MettaProgramming

As a kid, I loved the Hardy Boys mysteries, they always had interesting mysteries and plots that were just simple enough that you could figure them out at just the right time. Sometimes, programming is like a mystery, something happens unexpectedly, you hunt down clues, solve the mystery, and find that it leads to deeper mysteries.

A while ago, I started exploring Scala and wrote a post called Head Smacking in Scala on Positively Glorious! (Republished here for convenience). Yesterday I found another head smacking problem that taught me a few things. Read the rest of this entry »

I program in a lot of different languages, everything from C and C++ to Awk and Sed, Visual Basic and ASP to PHP and Javascript. I’m a bit of a jack-of-all-trades when it comes to languages, but the main one for the past 10 or so years has been Python. Python is the language that I automatically turn to when I say “I need to do ${X},” where X is any given task that does not require a UML diagram and user case studies. It’s fast, it’s powerful, and it’s about as comfortable as an old shoe.

Lately, many of my projects– including my really really big one– have been in Java. Since I haven’t programmed in Java since about 1998 (about when I picked up Python, notably) it’s been a hard road. Java has become a harsh mistress. That sweet young thing that was so easy going and flexible so many years ago has grown up to be a cynical, hard-edged woman with a riding crop in her hand.

At least, that’s been my recent experience. Read the rest of this entry »