With so much happening in the computing world, now seemed like the right time to write “Welcome to the Jungle” – a sequel to my earlier “The Free Lunch Is Over” essay. Here’s the introduction: Welcome to the Jungle In the twilight of Moore’s Law, the transitions to multicore processors, GPU computing, and HaaS [...]
Archive for the ‘Opinion & Editorial’ Category
Welcome to the Jungle
Posted in Concurrency, Hardware, Opinion & Editorial, Software Development on 2011-12-29 | 10 Comments »
A Passing of Giants
Posted in Friday Thoughts, Opinion & Editorial on 2011-11-02 | Comments Off
I don’t normally blog poetry, but the passing of our giants this past month has put me in such a mood. . What is built becomes our future Hand-constructed, stone by stone Quarried by our elders’ labors Fashioned with their strength and bone Dare to dream, and dare to conquer Fears by building castles grand [...]
John McCarthy
Posted in Opinion & Editorial, Software Development on 2011-10-25 | 15 Comments »
What a sad, horrible month. First Steve Jobs, then Dennis Ritchie, and now John McCarthy. We are losing many of the greats all at once. If you haven’t heard of John McCarthy, you’re probably learning about his many important contributions now. Some examples: He’s the inventor of Lisp, the second-oldest high-level programming language, younger than [...]
2000 Interview: Dennis Ritchie, Bjarne Stroustrup, and James Gosling
Posted in C++, Java, Opinion & Editorial on 2011-10-13 | 3 Comments »
Dennis Ritchie gave very few interviews, but I was lucky enough to be able to get one of them. Back in 2000, when I was editor of C++ Report, I interviewed the creators of C, C++, and Java all together: The C Family of Languages: Interview with Dennis Ritchie, Bjarne Stroustrup, and James Gosling This [...]
Dennis Ritchie
Posted in Opinion & Editorial on 2011-10-12 | 79 Comments »
What a sad week. Rob Pike reports that Dennis Ritchie also has passed away. Ritchie was one of the pioneers of computer science, and a well-deserved Turing winner for his many contributions, notably the creation of C — by far the most influential programming language in history, and still going strong today. Aside: Speaking of [...]
Steve Jobs
Posted in Opinion & Editorial on 2011-10-06 | 8 Comments »
Today our industry is much less than it was yesterday. We have lost one of the great innovators. Even more importantly, Steve Jobs’ family has lost a husband and brother and father, and our thoughts are with them. What can be said that hasn’t been said? Steve has been arguably the single most influential driver [...]
2010: Cyberpunk World
Posted in Friday Thoughts, Opinion & Editorial on 2010-12-31 | 14 Comments »
Speaking as a neutral observer with exactly zero opinion on any political question, and not even a cyberpunk reader given that I’ve read about two such novels in my life: Is it just me, or do the last few months’ global news headlines read like they were ghostwritten by Neal Stephenson? I wonder if we [...]
The “You Call This Journalism?” Department
Posted in Apple, Opinion & Editorial on 2010-05-07 | 2 Comments »
The Inquirer isn’t normally this silly, and it isn’t even April 1. Nick Farrell writes: Why Apple might regret the Ipad [sic] THE IPAD HAS DOOMED Apple, according to market anlaysts [sic] that are expecting the tablet to spell trouble for its maker. … Rather than killing off the netbook, the Ipad [sic] is harming [...]
Links I enjoyed this week: Flash and HTML5
Posted in Friday Thoughts, Opinion & Editorial, Software Development, Web on 2010-05-06 | 1 Comment »
These are the two best links I’ve read in the wake of the Flash and HTML5 brouhaha(s). They discuss other informative points too, but their biggest value lies in discussing three things, to which I’ll offer the answers that make the most sense to me: What is the web, really? “The web” is the cross-linked [...]
“Readability”
Posted in Apple, Opinion & Editorial, Web on 2010-04-10 | 7 Comments »
If you like reading just about anything on the web, including my articles, in a pretty nicely rendered plain format with no ads or other distractions, you might want to try out arc90’s Readability. All you do is drag a bookmarklet to your bookmark bar, and then on any article-like web page you can click [...]
