDA) that it will loose its focus as, and capability for, general analysis."

Fred also points to Martin Fowler's 2003 post with a similar theme.

But what are the specifics? What is missing or what was added that gets in the way ? I think some great diagrams have been added. And if you are sketching you can ignore the semantics that get in the way.

BTW the Rational's Eclipse based modeling tools referred to in Fred's earlier posting would be one of Rational Software Modeler(RSM) or Rational Software Architect, I assume. And they are both available .

Guardian Unlimited | Online | The war on copyright communists: "Software builds on other people's ideas. Claiming royalties on certain fundamental ideas looks like an easy road to endless riches: BT attempted to patent the clicking on hyperlinks in the world wide web. Microsoft has applied for 1,500 patents, some of them nearly as ridiculous. If these were granted, or enforceable, it would stifle innovation and work against the beneficial effects of copyright."

The New York Times > Technology > I.B.M. to Give Free Access to 500 Patents

Have Skype, will travel

Spotted in BeyondVC I think the combination of voice over IP and presence information is very good. BigCo IT departments are trying to stop this citing security and bandwidth problems. I have not seen mention of any Skype security concerns. On the subject of cost savings from Skype, they can be used to justify upgraded infrastructure.

If anyone has seen any case studies on adopting Skype ( or similar) in a corporate environment, let me know.

Well done Southampton University

Quite old news but I missed it completely:Press Releases - University of Southampton

Crystal Balls

Graham Glass, etc.: "IBM announces a new open source language, intended as a successor to Java, that runs on existing JVMs and CLRs. This seems like a natural extension of their existing open-source strategy, and would allow such a language to evolve quicker than through the current means."

Rumo[u]r mill - Live Journal

Six Apart to buy Live Journal?

So long as BizOrg still works with the resulting system I give my approval:-)

Whowa

Spotted in Planet Python

I agree

Java IAQ

A very intersting resource for Java coders:Java IAQ: Infrequently Answered Questions: "Infrequently Answered Questions"

Via William Bland

Scheme and Java

Making it stick.: 3MLOC: "and indeed, Scheme! Yes, the JVM source includes jscheme.jar, used to generate some CORBA classes"

Good luck Grady

Grady Booch faces a tough choice:developerWorks : Blogs

And he compares it with that great human disaster in the Indian Ocean. One personal choice, and the death and suffering of thousands ; life can be tough on any scale you care to look at it. There are no perfect solutions, no fail-safe prevention strategies -we just have to keep going.

Lisp with Java

I was very pleased with myself for finding Armed Bear Common Lisp; you've gotta love that name. You get a cool editor as well!! For someone like me who works in a mainly Java shop the excellent looking integration of Lisp and Java is cool and potentially very useful for prototyping (I wonder if Bill Clementson knowws about this?). (I'm also rather more attracted to building GUI's in Swing as Lisp is has so many different GUI libraries and many are rudimentary, only run on some platforms etc.)

A bit more research brought up a Java Foreign Language Interface for Common Lisp and a Lisp-friendly interface to Java Servlets by Rich Hickey - both look good.

Then it turns out that Lispmeister mentioned the latter 2 over 2 months ago and I missed it:Lispmeister.com : Lisplets

More to play with!!

PS: Yes, Bill Clementson does know about these !! Article in June or so; I wonder if he has done any more with any of them ?

God bless Poland!

Via Webmink: NoSoftwarePatents.com :: View topic - (EN) 21 DEC 04: Big Surprise in Brussels, No Swpats 4 Xmas!

More on DSL's and Lisp

Bill Clementson's Blog: DSL and Metaprogramming Resources

An eventful year for Lisp

I started looking at Lisp in the middle of the year, after a single course on it way back on my BSc course. I discovered that there was a lot more to it than I thought. This timeline is intersting though, as it shows a lot of progress has been made, just this year.ALU Wiki : 2004 Lisp Timeline

My sense is that there is a lot of activity around Lisp at present. I certainly feel that the renaissance of Virtual Machines and the rise of Domain Specific Languages is bringing the computer world back towards Lisp.

Cringley on the IBM PC/Lenovo deal

This analysis certainly makes more sense than IBM buying Apple!
PBS | I, Cringely . Archived Column: "Winners in this deal are IBM, Lenovo, AMD, and Dell. Lenovo instantly doubles its market share. AMD eats away just a little bit more at Intel's power base. Dell, as the true PC market leader, will rely on its lower overhead to further hurt HP.

Losers in the deal are HP, Intel, and Sun. Especially Sun. Those guys are in trouble."

Successful Lisp arrives

My copy has arrived!Lispmeister.com : Buy "Successful Lisp" at amazon.com

It is in beautiful condition, the cover looks great. Opening it up is a joy: the pages are crisp and new, the font lovely.

My only gripe? Each right-hand page has a tiny left-hand margin and a big right-hand one. I can see the spine coming under a lot of pressure as I struggle to see the first word of each line.

I ordered mine early from Booksurge.com. No complaints about speed of delivery, but the web store experience was scary, and response from customer service was non-existent. When I input all the details and confirmed the order, up popped a record of the transaction with a blank order number, and a list of things which I hadn't ordered, and the wrong total in dollars !!! Eeek. Phone number given on the site didn't work - eeek! Three e-mails to the address given - no response at all. Ohno!! I was getting a mite agitated I can tell you.

I was somewhat comforted when VISA confirmed the correct amount for Successful Lisp had actually been deducted ( and not the bogus amount) and that there were no other unaccounted for transactions.

Anyway, I am pretty much convinced I have not been phished and the book is here.

One last thing: David Lamkins ( author) should refrain from dyeing his hair (IMHO) !!

Model Transformation and Eclipse

Something new from IBM:alphaWorks : Model Transformation Framework: "What is the Model Transformation Framework?
The Model Transformation Framework (MTF) is a set of tools that helps developers make comparisons, check consistency, and implement transformations between Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF) models. The framework also supports persistence of a record of what was mapped to what by the transformation; this record can be used to support round-tripping, reconciliation of changes, or display of the results to a user."

If the models can be expressed in EMF then they can be transformed.

Lisp and Domain Specific Languages

Bill Clementson's Blog: "Forget syntax, forget library availability - the 'Lisp Difference' is that it allows you to create whatever domain-specific language you need for the problem space that you're working in."

Doesn't sound like Microsoft's DSL Workbench - still nothing wrong with that!!

Google Suggest Cool!

Hmm, languages as object ....

Logix: Multi-Language Programming | Lambda the Ultimate

Butchery at the Beeb

Ouch, 10% to go.

This looks odd:BBC NEWS | Entertainment | TV and Radio | BBC boss details 3,000 job cuts: "Almost 2,000 workers are expected to move from London to Manchester, to make the corporation more reflective of UK audiences."

I think "to reduce costs" might have been more honest! If you want to reflect a broader geography, you spread out. But no doubt that reduces management control, economies of scale or something.

Jonathan Schwartz speak with fork tongue?

I listened to the Gillmor Gang podcast for the 25th November (trendy , heh?). Mr Schwartz was that and came over as witty and made some insightful comments. He also made assertions about Red Hat which Steve G and co. never really called him on. And he kept talking about "Open", not alsways making clear which concept he was on about -Open Source or Open Standards (can I have both please?)

Now this:Slashdot | Sun's COO Pretends Linux Belongs To Red Hat

I hope Steve Gillmor asks Jonathan to back up some of his assertions: for instance, which benchmarks are showing Solaris trouncing "Red Hat's Linux" ?

Neat gizmo - Flash Linux

Portal - Flash Linux Home Page. 256M USB stick Linux with Gnome

IP Policy : the tyranny of the lobbyists

Democracy isn't just about everyone being able to vote. Who influences and drafts legislation? Who gets to sit on influential bodies endorsed by a government. We have a once every 4 or 5 year "nuclear option" to keep our elected representatives in-line - big industry has continual, well-financed influence. And they are using it: FT.com / Comment & analysis / Columnists - James Boyle: A natural experiment:

"So how do we decide the ground-rules of the information age? Representatives of interested industries come to regulators and ask for another heaping slice of monopoly rent in the form of an intellectual property right. They have doom-laden predictions, they have anecdotes, carefully selected to pluck the heartstrings of legislators, they have celebrities who testify - often incoherently, but with palpable charisma - and they have very, very simple economic models. "

Found via Lessig

Java to Python and back again

Interesting and provocative article. The referenced text is actually from one of the comments at the end, so keep reading!dirtSimple.org: Python Is Not Java: "But what's much more frustrating is the drop in language level; so much of what's done for you in Python needs to be put together painfully and explicitly in Java. And don't get me started on static typing..."

Found via Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants - James Robertson who comments: "Everything he said about Python relative to Java goes for Smalltalk as well."

Any Lisp comments anyone?

Lisp Comic Book

Thanks to LispMeister for this fun and useful link !!Lispmeister.com : Lisp Comic Book

I love the new terminology for macros - they are not like macros in any other language, so a new name seems appropriate to me (but I'm a newbie!)

The master speaks

Sun Proposes New Open-Source License: "'One of the beauties of the GPL,' he said, is that 'you have to totally give up control over the project (because everybody literally has the same rights to the whole project), but exactly because nobody can control it, it makes everybody feel like true owners.'"

Think Lisp

Sure this will be a great help to Lisp adoption:The Think Lisp Repository

Squeak on Linux

pvaneynds Debian & Lisp blog: Unix squeak image

Certainly the Gentoo Portage version is very out-of-date now. I for one would appreciate an update.

No, please don't remind me

Greg Reinacker's Weblog - The Best of the Best: "A::A() : m_x(5) { }"

Lord, I had almost forgotten this dire syntax. And frankly I wish I hadn't been reminded. Must be more careful of the links I follow.......

Good game, good game

AMK's Journal: Carcassonne

Good game!!

Played "settlers of Catan" last weekend - another good game!!

A flurry of books on Lisp

For a supposedly dead language (ducks behind cover), Lips is gettng a fair number of new books:

• Practical Common Lisp: "Practical Common Lisp"
  
• "Successful Lisp
  

"Hackers and Painters" has some Lisp references too.

Talking of Paul Graham, an update to "On Lisp" would be great. "On Lisp" is a great example of going beyond an intro book - it really shows the power of the language by going beyond the simple cases. I'd like to see other books that go into GUI, database etc. at a more detailed level. Of course, a disadvantage of Lisp (and Smalltalk) is tha therre are many ways to skin those Cats, so a book of contributions covering the most popular alternatives would be great.

What about Smalltalk? There are some fairly recent Squeak books, but perhaps there will be more along in a while.

XML.com: WSDL 2: Just Say No: "To put it simply, these specifications are astoundingly bad."

Architecture Astronauts

Joel on Software - Don't Let Architecture Astronauts Scare You: "Architecture Astronauts":
A recent example illustrates this. Your typical architecture astronaut will take a fact like "Napster is a peer-to-peer service for downloading music" and ignore everything but the architecture, thinking it's interesting because it's peer to peer, completely missing the point that it's interesting because you can type the name of a song and listen to it right away.

Ouch! no Xmas card for him !

Philip Greenspun's Weblog:World's most depressing country uses the most anti-depressants

Have no back to break, but have got hearts and minds

Scott iis rght:Scott Rosenberg's Links & Comment

There will always be some hot heads taking pot shoys, but adopt policies to reduce them to an unsupported minority.

UML and SOA

James Governor makes some important points on SOA and UML:James Governor's MonkChips: BEA, SOA, UML

SOA is not about bits and bytes, or XML, or some other standard du jour. There is a big picture to it, and an integrating vision part as well.

Then lets generate the XML!.

Fix UML 2?

Good summary of UML vs. DSL:Why not base domain specific languages on UML?

Some of these can be fixed.

And there is a potential downside for DSL - what if I want to combine models based on different metamodels?

An interesting debate - hopefully this moves us to languages with greater expressive power than todys programming languages.

Did I Blog this before ?

The same malaise which keeps m from blogging much also means I have lost the ability (or will) to search. Anyway it's still great !!
smart stuff

IBM and Smalltalk

IBM & Smalltalk

Is IBM blowing their Smalltalk ship out of the water just when the tide is heading again for dynamic languages?

My interpretation of the newsgroup thread that is pointed to is "No"; sounds like a holding statement to me. Plenty of people reading between the lines and speculating though!

Great hackers revisited

This article reflects many of my opinions about Paul Grahams article:Great Hacker != Great Hire

I too enjoyed the essay, but I too rankled at some of the strictures (Obviously I am not a great hacker!)

I really don't understand the part about not wanting to work on customer stuff - ultimately that IS what matters. The number of jobs you can do without pesky users is severely limited - back to academia ?

Also, team work is just so important; are there pretty great hackers who are more productive than most, but aren't prima donnas ?

Hope this isn't true

BBC NEWS | UK | MoD denies US missiles set for UK

Not so much whether we have the missiles or not, but how the decision has been made scretly (if it has).

Closing the presses

I thought most of the world had come to realise that allowing states to close down presses is a bad idea, unless you want to undermine democracy. Here is the modern equivalent of shutting down the presses: Home Office in frame over FBI's London server seizures | The Register : " What does this action say about freedom of expression and freedom of the press?"

September - the month of evil

Much fun with the SenderID debacle at IETF with some great houmo[u]r:Evil of September 2004 :: OSDir.com :: Open Source, Linux News & Software: "users are just friends who haven't submitted a patch yet"

Good, fun article.

Tinderbox..... for the Mac

After reading Mark Bernsteins article I took a look at his:Eastgate Tinderbox: the tool for notes : "Tinderbox is a personal content management assistant. It stores your notes, ideas, and plans. It can help you organize and understand them. And Tinderbox helps you share ideas through Web journals and web logs."

Sounds really good but I don't have any Macs to try it on. Linux version some day ?

Oh darn

10 Tips on Writing the Living Web: A List Apart: "Write for a reason, and know why you write. Whether your daily updates concern your work life, your hobbies, or your innermost feelings, write passionately about things that matter."

But that takes time !!

A recommended article, even though I do find myself wincing every now and again - perhaps I shouldn't write at all :-(

Back from Paris

Had a great time, met some great people, learnt many "interesting" things, but tripled the length of my TODO list !!

Off to Paris

Daniel Barlow -- Diary: "Off to Paris tomorrow (work trip)." What a coincidence -so am I!

Managing via blogs?

Fortune.com - Technology - It's Hard to Manage if You Don't Blog: "It's Hard to Manage if You Don't Blog". Hmm, I can see how blogs, well done, help get a message out ( though they should be about 2-way communication), but how does it help manage ? I assume he (Schwartz) means managing people. Does Sun have internal blogs too ? That would be neat.

Finally a use for the internet

NewsForge | Thanks to Linux, this beer's for you!

There is a guy "at" work who always offers me a drink when I help out - but in 3 years we have never actually met (different continents)

So, team building for the distributed team - just add a couple of videolinks and we're away!!

Vive la France

Spotted in WebMink

Beware ye seers

A reminder of the perils of looking too far into the future! manalang.com ? The Home Computer of 2004

Reminds me of those Victorian pictures of the future of air travel - they were more sophisticated balloons.

Still, the exercise of imagining the future is good - gives a path forward even if the vision proves to be wide of the mark.

And it gives our descendents a good laugh

Just stop it!

Blogging is bad, bad, bad!
Spotted in Joi Ito's Web
Stop tempting me with gadgets , darn it !
Must resist, must resist ......
... do the Eagle Creek folders fit in the large Waterfield?....... must resis...

Back to "normal"

If the posts have been few and brief, it was because I was the single-parent of a 3 child family. All kids go to different schools, have music lessons, dancing, sport etc.

Fortunately my wife has returned from her walking holiday to share the load.

WS- *

Sean McGrath has some great quotes and pointers to quotes:

The whole WS standards thing has more moving parts than a 747. Much of it recently invented, untested and unproven in the real world.

and:

Given that there are no exceptions to Gall's Law:

A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked.

Serve the cheapskates right

Frankly, if you are not willing to pay MS properly , then you get what you deserve: Slashdot | Early Warning For Microsoft Premium Customers: "Early Warning For Microsoft Premium Customers"

IBM Open Source's Basic Voice Reco Software

Spotted in Slashdot

What war on terror

Dowbrigade News: : "John Kerry, asked to comment on today's milestone in Iraq - a political softball to his wheelhouse, just begging to be swatted over the wall - answered, in his gaunt, sonorous and sepulchral tomes, 'Over 1000 of America's sons and daughters have now given their lives to the war on terror.'

NO, NO, NO, John. That is the Bush lie. They have given their lives to an obscure, oil-drenched Texas family feud, to a personal vendetta that has nothing to do with the real security of the United States and in fact is making us less secure by breeding a million widows and orphans who blame us for their misfortunes and will spend the rest of their lives trying to get back at us.

The Real War on Terror is tracking down Osama, rooting out the entrenched hate-mongers in our 'allies', Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, stopping the massacres in Africa, finding the Anthrax killer, and getting real about protecting our borders, airports and container ports."

Oh that sort of notebook...

Spotted in Joi Ito's Web

Looks cool - Victorian adventure anyone?

Oooh, this looks nice!

Clove Technology - Fujitsu Loox 720

Of course, I bought my iPAQ 5550 only a few months ago. This looks lovely, and it has Windows Mobile 2003 for Pocket PC Second Edition, which HP will not be providing as an upgrade (grrr!)

When to update hardware

Ted has an eye for good looking hardware:Ted Leung on the air : Lunchbox multiprocessor

The thought occurred to me though, that I have not upgraded my hardware for a while either. Perhaps this is a trend? I did build myself a box a few months ago, but it was low-tech: the aim was a small, cheap and quiet box. In fact it is a Duron processor, which is fine for Web usage, a bit slow for starting up the word processor.

If I am honest it was the kids games that used to drive most upgrades, so either they are more diligent with school work(!) or advances in games no longer requires increases in hardware power.

Is this "The Innovator's Dilemna" in practice? If PC manufacturers focus on more an more power, will they be beaten by other who focus on other facets? For instance, beautiful design, size, power , noise ......... Perhaps Ted's choice has power and these other factors!

OCL: " The semantics of OCL is unclear in many places, and there are likely many pitfalls in mapping it to a well-founded language like PVS. However, the potential for making a contribution to the UML development and to our understanding of OCL is great"

Scott Rosenberg's Links & Comment: "I can't imagine anyone watching Miller's frothing speech and feeling reassured about the direction Bush is taking us. It was an outburst of intimidation, intended to cow. Dave Winer heard the jackboots behind it: 'Why was the Miller speech so scary? Answer -- you're next. That's what Miller was saying. After this election we put on the brown shirts.' That may be a little over the top, but the fact that's it's only a little over the top is itself chilling."

And: ' "Today, at the same time young Americans are dying in the sands of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan, our nation is being torn apart and made weaker because of the Democrats' manic obsession to bring down our commander in chief."

Strip this of its spin and modifiers and what Miller is saying is, "While Americans are dying, the opposition party is trying to win the election, and that hurts the nation." '

Still relevant today...

Jan Smuts in the Houses of Parliament on "Thoughts on a New World": perhaps more so than in 1943.

We are facing to-day probably the most perplexing complicated human situation that has confronted the world for many generations, and anybody who thinks he has a panacea at his command to deal with these problems must either be sub-human or super-human. . .

This will never catch on ...

From the previous reference:A CODE OF CONDUCT FOR EFFECTIVE RATIONAL DISCUSSION

A use for philosophy!

The Fishbowl: The Principle of Charity

I knew there was (at least one) hole in my education - a use for philosophy ! Any others?

Insert your favourite language here

The Fishbowl: The Joy of Bombast: "More importantly, whenever I start hacking Ruby, I am overwhelmed by the feeling that this is... right. And I find myself going back to Java and thinking 'Why does this language keep getting in my way?'"

I might put Python instead of Ruby, or perhaps Smalltalk (less familiar).

I agree with the sentiment though! Whether Java is doomed is another question altogether - maybe it will become undead like Cobol.

GMailFS

Heez crazy!:Danny Ayers, Raw Blog

Mandrakesoft GLobeTrotter: wrong answer

Mandrakelinux Globetrotter FAQ: "Can GlobeTrotter be upgraded to future versions of Mandrakelinux?
This is not officially supported by Mandrakesoft. It should be possible (and not too difficult if you know Mandrakelinux well) but we won't be able to give you any support if you choose to do so."

The product looks interesting - this upgrade policy looks dumb

The MSDN Camp vs. The Raymond Chen Camp: "The Microsoft culture is about creating the newest, latest greatest thing that 'changes the world' not improving what is already out there and working for customers. When I read various Microsoft blogs and MSDN headlines about how even though we've made paradigm shifts in developer technologies in the recent years we aren't satisfied and want to introduce radically new and different technologies all over again. This bothers me. I hate the fact that 'you have to rewrite a lot of your code' is a common answer to questions a customer might ask about how to leverage new or upcoming functionality in a developer technology."

Open Source Article

Manufacturing lines they are a changing

Bill de h?ra: Add Nothing But Value

An excellent perspective. We have lots of promising, intelligent programmers, and treat them like idiots.

Classic Pilgrim

Spotted in dive into mark

Most developers are morons, and the rest are assholes.

Assessing Java code quality

AMK's Journal: Computing Archives: "'The problem here is that programmers are not as scared of using threads as they should be.'"

More on static typing

Ned Batchelder: August 2004:

"Static typing prevents certain kinds of failures. Unfortunately, it also prevents certain kinds of successes"

The Fnordistan Department of Software Engineering ? What Java Owes to Smalltalk

More regrets

The Fnordistan Department of Software Engineering ? What Java Owes to Smalltalk:

That’s the sort of thing I didn’t really notice until I started working with Smalltalk. Now I shake my head and wonder how much better life would be if it had been Smalltalk rather than Sun’s Java that had been poised to catch the wave in the 90s.

Forget the particular languages mentioned here (though I do agree), there seems to be a lot of feeling that things haven't improved in the area of language design. I see Python, Groovy, Ruby etc. restating older things, almost looking over the morrass of C, C++, Java, C# et al which form a tar pit between now and then. Of course other languages like Smalltalk, Lisp etc. have waded through; but are they prepared to move forwards themselves ?

Return of Java

The article refernced here is wierd:Slashdot | The "Return" of Java Discussed

Slashdot asks whether Java has been anywhere, but I wonder what makes us think it is getting renwed attention. The article cites:

• Jon Schwartz of Sun saying Java helps keep the cost of substitution low: cost of substitution is just part of the costs, and anyway you can only substitute vanilla installs - must Java apps sit on app servers and you certainly can't easily substitute those
  
• VCs think games can be written in it
  

I'm convinced !!


Personally I think the whole Prog Language game is more wide open than it has ever been.

Spotted in Dilbert
Darn what's my excuse?

More heresy!

IT industry warned over wasted money | The Register : "It [the survey] highlights the need for the industry to deliver tangible benefits, focus on selling practical solutions not technology for technology's sake and most importantly to improve after sales customer service. With the customer in mind, it is also important for us to focus on integrating new technologies with existing systems and not automatically adopt the 'rip out and replace' mindset."

So why does the industry get away with this approach? I think it may partly be because elements within the customers also like to focus on technology, haven't thought through what the business wants etc.

Treating workers well increases productivity?

Dangerous and subversive ideas: IT company gives workers free beer - wins award | The Register : "n fact, AGI spends around $1m a year on freebies and perks for staff, according to the Detroit Free Press. As a result, workers are more productive, motivated and enjoy coming to work - while the company saves buckets loads of dosh in recruitment and training."

Billionaires For Bush: Our Candidate

Frustrating lack of choice

Shame there are only (really) 2 to choose from, especially when on so many topics they seem tro have identical stances.
Preston L. Bannister:Yes, I want “someone else” for President.