“to date, the virtual machine abstraction has been relatively weak: the Java and MS.NET runtimes are essentially idealized versions of modern computer architecture that don’t leak memory or crash (at least, they’re not supposed to leak memory or crash.) This reminds of me of something I heard about the early days of cinema: there was a while, before Eisenstein and others invented a cinematic vernacular, where people made movies by just locking down a camera and filming a play.” — Adam Wolff

“I seem to recall that it was not Eisenstein that invented the pan (although he used it to great effect), it was Porter, one of Edison’s cameramen, who noticed that when a camera fell over while still running, the resulting film was still understandable and had an interesting effect. Prior to that, people had just _assumed_ that moving the camera would ruin the film (as it did for still pictures). Porter’s “Great Train Robbery” is cited as the earliest example of a film that includes pan shots. Porter’s invention happened in the early days of cinematography, but was not widely adopted for some time.

“In a similar way, McCarthy’s *Lisp* broke out of the straightjacket of numerical programming by realizing that programs were data. Lisp is as old as Fortran, but many of its concepts are still not widely adopted. Paul Graham has an interesting take on this in his “Revenge of the Nerds,” where he shows that one-by-one, the features of Lisp are slowly being grafted onto Fortran’s numerical descendants.” — P T Withington responds in a comment to the above post

I love the comparison of programming language evolution to innovations in early motion pictures. The first movies were as if plays performed in the theather had been captured on film. Much later was the medium truly discoved and applied to its potential. P T Withington argues that this is not a lack of inspiration in the case of programming languages since Lisp was first developed in 1958. It was originally, a lack of compute power; but perhaps with today’s multi-gigahertz processors, Adam’s analogy fits.

My feelings about programming languages are influenced by spending many of my formative years coding “close to the machine” to squeeze graphics performance from personal computers. I find it breath-taking to reflect on the countless layers of software that can cause today’s fast processors to run seemingly simple applications so slowly. However, conceptually simple applications can require a powerful programming language to make them simple to write. Any interesting web application has a lot going on under-the-hood from internet protocols to user interface to database operations.

In an environment where time-to-market is essential and user experience is key, I find that Laszlo and the Flash Player provide a fair balance of performance and power.

“Everyone is scared to get up there and lay it on the line. I’ve learned that from men who let me in on their secret, that they are just as scared as anyone, but are expected to JUST DO IT. I think women are often given permission to be scared of things like public speaking and BACK AWAY from opportunities, instead of move towards them.” — Halley‘s comment on misbehaving.net

A few years ago, I met Anita Borg at the 1999 top 25 women of the web awards. We struck up a conversation at the bar and after introductions and a bit of small talk she said to me: “you should publish.” I got the sense that she meant, you, as in every woman in technology, and of course, me in particular. When I asked her what I had to write about, she looked intently serious and a bit exasperated when she replied, “whatever you are working on.” She didn’t need to tell me that’s what the men write about. She didn’t need to ask: what makes you believe that your work and your thoughts are any less significant than the latest technical article or paper that you have read?

Fast forward to five years later and I haven’t published an article or paper. I could argue that in between family and work that I don’t have the time. I really don’t. However, that’s not the whole story. In truth, I’d like to write something that is more than a few paragraphs. Writing English is not like writing code. It’s harder (at least for me). There’s no compiler. You can’t run it afterwards to see if makes sense and feels right. It’s a different thing entirely.

One of the reasons I keep a web log is for writing practice.

“In 2 years of following the blog phenomenon closely, I can safely say I’ve seen all the criticisms before. They’re almost always written by someone who hasn’t sat at my keyboard. Many times they turn things that have long been considered virtues in other contexts directly on their head. A writer a-borning is always urged to face the blank sheet of paper, each day, every day, without fail. Fill it. The better part of writing then becomes deciding what not to include. For blog critics, filling the page is a vice. The budding writer is also urged to find her inner voice, to speak from the heart, because the only writing that truly matters, that will be remembered, is the writing that comes from a distinct point of view. For blog critics, writing from your point of view is considered egotism. I even saw someone quit weblogging because he felt there was something wrong with writing statements that were not immediately challenged, an interesting social phenomenon born perhaps of chat rooms and newsgroups.

“I see these potshots and I’m flabbergasted. We’re to bury ourselves? We’re to wait until we have something Important(tm) to say before speaking? Until our design is an award-winner?

“I say, Go to hell. I mean it. Maybe this form means nothing to you. Well, fine, because I am not writing for you. I am writing for me. I am writing for what I get out of the process of thinking about a political issue or a scientific discovery and explaining it to my readers. I am writing for the responses I get from my readers. I am writing for the interplay with the larger community of webloggers.

“I’m doing nothing different than writers have done for millennia. I just have better tools. Fan-fucking-tastic better tools.” — a weblogger’s manifestito

(this quote from a now obsolete web page was resurrected thru the magic of the wayback machine)

read more top ten reasons for a web log

“Our user interface designs do not scale well to the available screen real estate. Windows are hard to access on very large or heterogeneous displays, like Tablets and non-touch-enabled devices. Notifications come up where one is not attending, and windows open in unexpected places or are improperly sized for their contents.” — Microsoft Research VIBE, Visualization and Interaction for Business and Entertainment

The Microsoft team presents a number of ideas for dealing with complexity across large screens. I like the idea of Drag-and-Pop which might help navigate even not so big. yet cluttered desktops like mine.

via every breath death defying: more GUI Madness