Apr 30
This is part 9 in a series of articles on obscure programming languages.
What is Io?
Io is a small, prototype-based programming language. The ideas in Io were inspired by Smalltalk (all values are objects, all messages are dynamic), Self (prototype-based, eliminating the distinction between instance and class), NewtonScript (differential inheritance), Act1 (actors and futures for concurrency), LISP (code is a runtime inspectable/modifiable tree) and Lua (small, embeddable).
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Apr 21
Let’s face it: computer programmers became cool with the dot-com wave. It wasn’t just the Artist-Formerly-Known-as-Prince who was partying in 1999, it was all those pimple-faced anonymous geeks who built the Netscapes, Googles and other.coms of the world.
Thanks to these successful entrepreneur coders, there’s no longer shame in admitting that you are a programmer geek. In fact, it means that you are a member of an exclusive club of brilliant logicians who are all just one killer app away from retiring rich and living large.
As a result, the image of geeks in movies, TV and pop culture has shifted away from the dorky “Revenge of the Nerds” virgins with thick glasses. Now the geeks start dot-coms, stop bad guys, save the world, make millions, and get the (real live, not virtual) girl.
This short quiz will help you see if you’ve got what it takes. The more questions you answer “yes”, the more you are programmed to be a geek.
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Apr 21
For the first time in history, the FBI has added a domestic terrorist to its list of “Most Wanted” terror suspects.
Daniel Andreas San Diego, a 31-year-old computer specialist from Berkeley, is wanted for the 2003 bombings of two corporate offices in California. San Diego is an animal rights activist who graduated to bombing for his cause.
The explosions caused minor damages and no injuries. A group calling itself “Revolutionary Cells” took responsibility for the blasts, saying they targeted the companies because they performed drug and chemical experiments on animals. There is a $250,000 reward for information leading to his capture.
San Diego is the 24th person on the list, and the only domestic terror suspect. It seems a bit silly that this man who has caused no deaths is on the same terror list as 9/11 mass-murderer Osama bin Laden. More likely, this is a politically-motivated move to balance things by adding a left-wing terrorist to the list just days after the Obama administration was criticized for reports suggesting that military veterans could be susceptible to right-wing extremism. Perhaps the real message is: extremism is bad on all sides.
Story at Mercury News
Apr 20
Apparently I’m a major geek because this made me LOL.
From xkcd: A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language
More funny stuff
Apr 16
From xkcd: A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language
Apr 15
Grok2 has highlighted an old but excellent essay about why computer programming is fun. This quote is from one of our industry’s groundbreaking books, The Mythical Man-Month by Frederick P. Brooks, Jr. First published in 1974, the book posited the computer law that “adding programmers to a late project makes it later.”
Brooks’ innocent but insightful comments about his delight in programming the green-screen dumb-terminal IBM OS/360 is even more relevant in today’s world of high-resolution dynamic graphical displays and the global reach of Web applications. The players have changed, the technology has certainly changed, but the joy of computer programming endures.
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Apr 09
Major League Baseball handed Microsoft some very bad news by reverting back to the Adobe Flash player after just one year with Microsoft’s Silverlight browser plug-in. This season, baseball fans will watch live and on-demand video at MLB.com via the Flash player. MLB.com offers the Web’s most successful subscription service with over 500,000 subscribers.
The trouble started last November when Major League Baseball Advanced Media (MLBAM) — the league’s technical group — announced it would discontinue using Silverlight after less than a year. The decision has impact far beyond baseball, as MLBAM also handles CBS’ webcasts of the NCAA Basketball Tournament and the 2009 Masters golf tournament.
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Apr 09
At five minutes and six seconds after 4 AM on the 8th of July this year, the time and date will be:
04:05:06 07/08/09
Apr 08
Two social networking news sites have emerged for .NET developers: DotNetKicks and the new .NET Shoutout. Both sites provide tons of .NET news and information, if you’re willing to spend the time to dig through it all. But for busy developers, there is a new .NET news site that cuts through all the clutter.
Dot-Net-News.com provides the latest news and information about the Microsoft .NET development environment including C#, Visual Basic and Visual Studio. No fluff, no spam, just the facts, man.
Here are some of the latest .NET news stories:
Subscribe to the feed today to get your steady-stream of .NET news!
Apr 07
It seems like everybody these days has a Facebook page. Well, not everybody. In fact, some very important people — who probably have very interesting lives worth exploring on Facebook — are nowhere to be found on the world’s most popular social networking site.
So in the interest of posterity, PC World carefully approximated what those missing Facebook pages might look like. They included both important figures from history and current events.
And some are pretty funny and rude, such as the Facebook page for Microsoft co-founder and former Chairman Bill Gates:
Facebook Pages We’d Like to See
