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January 2007 Anything You Can Do, I Can Do MetaContinued from page 6 By Scott Rosenberg
As the 1970s wore on, Simonyi grew impatient with Xerox's inability to turn PARC's pioneering research into successful products. One day a friend showed him VisiCalc, the new spreadsheet program for the Apple II. It thrilled Simonyi. Here was another application, like Bravo, that could change people's lives, but unlike Bravo, it ran on a mass-market computer that people could afford to buy. PARC's work, he realized, was never going to see the light of day. He asked his former PARC colleague Bob Metcalfe, who'd left the lab in 1979 to start 3Com, to recommend prospective bosses in the fledgling PC industry. At the head of the list was Bill Gates. In 1981, Simonyi moved to Seattle to start the new-applications group at Microsoft, which until then had sold programming languages and operating systems. He was 33, but that made him a grown-up among Microsoft's striplings (Gates was then 26 years old, Steve Ballmer 25). Through all the years that Simonyi oversaw the products that eventually coalesced into the "program suite" known as Microsoft Office, he continued to seek new efficiencies in new kinds of programming abstractions. Most notably, he schooled generations of Microsoft programmers in the discipline of keeping track of the myriad variable names used in big programs. In computer programming, variables represent information that can change as a program runs. For example, an online store's shopping-cart program will have variables that represent the number of items of each type to be purchased, each item's price, and the shipping costs and taxes. Using those variables, a programmer can write a simple line of code that multiplies quantity by price, adds shipping and taxes, and calculates the total cost--which becomes the value of yet another variable. A large program can have thousands of different variables that a programming team must keep straight. Naming them carefully becomes crucial. Today, most code features variable names designed to convey meaning to the programmers who will read it--names like NumberOfItems or ShoppingCartTotal. In Simonyi's naming scheme, which he'd invented for his own use years before, every variable name comes with a prefix that tells you useful information about it, like its type (integer, say, or decimal fraction, or string of letters). Some systems limit the length of variable names to eight characters; Simonyi simply left out the vowels. The resulting code was dense and hard to read. Simonyi's system came to be known as Hungarian notation, both in homage to its creator's birthplace and because it made programs "look like they were written in some inscrutable foreign language," according to programming pioneer Andy Hertzfeld. Hungarian is widely cursed by its detractors. Canadian Java expert Roedy Green has jokingly called it "the tactical nuclear weapon of source code obfuscation techniques." Mozilla programmer Alec Flett wrote this parody: prepBut nI vrbLike adjHungarian! qWhat's artThe adjBig nProblem? Hertzfeld, writing about an encounter at Apple with some Hungarian code written by a colleague who'd worked with Simonyi at PARC, said the names "looked like they were chosen by Superman's enemy from the 5th dimension, Mr. Mxyzptlk." But while critics believe Hungarian makes code illegible, Simonyi remains proud of it and employs it to this day. |
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IBM's Symphony for the Office Worker
09/28/2007
Comments
rajuch on 02/07/2007 at 11:38 AM
1
How does it solve the software updates problem? What would happen, if they need to change some features six month from the installation? Can we put the bench back in the machine to refine the bench, or do we need to start over and pay for full new bench? Many online applications are being updated every other month.
If one needs to build a computer table or wooden cabinet, can he use that bench-making machine? Or does he need to build a new machine for each kind of products? I am not joking. You would agree, if you read the following.
We already invented such machines for building online-GUI-applications. Greatly appreciate your feedback, what you think about our online GUI application making machine. Please review brief overview to our application machine:
http://cbsdf.com/technologies/software-irony.htm
Each ‘Component Factory’ in the left side of the Figure#1 acts as a knob, to refine each part (i.e. a loosely coupled component/AC) in the application (shown right side). Please review the following WebPages, which show that this process builds perfect ‘application machine’ with simple to operate knobs to refine each part. Please review summary at the end to understand why it cost only a fraction to refine the application:
http://cbsdf.com/ps_blog/Minimum-couplings.htm
http://cbsdf.com/ps_blog/super-distribution.htm
P.S: Of course, one must use our highly-flexible online-GUI-API to build the online GUI components. You may see interactive GUI Components, which are built using SVG. We will be building the GUI Classes for XAML/Vista in the future.
http://cbsdf.com/technologies/demo-links/Demo-SVGS/misc-charts.html
More sample links at: http://cbsdf.com/technologies/demo-links/demo-links.htm
One may build his own custom GUI Classes, for example, to build multi-player online games or near real-time modeling of Air-traffic, as explained at:
http://cbsdf.com/Newbies/Flight-main.htm
http://cbsdf.com/misc_docs/online-apps-rock.htm
Best Regards,
Raju
sriramv.iyer on 02/13/2007 at 4:59 AM
1
But this article did rekindle my interest in DSLs. (I use python and not lisp, though)
rubs74 on 02/22/2007 at 5:27 PM
1
Model Driven Architecture also adds a new level of abstracction to software development and I guess that takes the base idea of Intentional Programming as well. There are already tools that work on production. Here there's a tool based on MDA that really allows you to think more about the bussiness logic and less about the complexities of building it, just take a look http://www.care-t.com/
JEfromCanada on 03/09/2007 at 3:10 PM
1
bushka on 03/14/2007 at 5:55 PM
1
oscarbhaskar on 06/13/2007 at 10:11 AM
1
The question now is how do we implement the concept? How do we capture the "Intention"?
I think we are about to see a new dimension in the way software is developed.
enterprise on 06/30/2007 at 2:45 PM
1
By Christmas.
We will make sure the writers of this excellent article know in good time.
In the meantime, if you want to be involved with the fun, get in touch on gedymail@gmail.com
GD
Corbier on 12/25/2007 at 2:02 PM
4
For a quick glance at what a language definition file might look like, check out:
www.ucalc.com/lisp.txt (Lisp)
www.ucalc.com/forth.txt (Forth)
The download includes more files like this, which you can load up into the generic interpreter, at which point it becomes an interpreter for the language you just loaded. (The supplied interpreter demonstrates just one possible kind of interface. You can create your own fancy interface to interpret such code).
uCalc LB is no longer in the idea stage. An actual fully working beta implementation can be downloaded.
I am the author of uCalc Language Builder (as well as uCalc Fast Math Parser), and I am looking for early adopters of the uCalc LB technology. An interactive tutorial that comes with the download can walk you trough the various concepts. Other forms of documentation are also included, as well as an interactive interpreter.
--
Daniel Corbier
www.ucalc.com