Monthly Archives: October 2011

Java coder don’t get Lisp? Read defmacro: on coding

Posted on October 19, 2011 by Karl

Slava Akhmechet wrote a piece a while back that that challenged my thinking in terms of design using an old familiar friend and adversary: Ant. If you are a Java programmer, you’ll recognize the patterns Slava is connecting with to … Continue reading →

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It’s more than just Dart – recent language development: on coding

Posted on October 19, 2011 by Karl

Michael Fogus reviews the astonishing (to the unfamiliar) number or new programming languages being developed these past 5 years from Scratch to CoffeeScript, to Dart, it is quite a list.

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Missing Doctor Who 1: What to Watch: The City of Death

Posted on October 10, 2011 by Karl

So, you’re fan of the new Doctor Who series and are missing your weekly Doctor Who fix, this post is the start of a series just for you. There are a lot of posts out there that introduce you to … Continue reading →

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The Matrix and its influences: on storytelling

Posted on October 10, 2011 by Karl

Rob Wilson’s project releases its latest, this time on The Matrix, showing its influences inline, including a snippet of the 4th Doctor in “The Deadly Assassin”: Everything Is A Remix: THE MATRIX from robgwilson.com on Vimeo.

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Metrics and damn metrics: on systems

Posted on October 9, 2011 by Karl

Sometimes we get caught in numbers and miss what’s real. This can happen especially when we focus on the wrong numbers writes Arpit Mathur in a sharp post. I’d add even if you were looking at the right numbers, without … Continue reading →

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Impermanence and Software Design: on systems

Posted on October 9, 2011 by Karl

When you’re building software, it is probably best to look at things half-Buddhist. Kent Beck writes about building software that won’t be around longer than him in a recent Facebook note: …nothing I am doing now with software will remain … Continue reading →

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On People, Process, and Passion and Persistence

Posted on October 6, 2011 by Karl

My boss back at Bell Atlantic, who became my friend and mentor, Pat Trongo, had the following quote from Peter Senge’s “The Fifth Discipline” on his cube wall in big bold letters. I found it inspirational back then. But now … Continue reading →

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Steve Jobs, one of computing’s icons, rest in peace

Posted on October 6, 2011 by Karl

There are many, many tributes being shared over the Web these past 12 hours or so and I’d hate to just add to it, considering I am not among those who think Apple can do no wrong, or that Steve … Continue reading →

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Life and Code: a blog to follow

Posted on October 5, 2011 by Karl

I’ve really been enjoying Lisa William’s blog titled “Life and Code” and think it’s a great one for your RSS reader every day. She started to blog to document her passage to a programmer who can toss together an app … Continue reading →

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On ever growing complexity in programming: on systems

Posted on October 2, 2011 by Karl

Edsger W. Dijkstra gave a lecture, in 1972, that has since been come to be called “The Humble Programmer”. It’s a short piece that explains why software development, why programming, was growing more, not less complex over time, and some … Continue reading →

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