something about the drums in the strokes - reptilia/the strokes - between love and hate stood out for me. after being an avid fan of drum’n'bass for a while i came back to this track and realized,,, “hell yeah” - that’s one of the default drumnbass beats right there!

now i discovered another interesting beat in beck - we dance alone… maybe that’s somewhere else as well.

The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis theorizes that thoughts and behavior are determined (or are at least partially influenced) by language. […] To this day it has not been completely disputed or defended, but has continued to intrigue researchers around the world.

“A language that doesn’t affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.”
— Alan Perlis

via 10 things every bla bla bla …

what about attaching this to a skateboard? ^_^

via yayhooray.com

“i’m not there”

watch the trailer on youtube

Clearly, you and I should be up there.
We should be the hosts of this banquet.
— wtls

start with ruby or python! learn c and/or java later.

why?

because learning programming languages should be like learning how handle bicycles.

• first you learn how to ride the bicycle.
• then you learn how to dismantle the wheels, repair the gearshift and do all the complicated stuff that could brake a lot of things at lots of places.

handling the bare metal is so complicated, tedious, boring and error prone, that you need to know how the fun part about your bicycle feels - riding it.

so before you start hacking network protocols in c, you rather want to create neat websites in ruby.

or games.

Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency. Remember that our sons and grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us. Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty. Think big.
– Daniel Burnham

via Signal VS Noise

ruby + google maps + twitter = WOW!

one more week and we’re online.

via my soup

Note: I started this article about a year ago when I learned about Ruby. I was very enthusiastic about it and and it was rather biased. Now I’ve been programming python for the past half year and finally found time to revisit this. …Now it’s totally biased. ~__-

Something that bugs me for quite a while now: Ruby or Python?

Well… Ruby still does not care about whitespace, where Python does. Typing something like “end” is really tedious and shouldn’t be necessary by now. Also Python advocates “There should be one– and preferably only one –obvious way to do it.”. In fact that’s rather compelling.

But… Ruby is just oh so elegant. It feels right. Give programming n00bs a snippet of Ruby code and they will be able to understand what’s going on. Ruby’s syntax and naming conventions rock, it reads like english; eg: current_user.is_loggedin? in Ruby on Rails*.

“I CAN HAS SAUCECODEZ?”

Python

class Bar(object):
    def __init__(self):
        self.reminder = "hello my name is python"

    def whatYouSay(self):
        return self.reminder

foo = Bar()
print(foo.whatYouSay())

vs

Ruby

class Bar
  def initialize
    @reminder = "ohai my name is ruby"
  end

  def what_you_say?
    @reminder
  end
end

foo = Bar.new
print foo.what_you_say?

Ruby still has some quirks, but it’s close to be teh perfect 1337 h4xx0r language.

And with the new Parser Ruby is 3 times as fast as Python. **

Python’s followers praise that there’s only one way to do it. Yes, in Ruby there are multiple ways. But there’s always one perfect way depending on the situation. The code feels so natural when you write dj.turn_the_volume_up unless dj.is_tired? instead of writing a complete if/then/else/not block. Python and Ruby produce the same Output, but the Ruby solution is beautiful.

Also: As the medium is the message and changes the communicator more than one’d expect, you’d better use a great medium.

I prefer Ruby’s beauty. That’s it for me.

If everything goes as the scientists say I’m here for approximately 85 years. What am I going to do with my time? There are many paths one can walk, but just one is perfect for oneself. When I imagine how many years I’m going to spend hacking, I’d rather enjoy them.

Or… do something else all together :).

Fin.

The future of open source is not only open source, but shared source: a programming language in a wikipedia like environment.

Imagine everything you write is immediately available to every other user of the language. the community continuously builds / updates / extends / fixes libraries, no duplicate projects, because everything is immediately in the “language core library” and can be fixed and update on-the-fly. No more dealing with pesky .patch files and finding owners of abandoned projects. the first true language for the web.

Also: an organic process will yield way better results than any library designer can ever think of.

This is one of the reasons why I’m enthusiastic about the JISP Project - a LISP implementation using Javascript. Plus programs can shared as JSON objects, which is just great!

There’s only one thing: for this idea to really work the language would be easy enough to be learned by a broader range of people. LISP probably isn’t the best choice for mass adoption. Maybe a Mixture of Ruby and LISP: A balance between LISP’s power to “write code using code” and Ruby’s KISS approach, elegance and beauty.

I think Smalltalk tried to achieve something similar once, but was way ahead of it’s time. Good thing that Ruby is a descendant of Smalltalk ^__^.

Also: Ruby on Wikipedia.