Why are programming languages brittle? Richard Gabriel has this to say about that.
For example, "Design a system where if someone deletes 1KB of code, the system will self-repair in 24 hours." I will be summarizing the workshop in the next month, and we will publish a manifesto. Maybe some prizes will be given for them.
Good sentiments from a great Lisp geek. How did I end up at this blog entry? I'm not quite sure. It's been a long Memorial Day weekend here in the States, and I've missed a couple of days' entries worth of blog writing. I've been reading Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice which V. and I saw last year in Ashland and Philip Roth's Operation Shylock: A Confession, which I read about a decade ago. In between, I've been looking over open source e-learning software, prepping for an online class I've been wanting to teach. On top of that we watched a bunch of flicks on DVD: Virgin Suicides, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Reign of Fire. All in all, an eclectic weekend.
Anyway, I got sidetracked by a public argument between Nikolai Bezroukov and Eric S. Raymond. It started with this article in the online journal, First Monday, spread out over to Slashdot, and ended with this short but to the point article.
OK, so programming languages need to be more forgiving, like natural languages, but then we won't be writing programs, but some other kind of texts. Not that I'm against this in any way, just, but ... It reminds me of the turn philosophy took after Heidegger started writing poetry in place of phenomenology. Most of the contemplative pieces you find on programming languages tend to be of the, X is a superior programming language compared to Y. Someday, instead of writing halfassed blog entries, I'll get down to the difficult task of specifying my category-oriented programming language.
Posted by jim at May 26, 2003 06:12 PMProbably the greatest Shakespearean role ever performed was by Lawrence Olivier as Shylock in Jonathan Miller's National Theatre Production of "The Merchant of Venice" (BBC-TV, 1974). Sadly, it was never committed to film, but remains fairly accessible at many public libraries. Olivier is stunning, hilarious, devastating.
Posted by: Ratso~~ on May 27, 2003 08:43 PM