Does computational power add programmer performance? I said no in this post, Josh sarcastically agreed: "I agree whole-heartedly, if you can be a engineering-puritan and use a simple text editor and compiler, without complex build/make/ant scripts which do far more than just compile. It seems to me that …

[Microsoft is running a great promotion this summer -- free eBooks for Reader. Today's selections are Candy & Me by Hillary Liftin, Last To Die by James Grippando, and A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. Once retired, these titles will (almost certainly) not be available for free, so jump …

I moved to the Bay Area 14 years ago today, as Product Review Editor of Computer Language and AI Expert magazines. My duties included administering to the BBS's, which ran on a dedicated PC connected to a 1200 baud modem, and keeping track of the CompuServe forums. My CIS account …

My rant in reaction to Paul Caplan's response to Angelika Langer's OP:

> I would like to hear more about
> what is wrong with the languages of today

Of all the activities imaginable, computer programming is the one in which computers should have the greatest productivity impact. And yet compared to …

My colleague Joe Walnes pointed me to a fascinatingly simple tool developed by our colleague Chris Stevenson. TextDox (part of AgileDox) is a tool to automatically generate documentation from JUnit test cases. Sounds ridiculous, but then that's what Wardish ideas are like. [via ]{.135365000-25062003}[Martin Fowler's Bliki]

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blockquote dir="ltr" style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> The standard answer to the people wanting to [really]{.underline} understand how .NET works is to go to the source, i.e. the Rotor source code. Now, there is one step better: these great presentations from the Rotor Conference (scroll to the bottom) from …

[Eric Kidd has written an eloquent post dismaying of the future for small ISVs. He sees the future dominated by two forces: Microsoft and Open Source. He laments for a third way, where "30 person companies" can be significant. He has some good points: Microsoft and Open Source are going …

Download new Emulator Images that allow you to test your applications in all available Pocket PC 2003 languages. [via]{.792373016-23062003} [Microsoft Download Center]

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p dir="ltr"> [Microsoft released the new version of the Pocket PC operating system today. It's called Windows Mobile 2003 and I think its most important features …

Jeff Bezos wants his company to offer mini-Amazons to companies needing a successful Web commerce tool. The technology that runs the popular shopping site may be its most valuable product offering. [via]{.037545215-23062003} [Wired News]

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p dir="ltr"> [I think this makes a lot of sense. Internal Business Machines and …

PARC researcher Mark Yim builds amazing modular robots that can self-reconfigure from a snake to a loop to a spider without stopping. Check out the videos--very Transformers-esque! For those in the San Francisco Bay Area, Yim is speaking on Monday in a public seminar at the Intel Research Berkeley …