techno.blog("Dion")

First we saw the productive pair programmer and now we see how we are dealing with humans, and it depends on the connections.

Donald Knuth is a god. Someone recently told me that he was at an event where everyone in the room were well known heavy hitters, and when Donald came in the room they all quietened down.

The Art of Computer Programming is an amazing tomb, and thus he gets the award:

Donald Ervin Knuth is a renowned computer scientist and Professor Emeritus of the Art of Computer Programming[2] at Stanford University.

Author of the seminal multi-volume work The Art of Computer Programming (”TAOCP”), Knuth has been called the “father” of the analysis of algorithms, contributing to the development of, and systematizing formal mathematical techniques for, the rigorous analysis of the computational complexity of algorithms, and in the process popularizing asymptotic notation.

In addition to fundamental contributions in several branches of theoretical computer science, Knuth is also the creator of the TeX computer typesetting system, the related METAFONT font definition language and rendering system, and the Computer Modern family of typefaces.

A prolific writer and scholar, Knuth is also creator of the WEB/CWEB computer programming systems designed to encourage and facilitate literate programming, as well as designer of the MMIX instruction set architecture.

What about the other awards?

• Community Waiting for an Update
• Biggest Hack for a Language Runtime
• Most Original Name for a New Language
• Most Format Restrictive Language
• Best Comeback for a Programming Language
• Most Overloaded Product Name

Got some ideas for awards you would give?

Man, what a wait. 10 years and counting? The community has started to take hold and have updated Perl 5 a lot recently, which most people outside of the core community never see as they wait for the Big One. When Perl 6 and Parrot really hit primetime, I wonder what will happen?

What about the other awards?

• Lifetime Achievement
• Community Waiting for an Update
• Biggest Hack for a Language Runtime
• Most Original Name for a New Language
• Most Format Restrictive Language
• Best Comeback for a Programming Language
• Most Overloaded Product Name

Got some ideas for awards you would give?

People make fun of the Ruby MRI runtime. The Java and Pythonistas giggle. What is interesting though is how it has been good enough for a lot of people. However, there is no reason for a Ruby runtime to be that slow, so it is great to see the competition across YARV, Rubinious, and of course JRuby.

The beauty of being slow, is that you have a lot of room to get faster :)

Want to learn about Ruby 1.9? Matz came to Google the other day to talk about it:

What about the other awards?

• Lifetime Achievement
• Community Waiting for an Update
• Biggest Hack for a Language Runtime
• Most Original Name for a New Language
• Most Format Restrictive Language
• Best Comeback for a Programming Language
• Most Overloaded Product Name

Got some ideas for awards you would give?

You have the originally named languages of A, B, and the popular C. Then Bjarne Stroustrup gets clever and goes for C++. Anders comes along with C# and adds the musical touch.

Walter Bright creates a language that “originates as a re-engineering of C++, but even though it is predominantly influenced by that language, it is not a variant of C++. D has redesigned some C++ features and has been influenced by concepts used in other programming languages, such as Java, C# and Eiffel.”

Walter then named the language …. D.

Other entrants are of course E, and the very new Arc.

What about the other awards?

• Lifetime Achievement
• Community Waiting for an Update
• Biggest Hack for a Language Runtime
• Most Original Name for a New Language
• Most Format Restrictive Language
• Best Comeback for a Programming Language
• Most Overloaded Product Name

Got some ideas for awards you would give?

Fortran pre-90 was very restrictive. There is the magic of column one, the line numbers, etc.

The original Fortran was written for the IBM 704 and you programmed it on punch cards which is why the restrictions were in place. Before Fortran, most of the community were coding using assembler, and Fortran was a factor of 20 more concise. Take that modern Ruby!

There were some close runners up. Fortran 90 fixed a bunch of these issues, however it was a touch too late.
Some forms of Basic has some of the issues too, namely with the explicit line numbers.

Python should maybe win the award since it is a very modern language, and the restrictiveness that people love or hate are not due to computer needs, but rather a benevolent dictator and his opinions :)

Fortran has also won the award for “programming language name that sounds like a robot from the future”.

What about the other awards?

• Lifetime Achievement
• Community Waiting for an Update
• Biggest Hack for a Language Runtime
• Most Original Name for a New Language
• Most Format Restrictive Language
• Best Comeback for a Programming Language
• Most Overloaded Product Name

Got some ideas for awards you would give?

In honour of the Oscar’s, which itself honours those of us who make millions of dollars for doing their job, I thought it was time for the geeks to have their own award show. This is the first in a series that awards a Lisa to those that deserve it.

To start with, Adobe announced Air today, and they win the award for “Most Overloaded Product Name” :)

In all seriousness, congrats to the Adobe team for the 1.0 release!

What about the other awards?

• Lifetime Achievement
• Community Waiting for an Update
• Biggest Hack for a Language Runtime
• Most Original Name for a New Language
• Most Format Restrictive Language
• Best Comeback for a Programming Language
• Most Overloaded Product Name

Got some ideas for awards you would give?