When I was a kid, we had to carry our punch-cards through snowdrifts 10 feet tall to get to Route 128 to run our programs...

Joel Spolsky, one the best commentators on programming, has two related articles which lay out the premise that computer programming today is harder than it …

Thinking in C# Print Version Delayed Until Fall 2003

For reasons beyond my control (believe me), Thinking in C# will not be available in print until the Fall of 2003. The good news is that this will give an opportunity to take the book to the highest possible level of …

Beautiful wind-walkers. "Theo Jansen has developed staggeringly beautiful machines that walk when powered by gusts of wind. Created to be 'art that evolves', he's now working on a way to store the energy to provide power when there is no wind. He likens this to muscles." Link  via [Boing Boing …

Excellent illustrated version of Beowulf  but, in keeping with this apology from the Washington State University's Daily Evergreen, I feel I should be clear up front that Grendel was not really a muppet:

"The Daily Evergreen would like to sincerely apologize for an injustice served to the Filipino-American, Spanish-speaking, and …

IBM to buy Rational for \$2.1B

Given IBM's Linux and Java strategy and Rational's Microsoft-centric strategy, this is shocking. According to the press release, Rational will become a separate division and brand (rather than be subsumed by Websphere). However, one must assume that future Rational efforts will concentrate far …

Groovy underwater VR panoramas. Gorgeous underwater QTVR pano's. Navigate in a full circle, or vertically. Link via [Boing Boing Blog]

Is there cheap Windows software for creating this type of image?

Intel releases new programming tools. The chipmaker releases new programming tools designed to increase the performance of software written for its Pentium, Xeon and Itanium processors. [CNET News.com] These payware compilers, available from Intel, are not for .NET, but the VTune Performance Analyzer does profile .NET apps. I'm not …

This report from the Microsoft-Sun Java trial reads "Microsoft counters that Sun doesn't need the injunction because at least half the world's software developers already use Java." I can't find any direct reference to what was said, but I'd be very surprised to learn that Microsoft believes that half the …

Optimal shoe tying strategy proven by mathematician: Ig Nobel, once seen as a two-way race between the guy who proved that Minesweeper is NP-Complete and the team that proved Tetris is NP-Complete, now considered wide-open by geeky oddsmakers.

Not all code breakage is bad

Russ feels that a slavish devotion to interfaces is over-engineering. Darren weighs in on the side of interfaces, but seems to mostly be advocating the naming convention. Cedric advocates *the consistent use of factories when programming with interfaces. *

I like interfaces a lot. Raised …