programming languages
I was struck by this quote from a New Yorker article on Muzak: “Our biggest competitor,” a member of Muzak’s marketing department told me, “is silence.” The problem with comparing something to nothing is that nothing is, well, nothing. James Bach elaborates: I was watching Dr. Stuart Reid talk
programming languages
I see that Scott Mitchell has a new book out, Teach Yourself ASP.NET 2.0 in 24 Hours. Let me preface this post with a disclaimer: Scott Mitchell is a great writer. I’ve been a fan of his work since his 4 Guys From Rolla days. Anything he
programming languages
Tom’s criticism of Mikael Grey’s article, How to Become a Rock Star Programmer, starts off promisingly enough: Let’s start with the title. There is no such thing as a “Rock Star Programmer,” so if you want to become one, you already have problems that reading a blog
software development
One of the peculiarities of software development is how rapidly knowledge becomes obsolete. Dan Appleman cited a parable from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass which illustrates this wonderfully: ‘Now! Now!’ cried the Queen. ‘Faster! Faster!’ And they went so fast that at last they seemed to skim through
.net
Richard Grimes recently posted an Analysis of .NET Use in Longhorn and Vista, wherein he draws two conclusions: 1. Between PDC 2003 and the release of Vista Beta 1, Microsoft has decided that it is better to use native code for the operating system 2. Microsoft has shown no intention
programming languages
I’ll be attending SDWest 2006 all next week (March 13 - 17) in Santa Clara, California. If you’re attending, let’s meet up somewhere! I’ve met a handful of people in person at past conferences: * Sara Ford * Steve Maine * Walt Rischler The highlight of SDWest, however, will
retro computing
My second true computer, after the TI-99/4a, was the Coleco Adam: I remember waiting in line in the snow with my Dad to get our hands on one of the first ADAM computers. Oh, the awful SmartBASIC programs I would write! I spent hours and hours hacking away in
ruby
Steve Yegge’s whirlwind language tour is, as he points out, neither good nor complete, which makes it one of the best blog posts I've read this year. I’ll spoil the ending for you: according to Steve, Ruby combines the best features of Perl, Smalltalk, Python, and
programming languages
Inspired by my recent post on C# code snippets, I found a little console app by Francesco Balena* that enumerates all the snippets on your system along with their shortcut text. I improved his console app and turned it into a convenient IDE macro along the lines of my keyboard
programming languages
I have nothing against World of Warcraft, but the Gamasutra editorial World of Warcraft Teaches the Wrong Things highlights one problem I have with the entire MMORPG* genre: [WOW teaches players that] investing a lot of time in something is worth more than actual skill. If you invest more time
markup languages
Black and white works fine when I’m reading newspapers. But when I’m reading computer languages of any kind – from Perl to SQL, from C# to Regular Expressions, from HTML to XML – I can’t bear to read them in black and white any more. Consider this Infocard XML
programming languages
The archetypal Hello World program has always had a calming effect on developers. It’s been a programming staple for decades: [Hello World] is typically one of the simplest programs possible in a computer language. Some, however, are surprisingly complex, especially in some GUI contexts; but most are very simple,