:: grepninjalog ::

:: Friday, March 10, 2000 ::

High-quality font support for Squeak.
:: linuxian 3/10/2000 04:21:43 PM [+] ::

Inprise (Borland) on Linux article.
:: linuxian 3/10/2000 04:11:35 PM [+] ::

The FreeBSD Diary
:: linuxian 3/10/2000 04:03:31 PM [+] ::

Fabrik in Squeak. "Fabrik is a visual programming environment - a kit of computational and user-interface components that can be 'wired' together to build new components and useful applications."
:: linuxian 3/10/2000 03:44:19 PM [+] ::

IBM/Ease of Use/Home - Interesting IBM User Interface article.
:: linuxian 3/10/2000 01:44:23 PM [+] ::

Linux Central the /root for Linux resources
:: linuxian 3/10/2000 11:11:12 AM [+] ::

XHTML: HTML Merges With XML -- Web Builder article on the new XML-based replacement for HTML.
:: linuxian 3/10/2000 11:00:33 AM [+] ::

Squeak FTP Download Site - repository for many old versions of Squeak. The Win32 directory seems to have Win32 VM code but I'm not sure it is the latest version.
:: linuxian 3/10/2000 08:49:29 AM [+] ::

Interview with Bjarne Stroustroup "I Did It For You All..." ______________________________________________________________ On the 1st of January, 1998, Bjarne Stroustrup gave an interview to the IEEE's 'Computer' magazine.. Naturally, the editors thought he would be giving a retrospective view of seven years of object-oriented design, using the language he created. By the end of the interview, the interviewer got more than he had bargained for and, subsequently, the editor decided to suppress its contents, 'for the good of the industry' but, as with many of these things, there was a leak.. Here is a complete transcript of what was was said, unedited, and unrehearsed, so it isn't as neat as planned interviews.. You will find it interesting.... __________________________________________________________________ Interviewer: Well, it's been a few years since you changed the world of software design, how does it feel, looking back? Stroustrup: Actually, I was thinking about those days, just before you arrived. Do you remember? Everyone was writing 'C' and, the trouble was, they were pretty damn good at it.. Universities got pretty good at teaching it, too. They were turning out competent - I stress the word 'competent' - graduates at a phenomenal rate. That's what caused the problem.. Interviewer: Problem? Stroustrup: Yes, problem. Remember when everyone wrote Cobol? Interviewer: Of course, I did too Stroustrup: Well, in the beginning, these guys were like demi-gods. Their salaries were high, and they were treated like royalty.. Interviewer: Those were the days, eh? Stroustrup: Right. So what happened? IBM got sick of it, and invested millions in training programmers, till they were a dime a dozen.. Interviewer: That's why I got out. Salaries dropped within a year, to the point where being a journalist actually paid better.. Stroustrup: Exactly. Well, the same happened with 'C' programmers.. Interviewer: I see, but what's the point? Stroustrup: Well, one day, when I was sitting in my office, I thought of this little scheme, which would redress the balance a little. I thought 'I wonder what would happen, if there were a language so complicated, so difficult to learn, that nobody would ever be able to swamp the market with programmers? Actually, I got some of the ideas from X10, you know, X windows. That was such a bitch of a graphics system, that it only just ran on those Sun 3/60 things.. They had all the ingredients for what I wanted. A really ridiculously complex syntax, obscure functions, and pseudo-OO structure. Even now, nobody writes raw X-windows code. Motif is the only way to go if you want to retain your sanity.. Interviewer: You're kidding...? Stroustrup: Not a bit of it. In fact, there was another problem.. Unix was written in 'C', which meant that any 'C' programmer could very easily become a systems programmer. Remember what a mainframe systems programmer used to earn? Interviewer: You bet I do, that's what I used to do.. Stroustrup: OK, so this new language had to divorce itself from Unix, by hiding all the system calls that bound the two together so nicely. This would enable guys who only knew about DOS to earn a decent living too.. Interviewer: I don't believe you said that.... Stroustrup: Well, it's been long enough, now, and I believe most people have figured out for themselves that C++ is a waste of time but, I must say, it's taken them a lot longer than I thought it would.. Interviewer: So how exactly did you do it? Stroustrup: It was only supposed to be a joke, I never thought people would take the book seriously. Anyone with half a brain can see that object-oriented programming is counter-intuitive, illogical and inefficient.. Interviewer: What? Stroustrup: And as for 're-useable code' - when did you ever hear of a company re-using its code? Interviewer: Well, never, actually, but.... Stroustrup: There you are then. Mind you, a few tried, in the early days. There was this Oregon company - Mentor Graphics, I think they were called - really caught a cold trying to rewrite everything in C++ in about '90 or '91. I felt sorry for them really, but I thought people would learn from their mistakes.. Interviewer: Obviously, they didn't? Stroustrup: Not in the slightest. Trouble is, most companies hush-up all their major blunders, and explaining a $30 million loss to the shareholders would have been difficult.. Give them their due, though, they made it work in the end.. Interviewer: They did? Well, there you are then, it proves O-O works.. Stroustrup: Well, almost. The executable was so huge, it took five minutes to load, on an HP workstation, with 128MB of RAM. Then it ran like treacle. Actually, I thought this would be a major stumbling-block, and I'd get found out within a week, but nobody cared. Sun and HP were only too glad to sell enormously powerful boxes, with huge resources just to run trivial programs. You know, when we had our first C++ compiler, at AT&T, I compiled 'Hello World', and couldn't believe the size of the executable. 2.1MB Interviewer: What? Well, compilers have come a long way, since then.. Stroustrup: They have? Try it on the latest version of g++ - you won't get much change out of half a megabyte. Also, there are several quite recent examples for you, from all over the world. British Telecom had a major disaster on their hands but, luckily, managed to scrap the whole thing and start again. They were luckier than Australian Telecom. Now I hear that Siemens is building a dinosaur, and getting more and more worried as the size of the hardware gets bigger,to accommodate the executables. Isn't multiple inheritance a joy? Interviewer: Yes, but C++ is basically a sound language.. Stroustrup: You really believe that, don't you? Have you ever sat down and worked on a C++ project? Here's what happens: First, I've put in enough pitfalls to make sure that only the most trivial projects will work first time. Take operator overloading. At the end of the project, almost every module ha [cropped. 7,600 character limit.]
:: linuxian 3/9/2000 10:50:38 AM [+] ::

"I Did It For You All..." ______________________________________________________________ On the 1st of January, 1998, Bjarne Stroustrup gave an interview to the IEEE's 'Computer' magazine.. Naturally, the editors thought he would be giving a retrospective view of seven years of object-oriented design, using the language he created. By the end of the interview, the interviewer got more than he had bargained for and, subsequently, the editor decided to suppress its contents, 'for the good of the industry' but, as with many of these things, there was a leak.. Here is a complete transcript of what was was said, unedited, and unrehearsed, so it isn't as neat as planned interviews.. You will find it interesting.... __________________________________________________________________ Interviewer: Well, it's been a few years since you changed the world of software design, how does it feel, looking back? Stroustrup: Actually, I was thinking about those days, just before you arrived. Do you remember? Everyone was writing 'C' and, the trouble was, they were p
:: linuxian 3/9/2000 10:49:54 AM [+] ::

LinuxLife.org -- another Linux site.
:: linuxian 3/9/2000 10:43:38 AM [+] ::

Dev-X has an online XML Magazine -- Spring 2000. Sponsors include eXcelon, Rogue Wave, & Microsoft's MSDN XML Development Center.
:: linuxian 3/9/2000 08:55:23 AM [+] ::

FreeMWare.org -- This is the LGPL'd system, similar to VMware, which allows multiple virtual computers on a single PC.
:: linuxian 3/8/2000 12:16:30 PM [+] ::

Programming Language Exploration -- Looks like an interesting language site. Maybe I should spend some time here. Note the link on Self.
:: linuxian 3/8/2000 10:33:22 AM [+] ::

FAQ: Scheme Implementations and Mailing Lists 2/2 [Monthly posting]
:: linuxian 3/8/2000 10:29:24 AM [+] ::

FAQ: Scheme Frequently Asked Questions 1/2 [Monthly posting]
:: linuxian 3/8/2000 10:28:55 AM [+] ::

Welcome to the SICP Web Site
:: linuxian 3/8/2000 10:04:49 AM [+] ::

Leech FTP Homepage -- a great multi-threaded Ftp client.
:: linuxian 3/8/2000 09:17:01 AM [+] ::

Squeak list message about new font support.
:: linuxian 3/7/2000 12:06:08 PM [+] ::

A very interesting web-located Squeak Browser.
:: linuxian 3/7/2000 12:01:58 PM [+] ::

Some Swikis at Gatech -- includes Squeak Info.
:: linuxian 3/7/2000 10:36:05 AM [+] ::

Winscheme48
:: linuxian 3/7/2000 10:32:20 AM [+] ::

Richard A. Kelsey's Home Page -- good site for Scheme 48.
:: linuxian 3/7/2000 10:27:19 AM [+] ::

The Scheme Underground
:: linuxian 3/7/2000 10:24:40 AM [+] ::

The Schememonster's Friends
:: linuxian 3/7/2000 10:23:59 AM [+] ::

Welcome To Schemers Inc.
:: linuxian 3/7/2000 10:21:56 AM [+] ::

Welcome to schemers.org!
:: linuxian 3/7/2000 10:21:13 AM [+] ::

CMU Scheme Repository.
:: linuxian 3/7/2000 10:20:36 AM [+] ::

The Internet Scheme Repository Home Page
:: linuxian 3/7/2000 10:19:54 AM [+] ::

Chez Scheme News
:: linuxian 3/7/2000 10:11:42 AM [+] ::

The main page for the new communal Squeak Book.
:: linuxian 3/7/2000 10:01:06 AM [+] ::

There is now an editable Squeak Book at Chapters For Review!
:: linuxian 3/7/2000 09:14:37 AM [+] ::

ArgoUML: The Cognitive CASE Tool -- an interesting OpenSource UML tool project. I think I may join this one.
:: linuxian 3/7/2000 08:50:45 AM [+] ::

SCM home page -- a good DOS/Windows Scheme implementation.
:: linuxian 3/7/2000 08:29:48 AM [+] ::

Portable Smalltalk Applications and ANSI Smalltalk Standard Smalltalk Interchange Format Homepage -- an interesting and significant site for Smalltalk portability information. I might want to get involved with this work later.
:: linuxian 3/6/2000 04:58:51 PM [+] ::

I'm a member of the Metaverse Project on SourceForge. Here is the link to the Metaverse Project Home Page.
:: linuxian 3/6/2000 04:31:40 PM [+] ::

Hmmmm. It's about time for me to get a Scheme system up and running again. I'll put one on Windows and one on Linux. Which Scheme interpreter/system/IDE should I use? I probably still have my registered version of EduScheme around somewhere but I'm still annoyed at them for their excessively restrictive security mechanisms.
:: linuxian 3/6/2000 04:27:28 PM [+] ::

scheme.org -- a starting page for Scheme.
:: linuxian 3/6/2000 04:21:47 PM [+] ::

The Scheme Programming Language -- The main MIT Scheme site.
:: linuxian 3/6/2000 04:20:04 PM [+] ::

PatternStories Wiki: Front Page -- Many stories about using software design patterns, particularly in Smalltalk.
:: linuxian 3/6/2000 01:05:46 PM [+] ::

An information page on the somewhat famous RefactoringBrowser: Refactoring Browser.
:: linuxian 3/6/2000 01:00:18 PM [+] ::