My OperaSo what is this about then?
Saturday, January 17, 2009 11:34:26 PM
This weblog is programming, its languages, its structures, its thought processes/transformations. So it might actually be more of a Proglog (Prolog anyone?), I don't particularly like the word "blog", it's a strange contraction from website and logbook to weblog to blog. See what happend? The "we" got cut off, if it were the web, then it would have made slighly more sense, anyway, I'm already derailing, and it's my first post!
Other things I shall also be talking about are languages. Not just programming languages, well, mostly programming languages, but also what I like to call "spoken" languages, even if a language is "dead" (think Latin/Ancient Greek) I would still call it a "spoken" language, because I would be unable to learn it.
I think that statement needs some clarification, I have managed to learn 2 spoken languages, Dutch (native tongue) and English (I try to use UK English, so colour and not color). But I'm not particularly able in those 2 either (one of the reasons I'm starting to write here). Other languages I haven't even been able to learn.
Not any other language? Well, there are these languages called "Programming Languages", those I can learn, quite well if you'd ask me. And no, Lojban is classified, for me, as a spoken language, since I haven't been able to learn that either, even if it's a logical language.
So, what else to write about?
I use the word write here, because I don't like to speak (ok, hate it). This, too, has a reason, I have a stammer/stutter (what is the word anyway?), I've had that pretty much my entire life (I don't tend to remember the early parts of my life, so it's possible that I once spoke fluently, doubt it
).
I also don't quite like things like religion, if I had to, I would describe myself as an "Atheist", but I'm unsure if that's quite right. To put it differently, I don't need an explanation for everything. I most certainly don't need a (bogus) placeholder for it, and even worse, I don't need to get upset if some "belief" gets invalidated. I won't care what you belief, I also won't discriminate you for it, just as long as you don't over actively try to convert me, or harm me.
Now, some of you might point out to me at the subtitle of this log. "In servitude of Koios and Mnemosyne".
Those are two Titans of the Ancient Greek mythology (but you already knew that, right?).
So what is this about no religion? Titans were even considerd a form of Devils back then!
Well, at the top I mentioned that this log will be about programming, I should probably say it's more about Software Engineering than just the act of programming. Now, in both you need to solve problems. And what do you need for that? Intelligence. And what else? (There is more?) Memory.
And of course you knew already that Koios is the Titan of Intelligence and that Mnemosyne is the Titanes of Memory. These two aspects are at the core of programming, because without memory you wouldn't be able to remember what worked and what didn't work, you would need to be incredibly intelligent to deduce the right answer upfront, or infact, multiple times since you can't remember previous versions of what didn't entirely work right. Mostly because it's stateless, it doesn't tend to remember other invocations. And didn't the proverb go something like "Those who don't learn from history repeat the same mistakes?" In other words we need Memory.
But why can't you not go with Memory entirely? Unlike intelligence, it's statefull. Well, for this we invoke the proverbial "An infinite number of monkeys on an infinite number of typewriters with an infinite number of paper and an infinite number of lint, will eventually produce Shakespeare's DNA in some ancient Klingon dialect" (I think it has more chance to be in that form than, say, Hamlet).
In, hopefully, some less words, just memory will only get you a little, since it would take quite a long time to eventually get what you want since you are brute forcing it the entire way.
So a balance of the two would be quite nice.
What else? Oh yeah, books. I'll also be talking a bit about books, perhaps not a lot, mostly programming languages I suppose. But whenever I get (and read) a new Pratchett book I'll mention this.
And something I'll mostlikely talk least about, real life. There are some things I come across I'll just have to write about, something that has riled me up so much I can't ignore it. I don't like to get emotional over things, it seems to impare proper thinking. Iritation/anger for the worst offenders, even if I can then speak fluently, I don't like to be in that state all the time. One odd thing, whenever I have spoken (and it went a bit hard) I tend to forget what I just said, and it impares the thinking process. Quite annoying, especially with telephone conversations, I still need to figure out how to record telephone conversations, or I'll forget them (quite soon after the end).
And we're still not done!
A bit more about myself to wrap this introduction post up, I like quite a lot of other things, in no particular order, Discworld, Star (Trek|Wars), Lord of the Rings (all 5 generally known collected volumes), British Detectives (Inspector Morse, Touch of Frost, Midsomer Murders, Silent Witness, but not US detectives like CSI: .*, etc, etc. Oh, and Doctor Who, I quite like Doctor Who, and I'm crackers about Wallace and Gromit (find the reference), Monty Python tends also to be fun. Oh, and QI, don't forget QI! I also like Stephen Fry's (the host of QI) works, TV and written.
Currently I'm a part-time student/software engineer. I study Computer Science & Engineering on TU/e in the Netherlands, and I work for ISAAC, who also fund my study. I already have a Bachelor degree on the same subject from a diffrent school in the Netherlands, for which I took 2 internships at ISAAC, which we both enjoyed.
ISAAC is a Java "shop", where we create "made to fit" software, mostly in Java.
I quite like the JVM platform (especially HotSpot), so most of the time I'll be looking at languages that run on it, so Scala, JRuby, Clojure. But I won't limit myself to that, I also quite like Haskell and Lisp/Scheme. And C++ can also be fun (Template Meta Programming for example, I would like to thank Andrei Alexandrescu for his book Modern C++ Design that made my really appreciate it).
That's it for now, I'll be customizing this log for a while, then I'll start posting!
I haven't decided on any type of schedule or content length, since university is taking quite some time.
Ok, that's really it for now.
See you (who-ever is reading anyway) around, and till my next post.
--MLeo
PS.
I'll also be talking about the projects I do in my spare time.
Other things I shall also be talking about are languages. Not just programming languages, well, mostly programming languages, but also what I like to call "spoken" languages, even if a language is "dead" (think Latin/Ancient Greek) I would still call it a "spoken" language, because I would be unable to learn it.
I think that statement needs some clarification, I have managed to learn 2 spoken languages, Dutch (native tongue) and English (I try to use UK English, so colour and not color). But I'm not particularly able in those 2 either (one of the reasons I'm starting to write here). Other languages I haven't even been able to learn.
Not any other language? Well, there are these languages called "Programming Languages", those I can learn, quite well if you'd ask me. And no, Lojban is classified, for me, as a spoken language, since I haven't been able to learn that either, even if it's a logical language.
So, what else to write about?
I use the word write here, because I don't like to speak (ok, hate it). This, too, has a reason, I have a stammer/stutter (what is the word anyway?), I've had that pretty much my entire life (I don't tend to remember the early parts of my life, so it's possible that I once spoke fluently, doubt it
).I also don't quite like things like religion, if I had to, I would describe myself as an "Atheist", but I'm unsure if that's quite right. To put it differently, I don't need an explanation for everything. I most certainly don't need a (bogus) placeholder for it, and even worse, I don't need to get upset if some "belief" gets invalidated. I won't care what you belief, I also won't discriminate you for it, just as long as you don't over actively try to convert me, or harm me.
Now, some of you might point out to me at the subtitle of this log. "In servitude of Koios and Mnemosyne".
Those are two Titans of the Ancient Greek mythology (but you already knew that, right?).
So what is this about no religion? Titans were even considerd a form of Devils back then!
Well, at the top I mentioned that this log will be about programming, I should probably say it's more about Software Engineering than just the act of programming. Now, in both you need to solve problems. And what do you need for that? Intelligence. And what else? (There is more?) Memory.
And of course you knew already that Koios is the Titan of Intelligence and that Mnemosyne is the Titanes of Memory. These two aspects are at the core of programming, because without memory you wouldn't be able to remember what worked and what didn't work, you would need to be incredibly intelligent to deduce the right answer upfront, or infact, multiple times since you can't remember previous versions of what didn't entirely work right. Mostly because it's stateless, it doesn't tend to remember other invocations. And didn't the proverb go something like "Those who don't learn from history repeat the same mistakes?" In other words we need Memory.
But why can't you not go with Memory entirely? Unlike intelligence, it's statefull. Well, for this we invoke the proverbial "An infinite number of monkeys on an infinite number of typewriters with an infinite number of paper and an infinite number of lint, will eventually produce Shakespeare's DNA in some ancient Klingon dialect" (I think it has more chance to be in that form than, say, Hamlet).
In, hopefully, some less words, just memory will only get you a little, since it would take quite a long time to eventually get what you want since you are brute forcing it the entire way.
So a balance of the two would be quite nice.
What else? Oh yeah, books. I'll also be talking a bit about books, perhaps not a lot, mostly programming languages I suppose. But whenever I get (and read) a new Pratchett book I'll mention this.
And something I'll mostlikely talk least about, real life. There are some things I come across I'll just have to write about, something that has riled me up so much I can't ignore it. I don't like to get emotional over things, it seems to impare proper thinking. Iritation/anger for the worst offenders, even if I can then speak fluently, I don't like to be in that state all the time. One odd thing, whenever I have spoken (and it went a bit hard) I tend to forget what I just said, and it impares the thinking process. Quite annoying, especially with telephone conversations, I still need to figure out how to record telephone conversations, or I'll forget them (quite soon after the end).
And we're still not done!
A bit more about myself to wrap this introduction post up, I like quite a lot of other things, in no particular order, Discworld, Star (Trek|Wars), Lord of the Rings (all 5 generally known collected volumes), British Detectives (Inspector Morse, Touch of Frost, Midsomer Murders, Silent Witness, but not US detectives like CSI: .*, etc, etc. Oh, and Doctor Who, I quite like Doctor Who, and I'm crackers about Wallace and Gromit (find the reference), Monty Python tends also to be fun. Oh, and QI, don't forget QI! I also like Stephen Fry's (the host of QI) works, TV and written.
Currently I'm a part-time student/software engineer. I study Computer Science & Engineering on TU/e in the Netherlands, and I work for ISAAC, who also fund my study. I already have a Bachelor degree on the same subject from a diffrent school in the Netherlands, for which I took 2 internships at ISAAC, which we both enjoyed.
ISAAC is a Java "shop", where we create "made to fit" software, mostly in Java.
I quite like the JVM platform (especially HotSpot), so most of the time I'll be looking at languages that run on it, so Scala, JRuby, Clojure. But I won't limit myself to that, I also quite like Haskell and Lisp/Scheme. And C++ can also be fun (Template Meta Programming for example, I would like to thank Andrei Alexandrescu for his book Modern C++ Design that made my really appreciate it).
That's it for now, I'll be customizing this log for a while, then I'll start posting!
I haven't decided on any type of schedule or content length, since university is taking quite some time.
Ok, that's really it for now.
See you (who-ever is reading anyway) around, and till my next post.
--MLeo
PS.
I'll also be talking about the projects I do in my spare time.
