• Programming Languages: Application and Interpretation by Shriram Krishnamurthi
  At present count, over 25 universities use part or all of the book, and some ambitious high-schools use select chapters. Users range from major research universities to liberal arts colleges, from public to private universities, and cover four continents.
  (tags: books compiler computer-science programming scheme book free languages)
• Implementing Type Inference: Not so Hard!
  Discusses and links to the book "Programming Languages: Application and Interpretation by Shriram Krishnamurthi".
  (tags: programming types inference type-inference cat-language)
• Fan Programing Language - JVM Languages (thread on Google Groups)
  This is the thread on the JVM Languages group where the Fan language was announced.
  (tags: programming fan jvm clr)

Thread: 0 replies. reply Last updated: 8:30 PM

I think finishing the school year has been very theraputic for me. I feel a lot better than I have in a while, a lot more relaxed, calm, at ease. Things are slowing down and I like it.

That's not to say everything is rosy in my life - far from it, I'm still dealing with customers that refuse to pay significant invoices, those close to me know how that has affected my family. As I mentioned on Twitter last week, I'm going to have to take legal action to get things resolved, and that sucks.

Other than that distraction, I'm feeling more clarity than I have in a while. Specifically, I'm leaning towards making some positive changes to my lifestyle.

Firstly, I need to set a more strict schedule for work. I need better separation between my work time and the rest of my life. My kids need more of my time. They haven't had my time for a long, long time, mostly because my work time hasn't been managed well enough. Some of those problems are ultimately caused by professional issues like the one above, but not all.

Secondly, I need to get over some of my opinions about web development that are impeding my ability to grow and innovate. It's not realistic to avoid web development. The reality is, every software system needs web linkage to succeed, and I need to accept the bad with the good. That doesn't mean I have to become an expert at crafting cross-browser HTML/JS/CSS, but it does mean I need to be more open-minded. The future I hope to create out of my graduate research needs to embrace reality to succeed.

Lots of big thinking going on, it's helping.

Thread: 0 replies. reply Last updated: 5:42 PM

If you've recently sent me email and not received a response, please resend it to (mylastname) at mac.com where (mylastname) is roepcke.

I suspect my ISP is having mail problems. Looking into it.

Update: Here's the chat log from my live-chat with site5.com support. I'm really happy they offer live assistance. The first time I used it I had a much quicker response and better service. The log has been anonymized to protect the support representative. I'm not sure what timezone this log is in...

(3:02:35) Jim Roepcke: E-mail sent to my domain is not getting to me. Why?

(3:02:38) SYSTEM: Please wait for a site operator to respond.
(3:08:38) SYSTEM: Please wait for a site operator to respond.
(3:14:40) SYSTEM: Please wait for a site operator to respond.
(3:20:40) SYSTEM: Please wait for a site operator to respond.
(3:20:40) SYSTEM: Please wait for a site operator to respond.
(3:21:49) support.rep: Hello Jim.
(3:24:19) support.rep: How can I assist you ?
(3:29:26) Jim Roepcke: Hello. My domain roepcke.com is not responding on backstage, and I can't get into its webmail, and no email sent to my domain is getting to me
(3:30:57) support.rep: I apologize for the inconvenience caused, the server is facing few load issues and we are working on this at the moment.
(3:31:24) Jim Roepcke: I think this has been going on for a couple of days
(3:35:11) Jim Roepcke: can you provide any more detail as to what the load issue is caused by, and when this will be fixed?
(3:35:41) support.rep: We are working on this currently and will update you shortly.
(3:35:58) Jim Roepcke: ok
(3:38:11) support.rep: We are restarting all the services as the server is not resonding.
(3:38:35) Jim Roepcke: ok
(4:01:41) Jim Roepcke: is there any new information about the state of the server/services?
(4:42:55) Jim Roepcke: is everything fixed yet?
(6:16:01) SYSTEM: Chat session has been inactive for 20 seconds and has expired.
(6:16:01) SYSTEM: Visitor has left chat.

It seems that mail is back up and running, but I'm guessing it'll take a day or two for bounced emails to make it to me. At least, I hope they bounced and didn't get lost by site5's mail server. If the support rep had been more informative maybe I would know.

Thread: 2 replies. reply Last updated: 10:33 AM

• def myBlog(self):
  (tags: cocoa programming blogs changesapp)
• Dodeca-core: The Megahertz Race is Now Officially the Multi-core Race
  AMD engineers reveal details about the company's upcoming 45nm processor roadmap, including plans for 12-core processors
  (tags: programming cpu multicore concurrency dodeca amd)
• Erlang for Python programmers: Part I
  (tags: python erlang programming tutorial)
• 8 Simple Rules for Designing Threaded Applications
  (tags: concurrency multicore parallel programming threads)

Thread: 0 replies. reply Last updated: 8:34 PM

Daily Kos: Catholic Priest Rips Fox News a New One

Fox News: "But but but, he's a hater! A, hater, we're saying it so it must be true right? Yup yup he is he still we're saying it over and over again until people believe it, hater hater bigot bigot anti-American."

Father Michael Pfleger totally owned Fox News in this one. Awesome.

Thread: 0 replies. reply Last updated: 12:46 AM

• Bob Ippolito on Erlang
  I just finished watching Bob's presentation. The best introduction to Erlang I've seen, so if you've been wondering why I'm pointing to Erlang so much, watch this and you'll understand.
  (tags: erlang video presentation programming concurrency ippolito c4)
• from __future__ import *
  Bob Ippolito's weblog
  (tags: blogs cocoa erlang python ippolito programming mochiweb daily)
• Exploring Erlang @ C4[1]
  Links for Downloading slides and code for Bob Ippolito's Erlang presentation at C4. It's quite helpful to have the slides open in your browser while you watch the video since they aren't always visible while he speaks.
  (tags: c4 programming presentation erlang)
• Andre Pang: Concurrency and Erlang (LCA2007)
  Presentation slides from Ande's talk at linux.conf.au 2007. Explains the problem with shared-state concurrency (ie: threads and locks) pretty convincingly, and explains how Erlang does a great job of avoiding the problem and how it performs so well.
  (tags: concurrency erlang presentation programming scalability reliability)
• LCA2007: Concurrency and Erlang (Lambda the Ultimate)
  Followup on the link to Andre Pang's talk, here's the LtU post about it. Lots of good info in the comments.
  (tags: concurrency erlang presentation programming ltu)

Thread: 2 replies. reply Last updated: 8:35 PM

I just finished watching the end of Bob Ippolito's talk on Erlang from C4.

At the end of the talk an audience member mentioned they were using Ruby and their senior guy didn't want to use Erlang so they wrote their own distributed queue thingy.

Bob said (not a perfect quote, watch the video to get it) "Ruby is great if you want to spend 15 to 20 times more on hardware than me".

Which makes me wonder... could it be Sun loves Ruby because it needs lots of their servers to scale?

Thread: 0 replies. reply Last updated: 2:36 AM