April 25, 2011
droplets of clarity
I like C#. This made no sense to me whatsoever; those of you who have
known me a very long time will find it even stranger than I did at first.
I've done work here and there in it for the last few years and it's always
been easy to drop in and out of. It feels pleasant and well arranged.
It was a complete surprise to me the unix snob, and I read something the
other day that brought the entire concept into focus: Anders Hejlsberg
is the main architect of C#. He also developed Turbo Pascal.
Turbo Pascal was the first real compiler I managed to get for myself back
in high school; I was already annoyed at QBASIC, unable to convince my
dad into a visual c++ license[1]. I'm not entirely sure where that first copy
came from; I still have at least one floppy somewhere in this house that
contains it. I spent so much time in that comforting blue user interface.
It was where I learned how to use a debugger[2]; my dad pointed me in that
direction when I was home from school on a weekend once I think in second
semester Pascal. I taught other people to use debuggers. I got a hold
of Turbo C and learned C, quickly got into unix programming as command
line-based curses programming UIs went forever out of style and never
looked back.
Fifteen years later I'm trying to understand why I like visual studio and
it makes sense. Now if only I could have vi and intellisense at the same
time, that would be perfect.
[1] Kids these days do not have to beg their parents for compilers
anymore (or steal them) and that has to be good for the world.
[2] Debugging skills lead nicely into reverse engineering skills,
unfortunately reverse engineering work is all in places I don't want
to live. Sigh.
aside: Could I put a car picture at the top of this post? Computers
really don't photograph well.
candice at 0:32 | link to post
April 18, 2011
books about war
Not having anything to study for - aside from learning how to write
device drivers - has gotten me reading.
So far I've gotten through a bunch of Steven Ambrose, and started
on The Forgotten Soldier. Thinking of picking up Silk and Cyanide.
Clay is in the middle of The Making of the Atomic Bomb which I think
I'm going to read when he finishes it.
Anyone have recommendations? I never got to take a WWII history
class in school and am generally fascinated by all things old crypto.
(Sidenote: Un Village Français season 3 is on TV5MONDE - subtitled)
candice at 20:57 | link to post
« March 2011 ... Current ... May 2011 »