Many many moons ago, I started calling my test programs “bagel”… I did this after a memorable occasion when I had used the Bourne shell ‘test’ command in a script that a co-worker ran from her test script which she named… “test”. Can you say “recursion“? Oy! The two of us made a deal after… Continue reading

I’ve joined a lot of mailing lists (and before that, newsgroups) in the past 20 years. Some are software support lists; many are discussion lists on some topic (software, cats, jobs, etc.). Many are social groups (whatever the “topic”). When I join a list, I either read it regularly and participate, or I archive it… Continue reading

I had an interview yesterday. The company uses Perl (specifically, object-oriented Perl) and C++. The job would entail working with OO Perl. Now, I have some OO background: I worked at Taligent for 2 years. I’ve read the books. I understand the terms. I’ve used OO Perl modules. That said, I haven’t written a lot… Continue reading

Philip Greenspun has started an interesting discussion on Java programming entitled Java is the SUV of programming tools. Continue reading

Egad. We’re a country run by fools… The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) was convinced by Jamie Love and others to hold a meeting about “open collaborative models to develop public goods.” One of those models is, of course, open source and free software. Lobbyists for Microsoft and others apparently (according to this extraordinary story… Continue reading

The latest Micro$oft Outlook whatever virus / worm / invasion is a royal pain. I keep getting email claiming that I’m infected and that a piece of mail I (never) sent was infected. The mail was probably infected, but I didn’t send it. I know I didn’t send it and I’m very sure I’m not… Continue reading