thebox

Technology Management Program UCSB: WIFI

A good talk on the beginnings of the Internet and the emergence of mesh networks among other topics. OLPC is such a device using mesh network technology.

"Mr. Bryan was also recognized in September of 1994 as one of the founders of the Internet."

Why Hackers FLOSS

http://blog.milkingthegnu.org/2008/05/why-hackers-floss.html

This absolutely describes why I got into software instead of finance when I finished University. And it's hard to get across to employers / managers why play and creativity actually produces more competent developers and better software. Paul Graham, Eric Raymond, and many others have testified to this.

Playing With Scala

I was playing around with Scala, following the "First Steps to Scala" article on Artima. The article doesn't touch on advanced topics like "Higher Order Functions" and "Monads". But the article does review Scala's raison d'etre:

• to be a functional language like SQL & Spreadsheets (focuses on 'what' rather than 'how')
• to unify Object-Oriented and Functional language approaches.

It also gives you a bit of Scala's feel. So artifacts like val/var, type inference, Arrays/Lists/Sets and Traits/Mixins are discussed. Martin Odersky, Scala's creator, gives a good talk about it here. I can't wait to try this out with some real code.
 

Linus Torvalds on Git

I know all you redditors have already seen this one, but it was worth a special mention. Linus Torvalds talks here about Source Control in general, and the proper way to do it - using a distributed model. What's special here is his outline of how we should be thinking about source control applications (distributively, many developers using their own local branches, merging within a network of trust), rather than a narrow technical discussion. He talks extemporaneously, and follows a loose outline. The result is very absorbing.

Java Breaking Down

This has been on my mind for a while, although I've been cowardly about bringing it up. Java is starting to break down. The Javaopolis conference in Belgium is kicking up a lot of dust because of the proposal to implement closures in Java. I've seen some examples and the closure code is god-awful ugly.

Admittedly, my concerns with Java were hunches. The first "hmm" moment I had was when I first explored Aspect Orieted Programming (AOP). AOP really opened the door to the idea that objects were not the only way of  abstracting and decoupling functionality. Specifically they didn't handle cross-cutting concerns like logging, transaction, etc very well. I'd also had an "off" feeling about Java's control structures like looping and exception handling. And then I got involved in Javascript (well, Actionscript at the time) and Ruby. Those problems "felt" much less significant and I saw what was possible with simpler syntax and loose typing mechanisms. Next, the fact that new features like generics and the 'for' loop were added to the language without major, mature field-testing indicated to me that the language did not and would not stand up to more advance design problems. Why not mix in different languages on the Java platform. Tim Bray and Jeff Atwood have said as much. Ruby(JRuby) has a lot of ideas right. And I can't wait to give Scala a try.

Programming Languages' Greatest Tools

"The greatest contribution someone could make to the programming language and compiler community   is not to make a great programming language, but to make the tools necessary for making new programming languages cheap — so cheap, that programming languages and the tools that allow their efficient use (e.g. compilers, debuggers, code-editors, etc.) become abundant."

- from The Greatest Contribution to Programming Languages

I tend to agree with this.

Concurrency is and will grow as a dominant issue in Language Design

"... it's nice to see the issue getting some attention outside we early adopters. It's going to be interesting watching programs like web browsers adapt to a multicore world."

- from NYT and Sun on Concurrency

Developing Android Apps a Mixed Bag

Ars Technica has a good article and links to other resources. This is just the early stage, but Google has some wrikles to iron out of Android. They better let the Open Source community do its magic and open the actual platform to development.

The Future Will Be About Programming Languages

I've felt this way for a while. I think we'll be using more languages and custom designing languages for specific problems.

The future will be about programming languages

What would you like to see most in 'Bookkeeping'

I've asked for people's involvement in Bob, and got some positive feedback already. That was prompted by my reading and listening of the Cathedral and the Bazaar. I realised that I wasn't being active enough in asking for help / feedback from the developer community.

Well I've also been working on 'Bookkeeping', a double-entry bookkeeping solution. It's useful enough to use for multiple users and groups with sizable data. 'Bkeeping', the command interface to the system is also  stabilising, and there are a few more features that I want to implement. So now, with a solid working code base, I figure is a good time to ask for the community's feedback.

This project is open for your participation. What features do you guys want to see in a tool like this? I'd love to hear your feedback, so let me know and I'll add you to the project.

Cheers