I am … unhindered by talent

Found this in the slides for a presentation by Jim Weirich entitled “10 things every Java programmer should know about Ruby”:

A language that doesn’t affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing — Alan Perlis

Amen, brother!

A little searching reveals that it was included in a collection of such pearls of wisdom in an article entitled “Epigrams on programming“, published back in 1982. Some have aged poorly, and some I just disagree with, but there are some real gems and this is one of them.

There have arguably been five significant milestones for me in my development as a programmer:

• Learning to program (almost entirely self-taught, first on a TI-59 programmable calculator in Jr. High, and then on a TRS-80 Model 1, 16K, Level 2 BASIC in High School)
• Learning structured programming and memory management (PASCAL, then C, while an undergraduate)
• Learning (in graduate school) to think of programs as formal, mathematical texts, which can be reasoned about in a mathematical way. This included learning pure functional programming (Miranda) and then taking a wonderful and head bending course on the formal derivation of programs from specifications taught by Edsger Dijkstra.
• Learning object-oriented programming (C++, Eiffel, and Java) as part of my teaching here at UMM.
• Moving from a kinda-sorta waterfall model of software development to understanding and embracing agile development methods (again as part of my teaching here at UMM). There was no programming language, per se, but ideas and tools such as test-driven development, JUnit, Clover, refactoring, and Eclipse all played important roles and certainly changed the way I think about programming.

Of those, probably the hardest was probably really “getting” objects after all those years of C. It was the first major transition (since my initial forays into BASIC) that was entirely self-taught, and really changing the way I thought about the structure of software was tough. Now, on those odd (and thankfully very rare) occassions when I find myself leaving the world of objects, it’s amazing how strange and foreign the old ways seem and feel.

It’s been a while since I’ve learned a programming language that stretched my head and helped me rethink some important things. I think Ruby has the potential to open up some new doors (if small ones), and Rails is pretty darn cool, so I’m looking forward to becoming more conversant in those universes.

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Leather (Pen and paper), originally uploaded by Unhindered by Talent.

More fun with my new macro :-). (Having this wonderful lens definitely changes the way I see certain things!)

These are both gifts from my wonderful wife, although both from years past. On the left is a great little leather bound notebook, with a strap that wraps around and ties it shut. On the right is a leather pen case, which is currently holding my fine point fountain pen that I prefer for editing work.

They happened to be sitting near each other on the window sill in a wonderful morning light, and this happened…

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First, let me be real clear that I pretty much hate U.S. big money college athletics at a fairly visceral level. That’s a long story, tied up in deep ways with growing up in Texas, and we won’t go there. Suffice it to say that I have real problems with the whole deal.

Second, let me be equally clear that I don’t hate the kids involved; I’m not into blaming the victims in a deeply screwed up system. I may not go to UMM’s games, but I was happy for them when they won the UMAC this semester, and when Coach Ken Crandall got named UMAC coach of the year. Ken’s served on our Scholastic Committee with me for several years, and he’s a valuable campus resource on many levels, and it’s too bad (for us) that his success had led to him being recruited away.

Now all that’s out of the way, I just watched a little more than the last quarter of the Fiesta Bowl, where Boise State eeked out an absolutely amazing, heart stopping, wildly exciting, oh-my-god, lots of four letter words and screaming and shouting victory over the Oklahoma University. Boise were underdogs going in, and some OU folks were apparently talking a lot of trash in advance of the game, and it was really nice to see a smaller program beat a major football power (i.e., a school with some pretty confused educational priorities) like OU.

And not only did they win, but they won in the most exciting possible way. After leading most of the game, they let OU take the lead in the waning moments, then tied it in the last seconds, and then squeeked it out in overtime. By the end we were all in Mom and Dad’s bedroom (Dad had been watching the game there), and while Dad couldn’t scream and shout (his voice is currently quite weak from radiation), we did plenty of it for him. It was probably a lot more excitement then a cancer patient needed, but once we were sucked in there was really no coming out again. Congrats to the underdogs!

Now I should be getting some sleep, but my adrenaline levels are so high, it’s not really an option. I’ll have to read or something to wind down…

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