I used to joke that I was the only programmer under 30 who knows SNOBOL. It may not be the case anymore, but there’s something fun about knowing a bunch of obscure languages. For example, a used Prolog book on Amazon goes for $20. A used Smalltalk book goes for about $10. A used SNOBOL book goes for about $1. For comparison, used books on functional programming usually seem to go for about $80. »
In my experience, there are two extreme visions of reality embodied in two philosophies of programming language design. The first is Dijkstra’s view, the view embodied by Milner’s guarantee in ML, that once the program is compiled it cannot “go wrong” at runtime. This perspective treasures correctness and asserts that all wonderful things flow from it: reliability, readability, and so forth. Languages supporting this view of reality are primarily Haskell and ML. »
To assist with job interviews at the NRAO we recently wrote a small “contest” program. Without giving away the details, the crux of the problem is to read a file with a list of scans and calculate the amount of time it takes to move the dishes and perform the scans, and report it. Candidates are required to write this in Java, but that restriction does not apply to me, so I of course had to write it in three languages that are not Java: Haskell, Common Lisp and Smalltalk. »
I have been using Smalltalk, specifically Pharo Smalltalk, a derivative of Squeak, for some light experimentation with Seaside and proper object-oriented programming. I really do spend too much time being a philosopher of programming and not enough time actually programming. On the plus side, I view this with some derision as a fault. I realized last year or so that all the functional programming in the world wasn’t going to make me adequate at OO design, and I really haven’t advanced at that skill since the middle of college. »
Today at work, while dealing with Hibernate, we noticed a queer problem that comes up when using one-to-many mappings. Like everything else in Hibernate, the system is apparently self-consistent, until it isn’t, and I usually find I can get about 90% through an explanation of why Hibernate requires something, but when I get to the last 10% I realize there’s a missing step in my understanding, or an unsound leap of reasoning in the software. »