Strategic advantage and keeping quiet about it

Here is the quote I referred to earlier:: ONLamp.com: The Pragmatic Programmers Interview: "Ultimately, it comes down to ease of expression. If I can express myself in code at a level closer to the problem domain, then I'm going to be more effective, and my code is likely to be easier to maintain and extend. Paul Graham makes a big deal out of the way Lisp helped him while building the software that became Yahoo Stores, and he's right. These languages, applied properly, are a strategic advantage. I know some companies are using them with great success. And you know -- they're keeping quiet about it."

Is this the big secret?

I will dig out the refernce, but I saw a blog entry a while back talking about how vaiuos small companies are using certain languages as a competitive example, and they are keeping quiet about it !! I remember it cited Paul Graham's LISP implementation of Yahoo stores(note find pointer to his essay).

Here James Robertson points to a very important application ofthe experiments I have been doing:Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants: How dynamic is dynamic?: "I can't imagine trying to manage a server without this capability. This blog hasn't been taken down in months, but I've made major changes to the underlying code base. How? By making use of the facility keith mentions, that's how."

This is an advantage I hadn't thought of before - my thoughts were on much smaller timespan benefits for client apps. Coolll!!

How dynamic is Python?

OK, this lunchtimes experiment was Python. Created a class and produced an instance, then modified the class by adding a method - the instance did not have this method available. However, a new instance with the new class did.

I have no idea whether ths old class and its instances stay around, disappear with gabage collection etc.

How dynamic is your (programming) language?

I'm doing some experiments on changing classes at runtime without affecting existing instances.

With Smalltalk ( at least with Visualworks) this was a breeze: added the code for a variable, accepted it and, hey presto, any inspector open on an instance got a new variable field set to nil.

Even tried Lisp, which I haven't used for $%$ years. Why ? 'Cos you can do anything in Lisp can't you, especially this dynamics stuff? Well, I tried CLISP first, and guess what ? A redefinition to add a new slot invalidated existing instances ( or so the message said). Not taking no for an answer I accessed an old instance and crashed the whole environment.

Now it has to be said that, from the docs I have read, I wasn't sure what the behaviour should have been. Finally, I found a doc which seemed to be adamant that it should have worked. So I tried the free version of Franz' Allegro Lisp..... and it worked.

What next? Well, what can other languages such as Python and Java do in this regard? Also try to be more scientific with Lisp and Smalltalk: add/remove variables, add/remove methods, add/remove supportable etc.

BTF Blog post without title tag

Thanks to James Robertson for updating the blog posting tool to remove the title tag,

Now I just need to get the subject line to appear!!! If I surround it with say h2 tags it completely disappears. Hmm

Lisp is procedural

A bit dated but I thought htis was interestingLSlashdot | Creating Applications with Mozilla: "Lisp was just procedural, while XML is more like logic programming."

Discuss(20 marks)

Logical Methods in Computer Science

Spotted in Lambda the Ultimate - Programming Languages Weblog

This is the trend of the future, by-passing the big publishers

Croquet: the movie

Croquet: A Collaboration Architecture

Takes about a 90 minutes, but I felt it was worth the effort!

You tell'em Dwight

Many people have quoed this excellent piece:Escapable Logic

But the section which leapt out at me was the 2nd Eisenhower quote about the military-industrial complex. Surely this influence is a major factor in Iraq.

the other salvo

Scripting News: 7/5/2004

...got most of the facts wrong...

Which ones ?

Just the facts, Dave, just the facts

I wish Dave would take the time to clarify what the facts are. Given the way this farce was announced, muttered about, rescued, it is hardly surprising that there is some confusion.

I'd like to see a sober setting out of the facts that show why the end of the service had to be announced, before a rescue package could be put together.

Another fact of importance would be,"when did the users get informed that they were being hosted by Dave, rather than Userland?" I think this escaped a lot of people.

Dave's latest salvoes:

Re: So Yale doesn't feel totally out there, Harvard Law School also took took a shot at me during the flamefest. Their comment about RSS is pretty nutty (it's a format, not software, it can't be licensed under GPL). They say they got their facts from Wired, so they're just passing on what they heard. I guess that's an okay excuse. Anyway, thousands of people weren't stranded and we got all the sites back on the air within a week. It would be nice if they published that part too.

So why haven't the btf posts shown on the web ?

See if this flushes the system.

Yep, sems to be working.

If you are having problems posting from BottomFeeder under Linux - re-install!!

This is a post from Bottomfeederon Linux

This tool is now claiming that it is posting, as opposed to just hanging. All I did was reinstall !!

However, nothing has actually shown up on the site yet.

Update: but it does in the blogger console ......

Croquet : Screenshots

Wow: Croquet Project

This looks truly wonderful.

LISP from Java

Cool; not sure when it would be used, but cool nonetheless!!
SourceForge.net: Project Info - Jatha - Java LISP library

PLT Scheme

This looks interesting:PLT Scheme

I don't know the details of LISP vs. Scheme but they look similar enough that the DrScheme with tutorial sounds like a good way to get started in this general area.

Let me know if I'm wrong !

Spotted in

Glenn Ehrlich: Could Croquet Be Getting Close To Release?

Spotted in

Croquet Project

Does Success in Tech Ventures Follow from Better R&D? Think Again - Knowledge@Wharton