0. Preamble
Let us go then, you and I,
When the code is spread against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Code Read #11 from Scott Rosenberg deals with James Noble’s and Robert Biddle’s “Notes on Postmodern Programming”.
1. A Sentimentalist’s Apology
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats,
Of all-night coding, of cheap cube walls,
Of [...]
Posts under ‘Code Reads’
Notes On Notes On Postmodern Programming
Code Read 10 – Guy Steele on “Growing a Language”
When doing software design, a common question is how much “advanced” functionality to build in, and how much to let the users create themselves using a simple set of tools. For example, a reporting module could have many canned reports, or could have a tool which allows users to build reports themselves (or both). [...]
Code Read 9 – John Backus and Functional Programming
The 1977 Turing Award went to John Backus, and in his Turing Lecture, “Can Programming Be Liberated from the von Neumann Style?”, he made a vigorous case against traditional “von Neumann” programming (VNP), and for functional programming (FP). Unfortunately, the vigorous rhetorical style of this paper has infused the discussion of FP, resulting in [...]
Code Read 8 – Eric S Raymond’s Cathedral and Bazaar
The ever evolving “The Cathedral and the Bazaar” by Eric S Raymond (aka CatB) has become something of a lengthy read. Scott Rosenberg’s Code Read 8 dives on in, and rightly describes it as a “classic essay” and says it “has proved its importance” in the literature of software development. I first read [...]
Code Read 7 – David Parnas on Star Wars Software
In 1985, David Parnas resigned from his position on a panel convened by the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization, which was overseeing the “Star Wars”, or SDI anti-ballistic missile defense program. Along with his resignation he submitted several short essays explaining why he thought the software required for Star Wars could not be built, at [...]
