Up to date there is No single street name for a top programmer or computer scientist in any of the Top 20 most developed countries in the world during the last 60 years.There is no statue built in the center of a major city for a renown programmer or computer scientists.No “Presidential Medal” or “Congressional Gold Medal” has been awarded to a computer scientists or programmer.There is no nationally televised social reward ceremony for computer programmers and scientists like there is for artists, football or basketball players, etc.There is no red carpet and Nobel pri...

When I was a teenager I played high caliber baseball. I’m competitive to a fault and when I decide I want to be good at something, results usually follow. Now I’m a third year undergrad studying computer science. There’s something critically different between programming and sports though: A pitching coach teaches you how to pitch, but a CS professor doesn’t teach you how to code.I was surprised that neither my TAs nor professors critiqued my code during my first year, but grew concerned after my second year. The assignments were larger and the problems tougher, but...

A popular saying goes that Programmers are machines that turn caffeine into code.And sure enough, ask a random programmer when they do their best work and there’s a high chance they will admit to a lot of late nights. Some earlier, some later. A popular trend is to get up at 4am and get some work done before the day’s craziness begins. Others like going to bed at 4am.At the gist of all this is avoiding distractions. But you could just lock the door, what’s so special about the night?I think it boils down to three things: the maker’s schedule, the sleepy brain and br...

1. The Mature ProgrammerThe mature programmer manages their own time and productivity well. The MP knows that maintenance is as much work as the initial writingand code always takes longer than you think. The MP knows that any changes to code can introduce bugs, no matter how seemingly trivial.The MP knows that premature optimization is foolish and dangerous. The MP knows that sexy coding like writing big complex systems fromscratch is rarely the best way to go. The MP does not get into ego competitions about who has the prettiest code. The MP acheives thebest final result in the minimum ...

Although it’s become a cultural mainstay now, I still remember when I first saw that thick book — the one with the wizard on the cover — about a school for magic where wonders are easily conjured by those who know the proper spells. Of course, I’m talking about the Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs. There was that other book with the spells, but the “Wizard Book” sincerely claimed to teach magic.For the past few years, I’ve been working as a software developer in the newsroom, where perceptions of my kind have changed from novelty ...

So there's recently been a bit of hype about another Colebourne article: http://blog.joda.org/2011/11/real-life-scala-feedback-from-yammer.htmlI'd like to respond to a few points he makes.First - You should evaluate Scala and pay attention to its benefits and flaws before adopting it.  Yes, there are flaws to Scala.   Working at typesafe makes you more aware of some of them.  We're actively working to reduce/minimize/get rid of these.   In my opinion, the negatives of using Scala are peanuts compared to the postives of choosing Scala over Java.  I think everyone s...

If this isn’t a Zawinski quote, it should be.I have avoided the JVM my entire life. I am presently confronted with problems which fit in the JVM; JVM libraries, concurrency, giant data: all that good stuff. Rather than doing something insane like learning Java, I figured I’d learn me some Clojure. Why not? It’s got everything I need: JVM guts, lispy goodness; what is not to love?Well, as it turns out, one enormous, gaping lacuna is Clojure’s numerics performance. Let’s say you want to do something simple, like sum up 3 million numbers in a vector. I do shit l...

A few years ago I visited a friend who is a graduate student in linguistics. After some time he asked me if I was aware of the work by Chomsky on formal languages. I told him that yes, Chomsky work was a basis for much of the developments in theoretical computer science. More than that, I was glad to learn that there was something technical that I could share and discuss with other people in linguistics.At the time I found this was just a great coincidence. It was only recently, though, that I started to think seriously about the implications of the idea that much of our understanding of compu...