So! I have all these cool things I want to write about, but I broke my thumbnail. Can you tell that's a long story? See, this summer I got excited about playing guitar again. I usually switch between all-guitar and all-piano every other year or so. This summer I dusted off the guitars and learned a bunch of pieces, and even composed one. I was prepping for — among other things — a

  This idea that there is generality in the specific is of far-reaching importance. — Douglas Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach Note: Today's entry is a technical article: it isn't funny. At least not intentionally. Contents Introduction Three Great Schools of Software Modeling Class Modeling Relational Modeling XML Modeling Other schools

I haven't been blogging much this summer. Mostly it's because all my free time has been spent engaged in an important research project called "What Would Niko Bellic Do?" I've been enrolled in a high-quality Management Scenario Simulator with the unconventional name "Grand Theft Auto IV", probably some sort of inside joke, and I've been going through all its Developer Management training

 "And as for this non-college bullshit I got two words for that: learn to fuckin' type"— Mr. Pink This is another one I've wanted to write forever. Man, I've tried a bunch of times. No ruck. Not Rucky. Once again I'm stuck feeling so strongly about something that I'm tripping over myself trying to get my point across. So! Only one thing left to try: bust open a bottle of wine and see if

Some CEO emailed me the other day. I don't remember who it was; people mail me all the time about their blah blah yawn product service thingy, and on the rare occasions I bother to read mail from strangers, I don't usually remember anything about the email, even if I respond to it. I can remember broad categories of questions I get, but everything else is just a blur. That's senility for ya.

Disclaimer: I do not speak for Google! These are my own views and opinions, and are not endorsed in any way by my employer, nor anyone else, for that matter. Everyone knows and quotes Joel's old chestnut, "Smart, and Gets Things Done." It was a blog, then a book, and now it's an aphorism. People quote Joel's Proverb all the time because it gives us all such a nice snuggly feeling. Why?

I will once again plagiarize myself by transcribing a talk I gave. First: be warned! I offer this gesture of respect to you — yes, you! — when I say that this is at least 20 minutes of reading. This is long even for me. If you're surfing reddit, gobbling up little information snacks, then it's best to think of this entry as being more like a big downer cow. Unless you're really hungry, you

Some guys at Stanford invited me to speak at their EE Computer Systems Colloquium last week. Pretty cool, eh? It was quite an honor. I wound up giving a talk on dynamic languages: the tools, the performance, the history, the religion, everything. It was a lot of fun, and it went over surprisingly well, all things considered. They've uploaded the video of my talk, but since it's a full hour,

 "We're going to get lynched, aren't we?" — Phouchg And you thought I'd given up on controversial blogs. Hah! Preamble This must be said: Jamie Zawinski is a hero. A living legend. A major powerhouse programmer who, among his many other accomplishments, wrote the original Netscape Navigator and the original XEmacs. A guy who can use the term "downward funargs" and then glare at you just

I recently switched to using OS/X full-time for all my client-side computing. Still using Linux on the backends, of course, at home and at work, but I now use Macs for my client machines. I'm not a Mac fanboy. I'm sort of a wannabe Mac fanboy, but I'm not familiar enough with the OS yet (either as a user or as a programmer) to really rave about it. I will say this: it was kinda fun turning