Oz Fest

Hop, skip, and jumping around... I'm taking another look at Oz, a "multiparadigm" language I took a brief look at a few years ago. Along with the book "Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming" my first look was brief and did not I did not appreciate everything about them.

I was originally put off by the shear number of capabilities in the language and presented in the book. On the other hand those capabilities fit together very well now that I am actually working through them.

OK, so the only real oddity is this: unary minus is represented as a tilde. And so...
~10
Should not read as "about ten" but rather "negative ten". This is the same as
0 - 10
using the Oz binary substraction operator, but -10 is invalid in Oz. I guess if that's the oddist thing...

WikiWYG

WYSIWYG in a Wiki. Nice feature. Horrible acronym.

It's a Wiki with better in-line editing.

P2P

And by P2P I mean Point to Point. From Loosely Coupled, appropriately enough...

The deeply ingrained point-to-point mindset of mainstream computer systems design is hampering recognition of some of the most basic concepts required for successful deployment.

Google Map of Site Visitors

(via the lispmeister himself)

My google map of visitors.

Google Talk and Jabber

Update, google sez:

We want to make IM as open as the web or email...

I think that the ultimate destination is to come up with a system that is as distributed and decentralized as SMTP/email while not falling prey to the spam problems that SMTP has. We are going to test those waters first off by starting federation with a few partners and then moving on from there.

End Update

More advances into messaging, voice, and other desk-side goodies from Google...

Independent journalist Om Malik on his blog at http://gigaom.com/ pointed to technical clues that suggest Google is preparing to run an instant messaging service based on an open-source system known as Jabber. Jabber technology would allow Google instant message users to connect with established IM systems that also work with Jabber, including America Online's ICQ and Apple Computer Inc.'s iChat, Malik said.

Multi-multi-core

The future of concurrent computing...

Come 2010, expect to see chips containing ten or more processing cores, he added.
-Paul Otellini at the Intel Developer Forum

The key to building future systems more easily is in languages for making concurrent programming as easy as object-oriented programming has made sequential programming. Objects (and higher-order functions, etc.) make the organization of names and sequential statements more manageable. Good concurrency models make the organization of space and time more manageable.

A programming language's concurrency model will have to support programmers conceptualizing tens and hundreds of thousands of processes the way languages today support programmers conceptualizing object models of tens and hundreds of thousands of objects.

Polar Opposite

Have you ever been dumbstruck by a polar opposite opinion that is perfectly valid just nothing you could image yourself.

Then Apple fell into a huge hole. It started with "Hypercard". It was a ridiculous way to build programs. I could never understand it.

Hypercard is about the most fun I've ever had with a computer.

Cheap Gas -- more fun with google maps

(via Mark Baker)

... the web wins again. Find cheap gas.

Portland has typically been more expensive than non-left-coast locations in the US. At least Portland does not seem to be increasing as quickly as some other locations.

SAP Trex Search Engine and Python

Interesting comment from Andrew Barnard...

SAP uses Python as an integral part of the TREX product and has done so for many years.

Perhaps Shai is not aware of the extent to which open source products are used by SAP?

Oh, that OODB

Guess what? Transparent persistence has sex appeal but gotchas. (de hÓra and Thornhill punch) Look before you leap. Things are not always what they start out to be.