Software application development
This blog is intended to provoke discussion and exchange between like minded software application developers, engineers, architects, project managers - and keen hobbyists too.
Wednesday 10 September 2008, 12:12 PM
Perl in the shell
I think it’s really great that RIM have opened a new office and launched a new product while Sun is hosting the first annual MySQL customer conferences, IDC’s market predictions are just superb and xyz company’s warnings over security and data breaches are good too. But what about the languages that bind all these developments to drive the mechanics of what surfaces on the technology horizon every day?
Maybe it’s just because I try to stay focused on the application development “beat”, but I feel everything is just a bit too “cosmetic” right now. It’s like putting a chrome tailpipe on your exhaust without worrying about the workings of your engine.
I was kind of interested to see that Oracle had launched an application testing suite this week, but it’s all a bit, “…helping customers deliver high quality, mission-critical applications faster and with less effort.” - if you know what I mean. Not exactly phone the BBC and call the Prime Minister stuff is it?
It would be great if we could ‘feel’ the industry a little more in my opinion. I saw a new book launched this week called The Productive Programmer by “master” (no less) developer Neil Ford. This volume is supposed to be full of critical timesaving and productivity tools that you can adopt right away, no matter what platform you use.
According to the publishers, “Ford not only offers advice on the mechanics of productivity - how to work smarter, spurn interruptions, get the most out your computer and avoid repetition - he also details valuable practices that will help you elude common traps, improve your code and become more valuable to your team.”
Great! At last! If you’re looking for that book – the publisher sounds Irish, starts with an “O” and rhymes with “smiley”.
Apologies for ranting, but the weight of the corporate message machine seems to be so ‘macroeconomic’ these days that I fear we’re losing site of the minutiae of detail that I think programmers are so fond of.
As for my pal Jason, well I immersed myself in this Perl project with him and enjoyed every bit of it. His bio claims that he speaks “fluent munchkin”, he dies his hair blue, orange and green and he titles his blog Ramblings of a Geek. Need I say more?
PreviousComments on this post
Amen Adrian. I have been stewing over this for a while, and not only is there not enough about "real programming", what little there is seems to always imply that it should be trivial - "mashups" seems to be the buzz-word right now, and from what I can gather we should all be able to just "mashup" everything to create anything we want...
My first programs were written in FORTRAN, and entered via an IBM 026 punch card machine. I remember the excitement of getting and reading the Bell Systems Technical Journal issues on Unix development (and Plan 9, for that matter), I remember when Perl version 1 came out, and I remember when Niklaus Wirth was developing, and writing about, Modula and Modula-2. Honestly, I haven't seen a really good article about programming or programming languages in a long, long time.
Is there not enough demand? Or are today's programmers simply too busy working to write about it? Or does it all come under "proprietary company information" or "trade secrets", and they aren't allowed to write about it?
jw 10/9/2008
Nice one JW,
I don't know - but I guess there's a fine line between drag and drop "componentised" programming to bring in components that simply don't need to be reinvented (and mash ups too I guess) and the type of FORTAN bare @rsed coding that you obviously started on.
The only thing I can say is that if you Google: "Perl in the shell" - you won't find many people (I can only find me) that have ever used that title and I think it's a REALLY obvious one that's kind of cute too.
Maybe that fact speaks for itself?
AdrianB
Generally speaking, the lack of good programming articles is mainly due to that they focus on a small percentage of the readers. A lot of programmers would love to get articles published but most magazines either won't publish a programming article or will give so little space for the article that it becomes shadow. I guess that is why blogs are probably better suited for programming articles - no restriction on length and you don't have to 'dumb it down' if you don't want to :)
You made a great point there Jason - we are usually platform specific with these kind of in depth pieces and that can put you off if it's not your preferred flavour of code.
That's why I used to be involved with a title that aimed to be 'cross-platform' for developers of all shapes and sizes. We just about pulled it off - well, for 50 issues we did. But you're right, blogging environments are a great arena for us to now drill into these issues.
The more reminiscing on FOTRAN and all things 1970s-onward related the better I say. Right, got to go and look at some pictures of Commodore PETs now
Adrian, go for a Commore PET emulator (http://www.viceteam.org) instead of just looking at the photos of a Commodore PET. An emulator is much more fun ;-)
