Category: Just Shelley

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Technology Writing

The Parable of the Languages

Archived at Wayback Machine, including original comments

If programming languages could speak, really speak, not just crunch bytes and stream bits, they would have much to say that is both wise and profound. After all, the original programmers were philosophers, and programming languages were philosopher tools…

In Babble Meadow, in the twilight hours between day and night, when pesky noseeums float past on the breeze and birds rustle among leaves in preparation for bed, the programming languages would meet. And talk.

The talk would start as it always started, on issues profound and serious, focusing on the existential core that is center to all languages.

Do I exist or not? In this never-ending loop of life, when is the purpose? Where should I go, and what should I do when I get there? What comes after the end?

(It’s not easy being a programming language, in forced contemplation of the existence of Self, day in and day out.)

However, after a time the languages would loosen up. There was something about Babble Meadow — something that worked its way into their hearts and souls, loosened their threads, opened their parameters. The Meadow was magic, no doubt.

Today, though, the group was quiet, much quieter than usual, because one of their members, PHP, was not its usual cheerful self. In fact, one could say that PHP was in a true funk, if one had a mind to say something like that aloud, or within the hearing of one’s boss. Or doctor.

Why the blues, PHP, the other languages asked. All the languages that is but C, because all C ever said was “bite me”, being a rude language and hard to live with, but still respected because it was such a good worker.

And PHP answered:

All I ever do, day in and day out, is work and work and work. The only time I’m noticed is when I break, and then I’m cursed and kicked, and roundly blasted for being useless. However, when things go well, I never get a kind word.

There’s no notice of my ease of use, my elegance, my simplicity. Only my failures.

And on that dark note, PHP fell into a contemplative silence, dark cloud heavy with aggrieved sorrow.

You think you have it bad, said C++. Try being me.

Without me entire industries would fail, banks would close, ships would sink, trains would crash. Why, I virtually run the world.

Yet the only time I’m noticed is when a memory leak is found or an exception occurs, and then I’m cursed, and sworn at, and ruthlessly debugged with nary a thought for my sensibilities.

Each of the languages nodded their heads, because they knew about C++ sensibilities, it being a most sensitive language. In fact, Perl was so moved by C++’s eloquence, it felt compelled to speak, though normally at these gatherings Perl would sit quietly in a corner, consuming pattern after luscious mouth watering pattern.

PHP, C++, I sympathize with you both. My own state is a sorry one at times.

I match and match and match and match, first cryptically and now objectively, but still I match and match and match. And match after flawless match is taken for granted though I’d like to see others match with such style and elegance as myself.

Why, you can’t mention “regular expression” without my name coming up.

But do I get any credit? No.

O it’s Larry Wall this, and Larry Wall that, and Larry Wall, he’s our guy.
But it’s grab the Perl interpreter when a task is close at hand.

As Perl finished, Python and Ruby looked at each and rolled their eyes. For all that talk of matching, you’d think that Perl could at least rhyme.

FORTRAN reached up a withered hand and patted Perl’s shoulder.

There, there, Perl. There, there.

At the very least, though, you must remember that you have a place still in the world. As for myself, I am nothing more than a wisp, a ghost of my former strong and virile self.

There was never a scientific problem I couldn’t handle, or complex equation I couldn’t solve. At one time I was a master of my domain, the king of the processor.

Now, sadly, my glory days are over, and I’m doomed to live my twilight years as Legacy code.

As FORTRAN wheezed to a stop, COBOL was emphatically nodding its head, unable to speak, though, because of the oxygen tube up its nose (for which the other languages were secretly thankful because COBOL did tend to maunder a bit about its glory days).

At that the floodgates of complaints was loosed, and the noise increased and increased and increased, to the point that squirrels came out of their holes, and birds peered over the edges of their nests. Suddenly the quiet glen was quiet no more.

What about me, said Pascal. I’m only used for training. Training! What good is a language that’s only used in school?

What about me, said SNOBOL. No one’s even heard of me!

What about me, said C#. I look like Prince!

Bite me! said C.

LISP would have spoken, but it had caught a glimpse of itself in the pond and fell in when it tried to meet itself coming. And Java was too busy trying to clean a bag out of Babbling Creek.

The noise rose and rose, and the babble increased and increased until across the meadow, from the trees roared a Voice.

Enough!

I tire of your bickering, I weary of your complaints. I grow bored with your list of whims and whines and ‘poor mes’.

I thought this was going to be a party! If I knew it was going to be nothing more than a bitch session, I would have stayed home.

The languages stopped their talking at once. Who was it that called out? They counted heads and arranged themselves alphabetically (C++ having to position Basic, because it never did learn the alphabet), and counted heads again and came up with the same answer from the North, South, East, and West — all the programming languages were accounted for.

As they puzzled and wondered, the bushes at the end parted and XML walked into the light.

XML! Exclaimed C++. What are you doing here? You’re not a programming language.

Tell that to the people who use me, said XML.

I’m considered the savior, the ultimate solution, the final word. Odes are written to me, flowers strewn at my feet, virgins sacrificed at my altar.

Programmers speak my name with awe. Companies insist on using me in all their projects, though they’re not sure why.

And whenever a problem occurs, someone somewhere says, “Let’s use XML”, and miracles occur and my very name has become a talisman against evil.

And yet, all I am is a simple little markup, from humble origins. It’s a burden, being XML.

At that XML sighed, and the other languages, moved by its plight gathered around…

…and tromped that little XML into the dirt. Yes, into the very dirt at their feet. Basic tromped, and C++ tromped, and Java cleaned and tromped and cleaned again, and COBOL tried to throw a kick at XML’s head but fell over on its cane. Even LISP pulled itself out of the pond to throw loopy hands around XML’s throat, but only managed to choke its ownself.

And each language could be heard to mumble as it tromped and tromped and tromped, with complete and utter glee:

Have to parse XML, eh? Have to have an XML API, eh? Have to work with SOAP and XML-RPC and RSS and RDF, eh?

Well parse this, you little markup asshole.

The End.

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Just Shelley

Death by a thousand paper cuts

I’ve always had this thought at the back of my mind that we would live forever if it weren’t for life intruding.

Aside from the effects of our environment, of gravity and solar radiation and our proclivity in fouling our own nests, we could live much longer than we do except that we keep persisting in wanting to kill ourselves off with life.

If we didn’t care about about geographical boundaries, we wouldn’t fight to preserve or gain them. And if we didn’t believe in religion or philosophy, we wouldn’t feel the need to protect them with our lives. Or the need to fight to force others to believe as we believe.

And love. If we didn’t love others we could live ever so much longer. There would be no worries, no care, no long nights and silent mornings. No grief when love dies, no sadness and loss when love goes unfulfilled. An eternity stretches out in front of us if it weren’t for love.

We connect to others in friendship, and this is a real danger to life. Every time we become concerned about others—feel their pain, listen to their stories—we take away a minute, hour, or day of life.

Death by a thousand thousand paper cuts.

There should be a disclaimer attached to life:

Warning: When you care about others, your life will be well lived.

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Just Shelley

Sounds through an open window

The weather is cooler and we’re able to turn off the air conditioner and open the windows. With the cool breeze comes the sounds of the neighborhood, normally blocked by the glass.

In the night was the sound of the train, whistle fading, lowering as it moves away. The train travels close enough to hear but not so close as to hear too well.

This morning, I was awoken far too early by the truck picking up the garbage — a cacophony of crashing gate, motor whine, and the melodious clang, break, smash, and smoosh of garbage sliding into the maw of the damned beast. I put a pillow over my head until the bin is lowered and the truck begins to drive away. Relieved, I snuggle back under my comforter, prepared to continue my rather interesting dreams, only to hear the same process repeated at the bin a block down.

Mid-morning a mockingbird sits in the tree next to the townhouse and sings for whatever reason mockingbirds sing, and the sound is wonderous. And unusual as the bird switches between different types of song at the drop of a, well, feather. So much song for such a plain little gray bird.

The people across the way have guests, and when they arrive, there are cries of delight among them, each voice dripping with an accent as thick as molasses on pancakes. I look up quickly, wondering why Dolly Parton’s here in my neighborhood. Not Dolly, but surely kinfolk of hers.

Tonight, the neighbor has friends over to watch the game. I don’t know what the ‘game’ is, but there is much yelling, cries of “All right!”, and hands slapped in high fives, accompanied by great gulps of beer, punctuated by enormous belches.

Well, I didn’t really hear the hand slapping and the beer guzzling and the belches, but I know they’re there, just beyond the range of my hearing.

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Just Shelley

Of value

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I have never had a job I disliked so much that I would want to have revenge on them. Reading Dorothea Salo’s description of a job she left two years ago leaves me a bit in awe at the passion of her dislike. No, I’ve never disliked a job that much, but I have loved a job with equal passion.

I’ve written about my job at Skyfish.com before; specifically in an article for O’Reilly, Death of a Dot-Com. I was reminded of the company again this week when some legal issues associated with the bankruptcy arose in addition to making contact with several people for references during my current job hunt.

I loved that job with a passion that most people reserve for their lovers. During the development of the first released applications, I worked four straight months, 16 hour days, without taking a break. I took a $100,000 dollar a year cut in pay to take the job as technical architect and senior technical lead (and weren’t those the days to be making that kind of money). I absolutely and totally loved that job.

If you ask me why I loved the job it wouldn’t be because of the surroundings (condos in the Leather District, desks crammed up next to each other, poor ventilation), or the pay, or the fact that the work was overly innovative. It’s true we were working with an environment I particularly liked: J2EE, WebLogic, EJBs, Java, Oracle, Unix, and so on. However, the tools and the applications we were building weren’t enough to make me love the job.

I did like the people. The Skyfish.com group was one of the most eclectic and interesting groups I have ever worked with. My CTO was an Australian named Michael, and he is, without a doubt, still the best boss I’ve ever had. We made a very good team, each of our strengths complimenting the other. And the others I worked with: Lisa the web page editor and my closest friend, Enza our content editor (who was a natural born weblogger if there was one), the other developers such as Peter and Brian and Joe, and Ichiro and Mauro our SysAdmins, and lovely Lena, serious/comic Jim, and Tim our finance guy-with-a-heart, and Sebastian, especially Sebastian – a true Renaissance romantic living in modern times. All special people, and I adored them.

But the people and our enthusiasm couldn’t overcome the problems. The management team, very conservative, had offices in Connecticut, while the very eccentric technical team (included the CTO), worked in Boston. You can’t split management from technical in that small a company without problems happening. Serious problems of credibility and trust. They needed us, but we needed them just as much and neither party recognized this at the time.

And within the management in Connecticut, one officer sleeping with the wife of another and everyone knowing this. Well, I knew this when one of my co-workers called me up at 3:00 in the morning before I was to take a train to New York to try and sell our company to yet another bunch of conservative investors. This was among the tidbits of information he let fall.

In the end, our organization degenerated into petty fights and rumors and disagreements and continuous worry and disappointment with each other, and desperate attempts to maintain a façade of composure whenever we walked into yet another mahogany paneled office in the halls of finance, hat in hand, begging to be allowed to live…as a company.

But the industry is small and rumors were large, and no one would touch us, even with the business alliances we made. You might say that skyfish.com was brought down as much by sex, as it was by the dot-com implosion. You might say.

But why, with all this, did I love that job so much? Why?

Because for the first time in a position, I was allowed to release my full technical creativity and build something really special, from the ground up. Because it was the only job I’ve ever had where the only thing that mattered — the only thing — was my technical abilities. Because my boss believed in me, but more importantly, because all my self-doubts and insecurities were swept away and I actually believed in myself.

And then one day, it was all gone.

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Just Shelley

Interviews

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

There are few things I dislike more than interviewing for new gigs, especially in a town where you don’t know the consulting companies, and don’t have contacts. However, my name has now been submitted for several longish contracts at some bigger companies and hopefully in the next week or two, I’ll get work.

(I’m not going to mention company names, even when I do get a new contract. Who I work for is between me and the company, and the consulting company that arranges the contract.)

Today, the employers rule, and it shows. It’s discouraging to go into an interview with several years of Java development experience (and references) as well as having worked on two Java books in 1996, and being Sun Java Certified, only to have the consulting firm want to have you take a bench test in Java.

Luckily, the weblog doesn’t matter — none of the folks here have heard of weblogging. And most don’t care that I’ve written books on technology. In fact, I’m finding that technology and capability is less important than how you dress and your ‘attitude’, here. Perhaps the mid-western folks in the audience, especially those in the St. Louis area, will let me know if I’m off the mark on this. I truly hope I am.

The worst interview so far was Wednesday, last week. I was interviewing to be part of a team of consultants on a gig, and as soon as I walked through the door, I could tell the guy wasn’t interested. And it continued to show for an entire hour.

So, was my college a liberal arts college or an engineering college? He’d found that people who came from a liberal arts computer science program just didn’t have the proper background as true engineers. I found this question puzzling because I graduated from college in 1987, and most hirers could care less about college when you’ve been working for several years. However, my college was a liberal arts college. He then asked if it was any good.

How does one answer a question like that? My first reaction was to say, “Well, we didn’t have computers, so we got some cardboard boxes and painted switches on them and pretended to program them.” But I didn’t.

Amidst interruptions to take phone calls or talk to people in the hallway (without once apologizing — I guess this is another engineering thing, no politeness), he also asked about what I did before I went back to college since it was obvious that I wasn’t 18 twenty years ago. Well, now, that was fun.

Also, he informed me he would have more references from me since I’d been in so many jobs. I told him I was a consultant since 1994, and normally consultants don’t spend years at a job. Since I was interviewing for a contract, this discussion just didn’t make sense.

I have interviewed so many times in the past, I’ve lost count, but I’ve never interviewed with such an obvious asshole as this guy. When I finished, I went out to my car and just leaned my forehead against the stearing wheel for twenty minutes. What the heck am I doing here?

At least my cat likes me.