Monthly Archives: May 2009

Why I Hate Programming

May 29, 2009
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I had a chat with an old friend last night about a bevy of CS things and we came to why I haven’t programmed much the past decade or so. It’s not that I can’t. I had to for one of my Ph.D. courses. It’s just that I find it too low bandwidth. It’s a general problem I have. I find many things too low bandwidth. That includes pursuing a Ph.D. wherein they want you to know all kinds of minutae while I would prefer to just ask someone else to do that work for me. Why do I need to know about probability? I’ll just hire someone to do that for me. It’s obviously my entrpreneurial streak, but really, why would anyone want to know everything? Seems like a pointless effort/exercise. And thus my take on programming, and my missive from yesterday. Most programming languages are way too verbose. And being someone who likes high bandwidth tasks it’s been easier for me the past 20 years to get someone else to code while I just orchestrate what needs doing. Over time I’ve simply left coding behind as its too low bandwidth requiring too much time for what I perceive

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No More Programmatic Verbosity

May 28, 2009
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I’ve been disillusioned with programming languages for a long while. I started coding in the 70s and more than 30 years later here I am in a funk about programming languages, but I do see rays of light. First, let me tell you about the languages I like: C Pascal Algol Lisp Prolog Scheme Python Clojure Arc Smalltalk And that’s not a complete list, just those languages I most like, including some modern ones. But here’s a list of languages I absolutely hate. C++ Cobol Java Objective-C Common Lisp And why do I hate them? Verbosity and ugly syntax, primarily. Either one, the other, or a hideous combination of the two. And it’s the rise of languages such as C++ and Java that I more or less no longer program. I just can’t see myself being impeded in my progamming by the verbosity of the language. I want to write small, tight code with the least amount of interference from the language syntax and semantics. To me, it all went wrong when we went from C to C++ and then onto Java. Each one in turn uglier and more verbose than the last. But things started to change recently. I’ve

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Proud of the GG, Seriously Badass

May 27, 2009
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I never thought I’d actually approve of the GG. In general I find it an uber-political appointment that seems so ceremonial that little of value every comes out of it. And then Michaella Jean goes and proves me wrong. As Teddy Roosevelt used to say, Bully! Jean Snacks on Seal Meat Governor General Applauded, Denounced for Eating Raw Seal Jean’s Seal Meal Draws Praise, Criticism Good for her for standing up for Canada and the Inuit. As for all the “bleeding hearts” out there, I still have no time for them. As Bono eloquently put it: I don’t believe in bleeding hearts or painted roses While bullets rape the night of the merciful.

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Images of VATs

May 27, 2009
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This article caught my eye today: Once Considered Unthinkable, US Sales Tax Gets Fresh Look. Obviously, in the US, there will be a massive hue-and-cry over this. But I really don’t see why. I’m all for consumption taxes. They’re fair. If you want to consume more, or if you can due to how much money you make or have, so be it. You can be taxed for your consumption. But you have the choice to consume less — regardless of your fiscal position. Thus, it’s fair. It does not unfairly impact anyone. In fact, I’d like to see here in Canada income tax become something you only pay to the provinces and that the Feds collect money only from a consumption tax (a redone GST) plus corporate taxes. In my view, provinces should not be allowed to tax goods or services, only incomes. That way they’d have to be more responsible to their electorate while the feds focus on the macro economic issues at hand. It also means, by pushing corporate taxes to the federal level only that provinces must control their spending so as not to overly affect the electorate who are paying for the province’s services. Furthermore, via

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Why no mid-size Mac Pro?

May 18, 2009
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There are a lot of mysteries in this universe, not least of which is the way Apple builds their computers. They have computers like the Mac Pro which is wonderfully assembled and easily expandable. Then you have the iMac which is a sealed unit and a bitch to upgrade, other than memory. It seems some mental midget at Apple figured that memory was the only thing that customers would ever want to upgrade, replace, or that would go bad. Of course, if your hard disk goes bad you have one of two choices: bravery or a Mac shop. The former requires some digging on the network to find how to take apart an iMac and then the bravery to actually do what the steps entail. I’ve done that, and trust me it’s a pain. Taking it to a Mac shop is, in my opinion, stupid when all you want to do is replace a defective drive. Why didn’t Apple make it easy to replace the stupid drive? After all, it is a SATA drive so how hard would it have been to create a small door hidden in the back to easily swap out the drive. It’s why I don’t

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Rogue

May 6, 2009
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There’s a great article on Rogue over at Gamasutra. It brings back a lot of memories, especially ones of sitting in the computer lab playing Rogue on the Engineering Vax. It so inspired me and a couple of friends that a few years later, around 1985, we coded up a version of Rogue for the CP-6 mainframe. We called our creation Lair. It was quite popular, relatively speaking. Unlike Rogue we opted for Pascal and it we had requests for it worldwide. It required the CP-6 Pascal compiler which was a bonus for my employer at the time, who actually wrote and sold CP-6 Pascal for the Honeywell CP-6 line. To this day I bump into people who had a Honeywell CP-6 system in their building and played Lair without knowing that I was the primary programmer. It’s interesting to look around the web and realize Rogue is still popular. I fired it up recently and I still find it fun to play. Hmm. I wonder if I can get Rog-o-matic working with it. That’s another cool program. Ah, memories. For the curious who want to sample the Dungeons of Doom, head over to the Rogue Like Development site.

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Culinary Delights: Turkish Figs

May 4, 2009
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One of my favourite snacks is dry figs. Not fresh ones — I’m not a fan. But dry ones. And the best dry ones are out right now: Turkish. I’ve had figs from all over but the dried figs from Turkey — which are just in season now — are by far the best. Head and shoulders better in my opinion than any others. I have no idea why they’re so good, but they’re like candy — yet healthier. And at just 100 calories for 3 of them a treat that even someone trying to watch the old calories can appreciate. Oh, they also make a wicked dried fruit for power bars or cookies. A mix of dates and Turkish figs and you’ve got a wicked dessert bar or cookie.

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Musings

A blog of my musings. Some folks find it interesting and so I continue. Hopefully it will remain fairly interesting. At worst, it'll keep me writing orthogonally to my day job.

Month at a Glance

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