Red Squirrel Reflections
Dave Hoover explores the psychology of software development
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Red Squirrel Reflections
Dave Hoover explores the psychology of software development
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Mon, 09 Oct 2006Back in 1999, Richard A. O'Keefe responded to a question of language marketablitiy with an fascinating post to the mercury-users mailing list.Why would anyone choose an unhyped language like Mercury over a widely hyped language like Java unless they were interested in finding out what can be accomplished by doing things DIFFERENTLY?via reddit. After four years of yearning to feel the difference that Ruby can make, and finally feeling the difference in the past year in my full-time work, it's exciting to have the luxury of looking beyond Ruby for this DIFFERENT-ness that Richard is talking about. Smalltalk and Scheme are two of the languages I yearn to learn now. In the midst of the flood insanity, I've finished reading the classic Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It has certainly inspired me on many levels, and provided excellent food for thought as I continue to ponder the Apprentice to Journeyman patterns on a background thread. The most directly applicable quote I found in my study of the book related (in my head) to Retrospectives:"You look at where you're going and where you are and it never makes sense, but then you look back at where you've been and a pattern seems to emerge. And if you project forward from that pattern, then sometimes you can come up with something." (pages 167-8) |
