The Engineer also Muses

I found this on a forum I read and thought I’d share it with you

A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages

1801 – Joseph Marie Jacquard uses punch cards to instruct a loom to weave “hello, world” into a tapestry. Redditers of the time are not impressed due to the lack of tail call recursion, concurrency, or proper capitalization.

1842 – Ada Lovelace writes the first program. She is hampered in her efforts by the minor inconvenience that she doesn’t have any actual computers to run her code. Enterprise architects will later relearn her techniques in order to program in UML.

1936 – Alan Turing invents every programming language that will ever be but is shanghaied by British Intelligence to be 007 before he can patent them.

1936 – Alonzo Church also invents every language that will ever be but does it better. His lambda calculus is ignored because it is insufficiently C-like. This criticism occurs in spite of the fact that C has not yet been invented.

1940s – Various “computers” are “programmed” using direct wiring and switches. Engineers do this in order to avoid the tabs vs spaces debate.

1957 – John Backus and IBM create FORTRAN. There’s nothing funny about IBM or FORTRAN. It is a syntax error to write FORTRAN while not wearing a blue tie.

1958 – John McCarthy and Paul Graham invent LISP. Due to high costs caused by a post-war depletion of the strategic parentheses reserve LISP never becomes popular. In spite of its lack of popularity, LISP (now “Lisp” or sometimes “Arc”) remains an influential language in “key algorithmic techniques such as recursion and condescension”.

1959 – After losing a bet with L. Ron Hubbard, Grace Hopper and several other sadists invent the Capitalization Of Boilerplate Oriented Language (COBOL) . Years later, in a misguided and sexist retaliation against Adm. Hopper’s COBOL work, Ruby conferences frequently feature misogynistic material.

1964 – John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz create BASIC, an unstructured programming language for non-computer scientists.

1965 – Kemeny and Kurtz go to 1964.

1970 – Guy Steele and Gerald Sussman create Scheme. Their work leads to a series of “Lambda the Ultimate” papers culminating in “Lambda the Ultimate Kitchen Utensil.” This paper becomes the basis for a long running, but ultimately unsuccessful run of late night infomercials. Lambdas are relegated to relative obscurity until Java makes them popular by not having them.

1970 – Niklaus Wirth creates Pascal, a procedural language. Critics immediately denounce Pascal because it uses “x := x + y” syntax instead of the more familiar C-like “x = x + y”. This criticism happens in spite of the fact that C has not yet been invented.

1972 – Dennis Ritchie invents a powerful gun that shoots both forward and backward simultaneously. Not satisfied with the number of deaths and permanent maimings from that invention he invents C and Unix.

1972 – Alain Colmerauer designs the logic language Prolog. His goal is to create a language with the intelligence of a two year old. He proves he has reached his goal by showing a Prolog session that says “No.” to every query.

1973 – Robin Milner creates ML, a language based on the M&M type theory. ML begets SML which has a formally specified semantics. When asked for a formal semantics of the formal semantics Milner’s head explodes. Other well known languages in the ML family include OCaml, F#, and Visual Basic.

1980 – Alan Kay creates Smalltalk and invents the term “object oriented.” When asked what that means he replies, “Smalltalk programs are just objects.” When asked what objects are made of he replies, “objects.” When asked again he says “look, it’s all objects all the way down. Until you reach turtles.”

1983 – Bjarne Stroustrup bolts everything he’s ever heard of onto C to create C++. The resulting language is so complex that programs must be sent to the future to be compiled by the Skynet artificial intelligence. Build times suffer. Skynet’s motives for performing the service remain unclear but spokespeople from the future say “there is nothing to be concerned about, baby,” in an Austrian accented monotones. There is some speculation that Skynet is nothing more than a pretentious buffer overrun.

1986 – Brad Cox and Tom Love create Objective-C, announcing “this language has all the memory safety of C combined with all the blazing speed of Smalltalk.” Modern historians suspect the two were dyslexic.

1987 – Larry Wall falls asleep and hits Larry Wall’s forehead on the keyboard. Upon waking Larry Wall decides that the string of characters on Larry Wall’s monitor isn’t random but an example program in a programming language that God wants His prophet, Larry Wall, to design. Perl is born.

1990 – A committee formed by Simon Peyton-Jones, Paul Hudak, Philip Wadler, Ashton Kutcher, and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals creates Haskell, a pure, non-strict, functional language. Haskell gets some resistance due to the complexity of using monads to control side effects. Wadler tries to appease critics by explaining that “a monad is a monoid in the category of endofunctors, what’s the problem?”

1991 – Dutch programmer Guido van Rossum travels to Argentina for a mysterious operation. He returns with a large cranial scar, invents Python, is declared Dictator for Life by legions of followers, and announces to the world that “There Is Only One Way to Do It.” Poland becomes nervous.

1995 – Yukihiro “Mad Matz” Matsumoto creates Ruby to avert some vaguely unspecified apocalypse that will leave Australia a desert run by mohawked warriors and Tina Turner. The language is later renamed Ruby on Rails by its real inventor, David Heinemeier Hansson. [The bit about Matsumoto inventing a language called Ruby never happened and better be removed in the next revision of this article - DHH].

1995 – Brendan Eich reads up on every mistake ever made in designing a programming language, invents a few more, and creates LiveScript. Later, in an effort to cash in on the popularity of Java the language is renamed JavaScript. Later still, in an effort to cash in on the popularity of skin diseases the language is renamed ECMAScript.

1996 – James Gosling invents Java. Java is a relatively verbose, garbage collected, class based, statically typed, single dispatch, object oriented language with single implementation inheritance and multiple interface inheritance. Sun loudly heralds Java’s novelty.

2001 – Anders Hejlsberg invents C#. C# is a relatively verbose, garbage collected, class based, statically typed, single dispatch, object oriented language with single implementation inheritance and multiple interface inheritance. Microsoft loudly heralds C#’s novelty.

2003 – A drunken Martin Odersky sees a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup ad featuring somebody’s peanut butter getting on somebody else’s chocolate and has an idea. He creates Scala, a language that unifies constructs from both object oriented and functional languages. This pisses off both groups and each promptly declares jihad.

1. Find an attractive prisoner of war, bring her home, shave her head, trim her nails, and give her new clothes. Then she’s yours. – (Deuteronomy 21:11-13)

2. Find a prostitute and marry her. – (Hosea 1:1-3)

3. Find a man with seven daughters, and impress him by watering his flock. – Moses (Exodus 2:16-21)

4. Purchase a piece of property, and get a woman as part of the deal. – Boaz (Ruth 4:5-10)

5. Go to a party and hide. When the women come out to dance, grab one and carry her off to be your wife. – Benjaminites (Judges 21:19-25)

6. Have God create a wife for you while you sleep. Note: this will cost you. – Adam (Genesis 2:19-24)

7. Agree to work seven years in exchange for a woman’s hand in marriage. Get tricked into marrying the wrong woman. Then work another seven years for the woman you wanted to marry in the first place. That’s right. Fourteen years of toil for a wife. – Jacob (Genesis 29:15-30)

8. Cut 200 foreskins off of your future father-in-law’s enemies and get his daughter for a wife. – David (I Samuel 18:27)

9. Even if no one is out there, just wander around a bit and you’ll definitely find someone. (It’s all relative, of course.) – Cain (Genesis 4:16-17)

10. Become the emperor of a huge nation and hold a beauty contest. – Xerxes or Ahasuerus (Esther 2:3-4)

11. When you see someone you like, go home and tell your parents, “I have seen a … woman; now get her for me.” If your parents question your decision, simply say, “Get her for me. She’s the one for me.” – Samson (Judges 14:1-3)

12. Kill any husband and take HIS wife (Prepare to lose four sons, though). – David (2 Samuel 11)

13. Wait for your brother to die. Take his widow. (It’s not just a good idea; it’s the law.) – Onana and Boaz (Deuteronomy or Leviticus, example in Ruth)

14. Don’t be so picky. Make up for quality with quantity. – Solomon (1 Kings 11:1-3)

15. A wife?…NOT? – Paul (1 Corinthians 7:32-35)

Idealist – A man who thinks the world can be saved by writing a pamphlet

Benjamin Disraeli

In 1988, as a 3-year-old petulance in my parents’ lives, we were travelling through the South of Poland when we stopped in a town centre to watch the passing parade. This was no normal parade, it was my first experience of a protest march – the Solidarność protests that helped make Poland free. Since then, I have often considered solidarity, and what it means to me.

Zip through time 21 years, and this year I made a trek to Canberra for the ever-thrilling Queer Collaborations (QC), an event which is the highlight of any queer activists’ calendar. For some, it’s the socialising; for others, the political action; but for a select few, it’s poking fun at the Socialist Alternative and their views that makes a week of chilly temperatures, early mornings, and late night drinking sessions all worthwhile. At this event, SAlt (Socialist Alternative) were determined to force solidarity upon us, align the event with the Palestinian cause and seek for freedom from the horrific Israeli oppression. I am not well versed in the ancient battle between the Arabic and Israeli cultures and appreciate the tenderness of this issue. What struck me most, though, was the comment of a Queer Palestinian, Randah, one of the two QSN Officers: “This is a problem caused by white people, and most people in the area don’t think that white people can, or should really solve it”. This article is about SAlt’s flawed perceptions – what is solidarity? Why should we be in solidarity with anyone else? And, critically, what can we learn from these concepts that will actually be useful in our lives?

The Oxford English Dictionary (one of my favourite sources) defines Solidarity as The fact or quality, on the part of communities, etc., of being perfectly united or at one in some respect, esp. in interests, sympathies, or aspirations. So, on a base level, to be in solidarity with, say, the Palestinian Liberation Movement would suggest that we, as oppressed people (the queers, womyn, disabled, etc) have the same aspiration – to be free of oppression. A noble cause, yes, but from the outset, problematic: what sort of oppression are we seeking freedom from? To join in solidarity with someone would suggest that you can identify with them: be it through the same government, same community, or for the same rights and recognition. An article on the SAlt website loudly espouses the view “The Palestinians need our solidarity”, juxtaposed with a piece on how the “system stifles our sexuality”. Two worthy causes, definitely, but how interrelated are they? 75% of Palestinian people on the West Bank and 98% of those in the Gaza Strip are estimated to be Islamic, which has strong guidelines about expressions of sexuality and gender, especially when it comes to femininity and homosexuality. However, we can’t just take two articles next to each other as a sign of the views of the people, as Antares found out in Week 7’s issue of Honi Soit.

In the earlier stages of 2009, an argument erupted over the Queer e-list about the (accidental) deletion of an article calling for solidarity with the Palestinians through Students for Palestine. This continued on through to QC where I was engaged in an argument with some members from SAlt about whether it was a queer issue. It is important at this point to remember that many members of SAlt identify as “queer”, though they do so to recognise their solidarity with the queer movement and to “subvert heterosexuality”, not because they necessarily fall under the queer umbrella.

To their point, the people I was talking to saw Palestine as a queer issue because they were looking for recognition as equals and freedom from the “Zionists” in Israel who are taking traditional Palestinian land (as per the agreement settled by that man of wonder, Winston Churchill – professional fucker-upperer and former UK Prime Minister). This compares with seeking solidarity for Poland with Solidarność: freedom from the oppressive communist (which is comparable to socialism) regime. Each of the groups: queers, Poles, and Palestinians, seeking freedom for something, and thus, natural allies.

Poland, a country with approximately 90% Roman Catholics, is staunchly conservative. Their recent PM-President twin team (they were identical twins) denied many rights for queer Poles, a group which is only now coming forward. Through their fight for solidarity, they were happy to ignore the queers. Unfortunately, not much is written on the perspective of Solidarność on queer rights, so this is where this part of the story ends. Solidarity, though, goes on…

We are now left with Palestinians and queers, and their solidarity. Particularly queers who are students at Sydney University, a group made up of diverse backgrounds. I won’t deny, I am appalled that Israel is taking land from the Palestinians, though I am certainly not in a position to make a solution. Nonetheless, Israel is significantly more queer-friendly than Palestine, and many queer Palestinians seek asylum in Israel to avoid severe penalties for being queer.

I’m torn now – is it about land or keeping myself safe? Palestinians also are somewhat opposed to the idea of more Caucasians interfering – the last one to do so successfully was Bill Clinton. So, tell me again, why am I, as a queer, in solidarity with Palestine when it doesn’t accept my identity, it refuses to allow for my friends’ sexualities and genders to be represented as equal, and it feels that I, as a Caucasian, was part of the problem and will not be part of the solution? And yet, the cry continues – PALESTINIAN SOLIDARITY IS A QUEER ISSUE, WE MUST BE IN SOLIDARITY WITH THEM.

The next argument I took with them as to why we shouldn’t focus on Palestine was that we are still addressing many rights for queers at our own place. Over this year, the Queer Action Collective has worked on the issues of equal marriage rights and queer domestic violence, to improve the conditions for queers within our community. As the Bible suggests: “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye” (Matthew 7:3). But, of cause, the Bible – who reads that any more?

Ultimately, for me the question of solidarity comes down to this – when two oppressed groups with similar views seek freedom from similar groups, their fight should be together as one. Most definitely. I cannot, however, fathom why I or the majority of other queers would align with Palestine given the severe disparity in views about homosexuality. This is not to say their fight is any less important, but moreover, is not our fight.

Twenty years ago, the Berlin Wall fell. There’s a lot being said about it at the moment, and I don’t really have anything to add here. But, I was in Poland both before and after their succession from the USSR, and many of the improvements made were for the better. I wrote an article a little while ago for Honi Soit about Solidarity, tying it in with the Solidarność and the Palestinian Liberation Front against the Queer Rights movement. When I get a chance, I’ll post it.

Is the world a better place for being free of the ties of the Berlin Wall and the USSR? That’s anyone’s guess, but the people of Berlin rejoice.

So, I was going through my RSS reader the other day (I use only the best – Google Reader), and it occurred to me that I hadn’t said boo on my own page for 25% of the year.  It seems like a long time – and then I realised, most relationships don’t even last that long.

What have I been up to, you might ask?  Here are a few of the things, with a rating on how good they are.

- My uni work has been slow, but I’ve had a few great advances recently in my model and it’s going like the clappers now.  3/5

- I’ve recently worked as a polling booth attendant, and within a day was promoted to the third most senior counter (well, you can’t go straight to the top, but that’s pretty close).  Dan also made it, and we’ve both been invited back to count for another election.  At $19.70 an hour, I’m not complaining too loudly  5/5

- I haven’t had much work as an ambassador, but what work I have had has mostly been demonstrating the wonders of Silly Putty.  This has resulted in days where my hands are covered in food colouring, my clothes soaked in PVA and borax, and, on one fine occasion, the entire concoction poured through my hair.  The statement “they don’t pay me enough for this” has never been more true.  2/5

- I have become a councillor with my university’s postgraduate council.  Yes, that’s right… You can now call me Councilman Janek.  The unfortunate thing is that one of my least favourite people in the world, a national queer officer and general bitch, Hitty.  She is also a prominent member of SAlt (if you don’t know what it is, think Socialist and then Google it).  Whilst she is the bane of my existence, I am also the bane of hers, so we get to piss each other off! 3/5

- My health hasn’t improved a good deal.  In fact, I now have back pain to add to my list of dramas.  When I take tablets in the morning, though, I remember them according to what each one does – “head, back, arms, legs, itching (antihistamine, not for crabs), skin (Vitamin D – I don’t get out enough )”  This mostly sucks, but I still get my disabled parking permit. 1/5

- I got a new phone!  It came down to a toss-up between the iPhone and the HTC Magic, and I went with the latter which runs on Google ANDROID.  Coolest phone ever.  If you don’t know much about it, go and check it out now! 5/5

Life is otherwise moving very quickly, and I’m sometimes struggling to catch up.  Sometimes, I forget I even have a blog.  But, I promise to blog more often, especially when Dan is busy.