#ifdef

40. (with egg) Visual Studio, Ruby on Rails, and Old Dudes Who Know Smalltalk

I really love Old Dudes Who Know Smalltalk! I was nurtured, sculpted, and brainwashed by Old Dudes Who Know Smalltalk from my very first day as a professional programmer, and they universally “get it”. Young whipper-snappers out there, take note: if you ever here (sic) some Old Dude say the words “in Smalltalk you could blah blah blah” or “In VisualWorks you could yada yada”, spend as much time with this person as possible. You will learn more from them about software development than the Young Dude who only wears black and thinks that the bash shell is “too bloated”.

Oh… I am so feeling the love. One old dude benefit is in recognizing useful language features. I immediately fell in love with Groovy after seeing it’s Closures implementation. (By coincidence, I’m listening to Jason explain Closures on a WebDevRadio interview. He wants to whip out his Mac and show you, but… it’s radio). Likewise, being interested in tools to better exploit processor concurrency, I’ve been studying Erlang and have to say that I’m really disappointed with the bulky syntax. It just isn’t very readable, IMO. I much prefer the clean syntax of Scala.

Update: Merlyn has similar issues with Erlang readability, though attributes it to style rather than language syntax. I have to admit, the solution gives me hope.

One day there will be statements about the Old Dudes Who Know Ruby. I don’t really expect to be around for that one, but trust me; it will happen.

Henry Butler played last night in the Nelson Music room at Duke University. The solo Jazz piano concert was part of the Following Monk series, celebrating Thelonious Monk’s 90th birthday on October 10th. Monk was born in Rocky Mount, though didn’t stay long. He was known for the sparse voicings in his left hand.

Mr. Butler started the show with a couple of Monk evoking tunes, but in homage to Monk’s short stay in Rocky Mount, Butler soon left Tribute Town and began a heavy handed program more in the villages of McCoy Tyner and Oscar Peterson. In honor of the style, I’ve created a Big Handed, Old School, Jazz Pianists Who Stomp Their Left Feets station on Pandora.

The show was great and warmly received, but 90 minutes was enough for me. Great Jazz doesn’t always require foot tapping to 4/4 time.