Tuesday, January 31, 2006
On the subway
Cool photo of a pit bull and his owner on the NYC subway. Notice that the dog is using a brick as a chew toy (!). Not too surprising that the seat next to the dog is empty. (Sure, it could be a really a sweet dog but why take chances?) (Via kottke.org)
Monday, January 30, 2006
Most Star Wars Actors in a Non-Star Wars Film
Here's an interesting bit of Star Wars trivia.
Q: Which non-Star Wars film featured the largest number of Star Wars actors?
A: Two films are tied with 17 actors each.
Looking at the actors listed for other films featuring Star Wars cast members, I found a curious entry: John Ratzenberger who played Cliff Clavin on Cheers. He was in a Star Wars film? Yup. He had a small role in The Empire Strikes Back.
Q: Which non-Star Wars film featured the largest number of Star Wars actors?
A: Two films are tied with 17 actors each.
Looking at the actors listed for other films featuring Star Wars cast members, I found a curious entry: John Ratzenberger who played Cliff Clavin on Cheers. He was in a Star Wars film? Yup. He had a small role in The Empire Strikes Back.
Sleepless in Seattle trailer remix
First there was The Shining, Redux trailer which made Kubrick's stylish horror film seem like a heartwarming tale. Now there's a remix of the trailer for Sleepless in Seattle that does just the opposite to the ultimate date movie.
Whizzball
The goal of Whizzball is to construct the appropriate path to get a ball to the target using the pieces provided.
Sunday, January 29, 2006
Disemvoweling
What to do with annoying inappropriate comments in online forums and blogs? Disemvowel them!
Friday, January 27, 2006
It's All Glue
Adobe Lightroom is a new application for profession and serious amatuer photographers to allow them to efficiently sort, cull, rate, keyword, caption, show, print and edit large volumes of photos. (Watch this video of Lightroom in action; it looks very slick).One aspect of Lightroom that I found interesting is that 40% of the code is written in Lua, a light-weight programming language designed for extending applications.
Adobe Fellow Mark Hamburg began work on Lightroom a few years ago. See Mark's presentation on how Lua was used in Lightroom. It's more than just an application extension language. Virtually all of Lightroom's UI logic, view layout, database abstractions, etc. were done in Lua.
I've worked on several different products that included embedded application languages. Usually the language was intended for customers or third parties to write extensions; little of the core code was written in the embedded language. But a Solid Modeler that I worked on had an embedded Lisp system that we used for all UI logic. By mixing C and Lisp we had some of the same challenges that Mark describes: garbage collection, performance, lack of static type-checking.
More details on the development of Lightroom can be found here.
Helltown USA
Since the summer of 1962, a fire, fueled by rich anthracite coal deposits, has been burning beneath the mining town of Centralia, Pennsylvania. Worst case scenario? It'll take a hundred years to burn out and consume about 3700 acres of land.
Pictures of Pennies
I recycle my change in one of those coin machines. After seeing Pictures of Pennies, I think I'm going to set aside the pennies to try to build some of these structures.
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Demonic Tots
Images from 1950s advertising are used in the Demonic Tots page.
Some of them are Children of the Corn creepy. (Via memepool)
Some of them are Children of the Corn creepy. (Via memepool)
flickr logo maker
Make your own flickr style logo with the flickr logo maker
The A to Z of Programmer Predilections
Mr. Ed's Hacknot essay The A to Z of Programmer Predilections was the result of his realization that he keeps working with the same programmers over and over again. Their names and faces change, but their personalities and predilections are immediately recognizable.
Let's see: Generic George, Incompetent Ian, Jailbird John, Kludgy Kevin, Loudmouth Lincoln, Process Peter, X-Files Xavier... I've worked with all of those folks too.
Let's see: Generic George, Incompetent Ian, Jailbird John, Kludgy Kevin, Loudmouth Lincoln, Process Peter, X-Files Xavier... I've worked with all of those folks too.
End of the Line
Where do old supertankers go to die? To the Chittagong shipbreaking yard in Bangladesh. Half of the world's supertankers are disassembled there. When the tide is high, tankers are driven at full speed toward the shore. Once the water recedes, the ships rest along the muddy beach. Salvage crews move in and use gas cutting tools to reduce the vessels to scrap. It's nasty, dangerous work. Brendan Corr's photo essay End of the Line shows what shipbreaking in Chittagong looks like.
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
The East Coast Grill
The East Coast Grill was one of our favorite restaurants when we lived in Boston. New York Times food critic Frank Bruni recently spent a week "undercover" as a waiter there to "get a taste of what servers go through and what we put them through, of how they see and survive us". Interesting read.
Chia Homer
Homer Simpson's attempts to grow hair always end in failure. Maybe he should relocate to Seattle. The climate here is perfect for growing cover on just about any surface.
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
8088 Corruption
8088 Corruption is described as "an exercise in displaying full-motion video on the first IBM PC". That's full motion-video on a IBM Model 5150 with a 4.77 MHz Intel 8088 processor. Pretty amazing given that it has less than one-thousandth the processing power of a modern x86 chip.
Match the pattern
Students require a firm understanding of limits in order to fully appreciate calculus. The concept can be hard to grasp. Sometimes it's pretty clear that "understanding" has gone very wrong. Wow.
Monday, January 23, 2006
IBM Linux animated features
What happens when a large corporation that invests billions on Linux wants to have some fun? Apparently they create animated Linux features. But are these really fun or just really strange?
Free the Code seems to be trying to invoke Apple's 1984 commercial. Ironic since Apple's ad was clearly a diss against IBM.
Meditation shows how true enlightenment can only be achieved by... staring at a shell prompt? There's a weird moment in this one with posters of Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds displayed on the wall of a Buddhist temple.
Free the Code seems to be trying to invoke Apple's 1984 commercial. Ironic since Apple's ad was clearly a diss against IBM.
Meditation shows how true enlightenment can only be achieved by... staring at a shell prompt? There's a weird moment in this one with posters of Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds displayed on the wall of a Buddhist temple.
Code Reviews: Just Do It
Jeff Atwood's post on code reviews includes this quote from Steve McConnell on their effectiveness:On my team every code submission is peer reviewed by at least two other developers. Not just changes made after feature "freeze", not just bug fixes — every code submission including feature work. If you don't do code reviews on your team this may sound onnerous but the time investment is really worth it. The hard part is developing a culture in which code reviews are the norm.
Jeff links to Karl Wiegers' book Peer Reviews in Software. I read through the sample chapters. It looks like a good book to help get started.
the average defect detection rate is only 25 percent for unit testing, 35 percent for function testing, and 45 percent for integration testing. In contrast, the average effectiveness of design and code inspections are 55 and 60 percent.
Jeff links to Karl Wiegers' book Peer Reviews in Software. I read through the sample chapters. It looks like a good book to help get started.
Peeling bananas
Which end of the banana do you start when you peel it — stem-end or the "other end"? This has been an occasional topic of debate in our household. I'm in the minority, peeling from the stem-end. My wife taught the boys how to peel bananas the other way and I haven't managed to sway them to change.
Next food topic: is it better to eat an ear of corn completely across each time like a typewriter or around and around? The consensus in my family (and elsewhere) is that I do that "the wrong way" too. No word on which way monkeys prefer.
Next food topic: is it better to eat an ear of corn completely across each time like a typewriter or around and around? The consensus in my family (and elsewhere) is that I do that "the wrong way" too. No word on which way monkeys prefer.
Analogy Police
I've been known to stretch an analogy to make a point. And sometimes the end result only makes sense to me. So far no visits from the Analogy Police. Ha!
Apple Intel commercial
Apple's new commercial promises to set the Intel chip free ... to live life inside a Mac. It's clearly targeted at the "geek" crowd.My wife is a pretty typical computer user. I pointed out the ad as we watched TV last night. She didn't understand what it was about. She had no idea that there was any difference inside a Mac or PC and wasn't too interested in the details — I guess those "Intel Inside" stickers aren't working.
In reality, beyond the Intel chip, the difference between a MacBook and a Wintel laptop isn't that substantial. Apple makes very pretty hardware which has its own intrinsic value. And Apple has a relatively small number of configurations to support. Apple's real value is the combination of its OS with hardware, not whether it uses Intel chips or not.
Another thing about the Intel ad: the commercial is remarkably similar to a music video by the band The Postal Service. See for yourself. Looks like Apple ought to ask Chiat/Day for their money back. (Via AdRant)
Sunday, January 22, 2006
Shiny Mud Balls
According to Trends in Japan, a popular pastime for Japanese children is making dorodango, or shiny mud balls.
Saturday, January 21, 2006
The Newton lives on (and on and on...)
When the Apple Newton was first released at Macworld Expo in Boston on August 3, 1993, I was one of those crazy people who arrived early and waited in line to buy one. The original Newton was amazing and infuriating. It showed a lot of promise but the software was buggy and battery life was poor. The Newton application development environment was very interesting, especially NewtonScript and "soups" but in the end the device itself didn't really work well enough for me. I returned it a few weeks later.I owned a Psion PDA before the Newton so I went back to using my Psion. It wasn't until I bought a Palm Pilot a few years later that I tried using a pen-based PDA again. The Palm Pilot was less sophisticated than the Newton but the software worked pretty well. I still use a Palm device today (Treo 650).
I knew a few people who bought later generation Newtons and were quite happy with them. The newer MessagePads were larger and more powerful. The software was much nicer. But Newton was never as successful in the marketplace as Apple had hoped.
When Steve Jobs returned to Apple, he killed off the Newton. It was discontinued in 1998 but diehard fans continue to promote it. They even hold annual Newton conferences. Since Apple no longer manufactures Newtons, users have to rely on a shrinking supply of aging hardware. Apple is uninterested in bringing back the Newton or marketing a similar PDA device.
So what's the future of the Newton? A port to new hardware. NewtonOS has been ported to run on a Linux PDA.
Burning cubes
Here's another NeXT cube story. This cube ends as a pile of burning metal slag, not in a museum.
Most people are aware of Steve Jobs' obsessive sense of style when it comes to the design of Apple hardware. This was also true when he started NeXT. The original NeXT machine was a perfect cube shape with a cast magnesium case. And as you probably remember from high school chemistry, magnesium burns with a brilliant white flame.
Most people are aware of Steve Jobs' obsessive sense of style when it comes to the design of Apple hardware. This was also true when he started NeXT. The original NeXT machine was a perfect cube shape with a cast magnesium case. And as you probably remember from high school chemistry, magnesium burns with a brilliant white flame.
The First Web Server
Here's an image of the world's first web server. It's a NeXT cube that Tim Berners-Lee used when he was at CERN. Notice the tattered label stuck on the cube. It says:This machine is a server.
DO NOT POWER IT DOWN!!
According to Wikipedia, Berners-Lee's NeXT cube is now in the CERN Microcosm museum.
That reminds me... I wonder what happened to the NeXT cube in my office when I left IBM? It was one of forty or so NeXT cubes that we used to develop Lotus Improv. Even though it was over fifteen years old, it still worked.
Friday, January 20, 2006
The Google Robot FAQ
Interesting facts from The Google Robot FAQ: What are Google Robots?
Google Robots are our human-like machines that walk the earth to record information. They do no harm, and they do not invade your privacy.
I heard stories of Google Robots attacking innocent people. Is that true?
No. A Google Robot, by definition of its internal software program, can never harm a human person unless out of self-defense. Under the International Robots Rights Act of 2022, robotic self-defense is a basic right of all robots. Google Robots have specific routines to ensure they are not harmed by malicious users.
I want to talk to a Google Robot and tell him of my problems and more. May I?
Yes! We appreciate it if you share information with a Google Robot. Please note that anything you directly tell to a Google Robot will be automatically indexed in our Google Life search program and be made publicly available.
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Jenga Tower Projects
I can't recall where I got this link to Jenga Tower Projects. It's been sitting in my draft posts list for a while.The page doesn't explain why Bryant Varney builds models of the Empire State Building, Sears Tower, etc. with Jenga blocks. Nevertheless, they're fun to look at.
The video clip of his Leaning Tower of Pisa model coming down is impressive. And there's video of his Sears Tower model coming down as well. (Frankly, I'm glad he didn't build a model of the World Trade Center towers and record it crashing down as well).
I wonder how he amassed such a huge number of Jenga sets? Each Jenga game has less an 100 blocks. Each one of these projects must use hundreds of sets. Donations from Hasbro? It's probably infeasible but it would be interesting to try playing a Jenga game with one of the towers.
By the way, if you've never played Jenga before, there's a Flash version here that works pretty well.
Nintendogs
My son recently bought a copy of Nintendogs for the Nintendo DS. It's a very popular game among his friends and classmates. And not the usual sort of thing you find on a game portable or console.Using the touchscreen, you can play with, train, pet, walk and wash your own virtual puppy. With the microphone built into the DS, you create voice commands that your puppy will understand and follow. You can take your puppy for a walk, play Frisbee and enter them in contests. Nintendogs also takes advantage of the DS's built-in wireless capabilities and will let players' puppies play together. There's also "Bark Mode" where the DS will look for other Nintendogs users that come within your wireless range.
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
Netbeans: Making Eclipse Better?
James Governor's post on NetBeans and Eclipse makes the observation that the competition between NetBeans and Eclipse has made both products better. Eclipse is arguable more popular and has more ISV support but NetBeans has strong supporters as well. And NetBeans has some features not yet matched by Eclipse. One area where Eclipse has lagged is for GUI developers. NetBeans has a very nice GUI builder called Matisse. James notes that Eclipse is now working to replicate the type of functionality provided by Matisse.
It's worth mentioning that some people feel that Eclipse copied a lot of its Java IDE features from IntelliJ's IDEA. IDEA supported refactoring, smart code completion, background compilation, etc. for years before Eclipse.
It's worth mentioning that some people feel that Eclipse copied a lot of its Java IDE features from IntelliJ's IDEA. IDEA supported refactoring, smart code completion, background compilation, etc. for years before Eclipse.
Glowing Mouse Babies and Scary Potter
Mr. Sun's recent post on glowing pigs generated some pretty weird links via email. First there's an image of mouse babies bred with the green fluorescent protein:
Argh!
Oliver Steele wondered how to spell Argh and decided to consult Google. He determined the relative frequencies of amrngh (aargh, aaargh, arrgh, etc) to decide which was most popular. Visualization of the results can be found on The Aargh Page. It's kinda funny how many outliers there are such as the 1320 occurrences of aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrgh.
Your Three Wishes FAQ
You have been granted three wishes — congratulations. If you wish wisely, your wishes may bring you great happiness. Before wishing, please take a moment to read the following FAQ.
Monday, January 16, 2006
Car Talk Credits
One of the funny bits on the NPR radio show Car Talk is the credits at the end. Ned linked to the list of them a while ago but it looks like they were moved to here. Described as the "The Conclusive, Definitive, Official Dewey, Cheetham, & Howe Staff List", each staffer has a funny fictitious name like the staff Statistician Marge Innovera or staff Tailor Euripedes Imenedes. (They sound a lot funnier when Ray reads them). If you're ever in Harvard Square near the main subway entrance, look up at the building across the street and you'll see the Dewey, Cheetham and Howe sign.
Ego-Statistical
Pete and Ben have links to EgoSurfer.org. It's supposed to measure whether your internal sense of blog-worthiness matches the external reality of Google hits. The results can move up and down each day. Today I scored a middling 5769.
Streak Ends
The streak of consecutive rainy days in Seattle ended yesterday on the 27th day. It was six days short of the matching the record of 33 consecutive rainy days set in 1953. Oddly while it didn't rain yesterday at SeaTac airport where the official rainfall measurements are made, there were brief rain showers elsewhere in the area on Sunday. And today we have more rain showers.
Except for the number of days, the rainfall has not been of Biblical proportions. Some days were a steady drizzle. On other days we barely got any rain.
I was surprised that Seattle's rainfall streak made the national news. Our family and friends who live in other parts of the country began asking what it's like to get this much rain. It hasn't really affected us too much. The short days of winter here are the same but the scenery is different: Rain and warmer weather mean that Seattle winters are lush and green. Boston winters tended to be colder with the dominant colors of brown and gray often covered with layers of snow. So even if we hadn't gotten so many rainy days this winter it would still have been an adjustment for us. I did hear a joke about Seattle's rain. Locals may find it tiresome but I thought it was funny:
Except for the number of days, the rainfall has not been of Biblical proportions. Some days were a steady drizzle. On other days we barely got any rain.
I was surprised that Seattle's rainfall streak made the national news. Our family and friends who live in other parts of the country began asking what it's like to get this much rain. It hasn't really affected us too much. The short days of winter here are the same but the scenery is different: Rain and warmer weather mean that Seattle winters are lush and green. Boston winters tended to be colder with the dominant colors of brown and gray often covered with layers of snow. So even if we hadn't gotten so many rainy days this winter it would still have been an adjustment for us. I did hear a joke about Seattle's rain. Locals may find it tiresome but I thought it was funny:
A newcomer arrives in Seattle on a rainy day. He gets up the next day and it's raining. He gets up the next day and it's still raining. Day after day, it's the same. Despair sets in. One afternoon, he goes out to lunch and asks the first person he meets, a young boy, "Hey kid, does it ever stop raining around here?"Enjoy the rest of the winter wherever you are. Stay warm and dry.
The kid says, "How do I know? I'm only 6."
Saturday, January 14, 2006
Uncyclopedia
Uncyclopedia, the "content-free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" is a funny Wikipedia parody. For example, look at the Uncyclopedia definition of book:A non-multimedia method of information storage and retrieval, BOOK is an acronym for the technology Bound Offline Organized Knowledge.
Although considered primitive by modern electronic standards, books are one of very few media proven to have a useful shelf life of hundreds of years. They are also the most reliable and inexpensive method of communicating with the future (experiments with using books to communicate with the past have so far been a miserable failure.)
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
Gall's law
Gall's law states that: The example given in the Wikipedia definition is CORBA. By extension, it seems like EJBs would qualify as well.
A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system.
Monday, January 09, 2006
Soaked
We've had 22 straight days of rain here in Seattle. All indications from forecasters are that we may break the record of 33 straight days of rain set in 1953.
Our first winter in Seattle, the season that everyone warned us was dreary, and there's even more rain than usual?
Our first winter in Seattle, the season that everyone warned us was dreary, and there's even more rain than usual?
Sunday, January 08, 2006
Misirlou
Interesting story on NPR about the history of Misirlou, one of Dick Dale's surf guitar masterpieces. Most people will recognize the tune from Pulp Fiction.
Much Ado
It's interesting how much attention Dave Delay's post has received. It even appeared on tech.memeorandum -- as well as my response, a first for me.
Friday, January 06, 2006
On Japanese Sushi
For the first few moments I thought that this documentary on Japanese Sushi was serious. It's not. It's weird and pretty funny too.
Suckage
Dave Delay was a developer on Lotus Notes for several years and has written an essay on how much he loves Lotus Notes. His intent is to counter claims that Lotus Notes Sucks.
No self-respecting software developer wants to hear someone say that his product sucks. You pour your heart and soul into software that you think is cool and ground-breaking. Software that's used by millions of people around the world. And someone has the gall to say that it sucks?
For me, the key thought in Dave's essay is this one:I used Notes for many years and worked with Dave at Iris for several years as well. I don't think that Notes sucks. I agree with Dave that the core of Notes is brilliant. An amazing set of ideas that are still relevant today. But most people who use Notes don't see or appreciate this core. They use Notes Mail and Calendar. To them, Notes is indivisible from these applications. And some of them are frustrated with Notes and, frankly, think that Notes sucks.
One way to appreciate this sort of end user experience, to feel what it's like to be in their shoes, is to think about a product that you use (or used) frequently that you really hated. A product that was a source of endless frustration but, at the same time, was incredibly popular. For me the product that comes to mind was a source control system that I used. It's a commercial product you'd recognize by name.
This product has been around for about as long as Lotus Notes. At its core, it has an incredibly sophisticated versioned file system. And it's highly customizable. But, for me, using it was a miserable experience. To me, it sucked. The graphical UI was confusing and often non-responsive. The product had a voracious appetite for network bandwidth and was completely unusable over broadband connections. I've used lots source control systems and this was the first one that forced me to work in a way that I felt was unproductive. And I wasn't alone. Most of my team was frustrated by this product. But the product has enthusiastic users as well. One developer on the team would counter that we just didn't understand, that we didn't appreciate its power. That we weren't using it properly. Sound familiar?
I'm not picking on Dave. As I said, I don't think that Notes sucks. My point is that we're all end users and we all encounter software that doesn't work the way we'd like. When we're forced to use it, as I was with the source control system and many people are with Lotus Notes, it shouldn't be surprising to hear a "this sucks" from time to time.
No self-respecting software developer wants to hear someone say that his product sucks. You pour your heart and soul into software that you think is cool and ground-breaking. Software that's used by millions of people around the world. And someone has the gall to say that it sucks?
For me, the key thought in Dave's essay is this one:
In my opinion, people dislike Notes because their expectations don't jive with the original intent of the product. At its core, Notes is a runtime environment for collaborative applications, but when people complain about Notes, they are usually not talking about core Notes at all. They are talking about the Notes Mail and Calendar applications.
Why does this distinction matter? It matters because the Notes core is what a lot of people really love.
One way to appreciate this sort of end user experience, to feel what it's like to be in their shoes, is to think about a product that you use (or used) frequently that you really hated. A product that was a source of endless frustration but, at the same time, was incredibly popular. For me the product that comes to mind was a source control system that I used. It's a commercial product you'd recognize by name.
This product has been around for about as long as Lotus Notes. At its core, it has an incredibly sophisticated versioned file system. And it's highly customizable. But, for me, using it was a miserable experience. To me, it sucked. The graphical UI was confusing and often non-responsive. The product had a voracious appetite for network bandwidth and was completely unusable over broadband connections. I've used lots source control systems and this was the first one that forced me to work in a way that I felt was unproductive. And I wasn't alone. Most of my team was frustrated by this product. But the product has enthusiastic users as well. One developer on the team would counter that we just didn't understand, that we didn't appreciate its power. That we weren't using it properly. Sound familiar?
I'm not picking on Dave. As I said, I don't think that Notes sucks. My point is that we're all end users and we all encounter software that doesn't work the way we'd like. When we're forced to use it, as I was with the source control system and many people are with Lotus Notes, it shouldn't be surprising to hear a "this sucks" from time to time.
The Motivator
The Demotivator posters on Depair, Inc. are great. There are so many to choose from but I think this one is still my favorite:
Thursday, January 05, 2006
Service Component Architecture: J2EE All Over
James Governor's recent post on SCA made me laugh. SCA is a set of specs from a consortium of IBM, BEA, Oracle, SAP, Siebel, IONA and others to develop a language neutral programming model to build components.
SCA stands for Service Component Architecture, a set of specs that describe a model for building applications and systems using a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). To complement the SCA spec, there's also SDO (Service Data Objects).
In a nutshell, SCA is the Java camp's response to Microsoft's Windows Communication Foundation (WCF). But as David Chappell's points out in his article comparing WCF and SCA, WCF is in Beta while SCA is just a draft spec with lots of details left to be hashed out.
Neil Ward-Dutton asks: Can they avoid the mistakes of J2EE? Based on my experience with J2EE, I doubt it. Multi-vendor committees are a terrible way to create new technologies. Just look at EJB. Worse yet, it sounds like they're adding more layers on top of existing complexity. As David Chappell says:Time for a Java developer revolt!
SCA stands for Service Component Architecture, a set of specs that describe a model for building applications and systems using a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). To complement the SCA spec, there's also SDO (Service Data Objects).
In a nutshell, SCA is the Java camp's response to Microsoft's Windows Communication Foundation (WCF). But as David Chappell's points out in his article comparing WCF and SCA, WCF is in Beta while SCA is just a draft spec with lots of details left to be hashed out.
Neil Ward-Dutton asks: Can they avoid the mistakes of J2EE? Based on my experience with J2EE, I doubt it. Multi-vendor committees are a terrible way to create new technologies. Just look at EJB. Worse yet, it sounds like they're adding more layers on top of existing complexity. As David Chappell says:
While SCA may one day provide a solid foundation for creating service-oriented applications, it will also add another choice to the already complex landscape that Java developers face.
Wednesday, January 04, 2006
IKEA: The Swedish Feeding Trough
IKEA has retail stores throughout Europe, North America, Asia and the Middle East. The stores are easy to spot: giant bright blue and yellow boxes. And the internal layout of the stores are the same -- a babysitting station at the entrance, a circuitous passage that takes you through all parts of the store and finally a cafeteria at the end of the route with inexpensive meals. These services are intended for shoppers but apparently in Germany IKEA is doing much more than selling budget furniture and housewares. People are using IKEA stores as babysitting centers, soup kitchens, and sources for diapers and baby food. Wow, I could imagine this occasionally happening in the US, but in Germany?
This Day In Apple History
Ten years ago today, Apple announced its online Macintosh only service called eWorld. The service never had the full support of Apple management and died within two years. Ironically, the year before, Apple had another online service called AppleLink-Personal Edition that provided Apple-centric resources. Apple provided the software and marketing while a little known company called Quantum built and maintained the system. AppleLink was killed off at Apple during a cost cutting session. Apple compensated Quantum by funding completion of the project. Quantum dumped the Apple branding and renamed the corporation America Online.
Hot Tub Living
Hot tubs aren't too common in the Northeast (snow and cold are common, outdoor nakedness in bubbly water is not). Many of the houses we looked at in the Seattle area had outdoor hot tubs. Our new house does not. Acccording to Mr. Sun, this is a good thing. We narrowly avoided becoming part of the hot tub cult!
The Perils of Being Joel
Joel Spolsky's recent essay on The Perils of JavaSchools criticizes the content of typical Computer Science curricula; specifically using Java as a teaching language rather than a "harder" language like C. The essay has generated a lot of commentary. Ned calls Joel a crotchety old man. Jack Shirazi takes Joel to task for complaining that Java is too easy. Bill de hÓra asserts Joel may not be picking the right challenges, that concurrency is a harder concept than pointers or recursion.
From my perspective, Joel is generalizing from a narrow issue: He's complaining that it's become harder for him to discriminate between great programmers and mediocre programmers when interviewing recent CS graduates. He blames Java but maybe he needs to find a different set of questions to ask candidates to decide whether they're Smart and Get Things Done.
I can't say whether Joel's assertion that CS curriculums are being "dumbed down" by Java is true or not. I've worked with recent CS graduates and haven't found them to be much different from any other newbies.
In software development, as in other fields, experience counts. No CS program is going to give you sufficient experience to work on complex projects. No CS program is going to give you all the background you need to do your job.
Further, I don't believe that CS degree programs are intended to churn out working programmers anymore than undergraduate programs in Mechanical Engineering are intended to churn out automotive engineers. You're expected to learn what you need as you go. If anything, an undergraduate program is intended to teach you how to learn and expose you to as many topics as possible so that you know where to look. If you're smart enough you'll pick up concepts and skills as you need them.
From my perspective, Joel is generalizing from a narrow issue: He's complaining that it's become harder for him to discriminate between great programmers and mediocre programmers when interviewing recent CS graduates. He blames Java but maybe he needs to find a different set of questions to ask candidates to decide whether they're Smart and Get Things Done.
I can't say whether Joel's assertion that CS curriculums are being "dumbed down" by Java is true or not. I've worked with recent CS graduates and haven't found them to be much different from any other newbies.
In software development, as in other fields, experience counts. No CS program is going to give you sufficient experience to work on complex projects. No CS program is going to give you all the background you need to do your job.
Further, I don't believe that CS degree programs are intended to churn out working programmers anymore than undergraduate programs in Mechanical Engineering are intended to churn out automotive engineers. You're expected to learn what you need as you go. If anything, an undergraduate program is intended to teach you how to learn and expose you to as many topics as possible so that you know where to look. If you're smart enough you'll pick up concepts and skills as you need them.
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