Wednesday, 11 December 2002

Christmas Greetings. As forwarded onto me from an unknown source... Please accept with no obligation, either express or implied, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of a holiday on or near the date of the winter solstice, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious and/or secular persuasions of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, inclusive of the choice not to engage in the practice of any religious or secular traditions. May you have a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling, and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted Western calendar year 2003, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose diverse contributions to society have helped make America great. (This statement made without implication that America is of relatively greater value than any other nation, country, kingdom, realm, emirate, sultanate, principality, or geopolitical state of any kind, whether or not officially recognized by any other nation, country, kingdom, realm, emirate, sultanate, principality, or geopolitical state, or that the United States of America is the only "America" in the western hemisphere, and without regard to the race, creed, color, age, gender, physical ability, religious faith, or choice of computer platform of the wishee.) By accepting this greeting, you are accepting these terms. This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for her/himself or others. This greeting is void where prohibited by law, subject to all Federal, state, and local taxes, and further is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher. This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year, or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher. [James Duncan Davidson] 10:07:40 PM

Programmers are Speshal Programmers. Are programmers special? Short bus-special counts. (474 words) [markpasc.org] I have been reading an interesting book that went through the differences in abilities of prototypical female brains and prototypical male brains. There is, of course, a continuum, with different people at different points on the spectrum (apparently due to the amount of testosterone in the babies' bloodstream 6-8 weeks after conception). The thing that I found from the reading was that visualisation is masculine ability, while linguistics is a feminine brain ability. To be a programmer, you need both of the above abilities - the visualisation ability to be able to build the dependency structures and mentally model the code, and then linguistics to be able to express the solution in the appropriate target language. So, in short, true first class programmers are going to be a select few, because they need brains that are on the borderline between masculine and femine brain structure. Which I must say, goes some way towards explaining the humour that programmers have. Word plays, puns, word games, and dependency inversion humour. Thus teaching normal people to program will never happen, they will either not be able to see the problem in their head (lack of visualisation), or they will not be able to express the solution in code (lack of linguistic ability). 9:45:19 PM

Life, interuptions there to Doing my surfing for me.. There was a time when Brett and Mike did my surfing for me, now Erik Thauvin is doing that. He is constantly on top of the cool Java (and other) news. Thanks Erik! [Blogging Roller] Sorry, I'm too busy having a life at the moment. All should return to normal soon. :-) 9:27:38 PM

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