In my opinion there are three kinds of programming language.
Toys: Languages that were designed by one person to scratch an itch or serve particular purpose, no more. Ruby was designed by Matz for programmer happiness. C was designed by Ritchie so he could port that Space Invaders OS to a different machine than the PDP/10. Petrie [...]
ThoughtWorks‘ resident language inventor Ola Bini will be visiting Sydney in September. Ola is one of the four committers on the JRuby project (now the fastest Ruby runtime) and the inventor of the highly experimental prototype-based language Ioke. And we’ve convinced him to give a talk about his latest language project Seph:
So without [...]
Tagged seph, thoughtworksAustralia in all its cultural majesty has co-opted yet another foreign tradition: hallowe’en. An ancient pagan European tradition celebrating the movement of dark forces through the night. The Americans took it first: a party for children. And now Australia has added our spin: alcohol and lots of it.
No need to thank us; we’re pretty proud [...]
Tagged socialThe agile family of software development methodologies is now pretty firmly established. Developers have always been some of the most firm supporters of these approaches. And as developers, we like to focus on the good practices that produce better software: testing, story driven development, continuous integration, etc.
And these are all wonderful things. But, from the [...]
There are now nine people in the world who have walked on the moon, and unless something dramatic happens [...], it won’t be long before there are none. That might not mean anything to a lot of you, because you are, I am led to understand, young people, and the [...]
I’ve been wondering why I dislike twitter hashtag memes so much. But it’s pretty obvious really: it doesn’t matter how unexpected and funny the original concept was, the world has a plentiful supply of people who just don’t know when the joke is well and truly dead and buried.
Timing. What makes a good comedian? No, [...]
In a potentially vain attempt to improve my photography I took the Australian Centre for Photography’s introductory Camera Craft One course. I enjoyed it, learnt a lot and, at least it appeared to me, my photography did improve. If you’re considering taking a course, I’d recommend this one.
At the end of each term at the [...]
The Fortress of Solitude Jonathan Lethem
Like a match struck in a darkened room.
There was something in those simple eight words for me. Some image. Some sense. Some rhythm. Something I still can’t identify, but something that instantly said to me this is a special book. As I read that line aloud now I can [...]
So, if you’re going to manage to convince the world to change the way it does something, it had better have an benefit that’s immediately obvious and take no more than a few seconds to explain how to do. — A long, rambly exploration of the state…, this is [...]
Watchmen Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
Fantastic Four, Vol. 1 J. Michael Strazcynski and Mike McKone
It’s been sometime since I’ve read any graphic novels or even comics. I read Watchmen because I knew the movie was about to open. I’d previously enjoyed both of the V for Vendetta comic and movie, but I wish I’d read it before [...]