I’ve spent the evening trading e-mail with the creator of Sierra. Please forgive the lack of context, but I’m posting my last reply, since I think it sums up my thoughts on the language well. Ok, I’ll shift my focus from Sierra as implemented to your stated higher level goals for the purposes of trying …
Category Archives: General
6.002 study group
I enrolled in 6.002x Circuits & Electronics on MITx, if anyone is interested in forming an online/offline study group, let me know. I’m pretty sure I’m going to need help with this one.
Hosting changes
Things are a changin’ at Knot. I’ve started the ball rolling at moving the server infrastructure to a web-hosting provider. It looks to me like most/all of the functions we still depend on can be much more economically handled be an external hosting company. There’s the additional benefit that I’ll be less involved in routine …
Sierra, again.
OK, there are other things I meant to post, but I ran across the latest update on the Sierra language Kickstarter, and I really need to comment. First the update: Update #1: Sierra to Objective C Posted 5 days ago I have decided that the project will first translate into Objective C rather than having …
Who knows Best?
I was thinking about what’s wrong with Sierra (see my previous post), and I realized that it mostly sounded like someone asked a CS100 student for a list of things they disliked about C. This immediately led me to consider if that’s ever a good idea. Should we ever ask users — especially novice users …
Sierra programming language
I ran across the Sierra Programming Language yesterday on Kickstarter. First, I thought it was odd seeing an open source programming language looking for funding. Most of these projects seemed to move forwards pet projects for some programmer or another. The inventor makes some pretty bold claims (5x-6x faster programming). Then looking at it, a …
Dropbox: up to 5gb more space free
We love dropbox. I think we have it on every device that supports it. Now Dropbox is offering up to 5gb more space for those who help BETA test the new “automatic camera import” feature. Head over to the beta forums to get details, then grab the latest version here. (via Engadget)
Bicycle Myths
I’ve been cycling for years, and over time I’ve become a pretty decent wrench as well as an avid fan of vintage cycling gear. Over the years I’ve seen multiple fads, bad ideas, and misconceptions float among novice cyclists. Inevitably, these people have a bad experience on their bike and end up parking it in …
Getting serious about backups
With the new year and new operating system install on my mac, I’ve finally gotten serious about backups (again). After a few years of essentially no backups for my day-to-day system, Apple has inspired me by making constant backups simple with Time Machine. You can read about Time Machine all over the Net, so I …
Little Niceties on the Macintosh
I’m pleased to find that even after 10 years of Mac OS X, and over 20 years of using the Mac, but I can still be surprised by the small touches. This last month I discovered a couple of little features of the Mac that make using it ever so slightly nicer. None of these …