A new start

A long time ago, I wrote a little utility to keep a historical record of all changes made to a source file. It was (and still is) called Synchrotron, and written in Delphi.

Now I've moved to a much more powerful version, always called Synchrontron, with so much more to it, and written in C#.

Maybe I should have managed to release it into production today...

Python definitely beats them all

Whoa, I tried to write some Python code today (trying that nice Google App Engine, of course.)

Guess what... After three typed lines I managed to hit the first wall of laughability. My code does not compile (oh you may want to say "parse", I don't care) and that was because...

because some "unexpected indentation".

Indeed... there were blank lines at the end of the file, and those blank lines were actually not blank, but full of spaces. How do you distinguish an empty line from a line with only spaces? The funny thing is ... you don't :-)

The sad thing is that some people still believe that Python is a valid programming language :-(

Why Java programmers are afraid of dynamic typing

Read the Ruby blogs. All hardcode Java programmers are described as being "afraid" of moving to dynamic typing. One post goes as far as saying that Java programmers feel that static typing gives them a sense of security, because they fear that their fellow Java programmers are idiots.

The article is right, but for the wrong reasons. Now I know why Java programmers are afraid of moving to dynamic typing: as long as their programs use static typing, they can rest assured that no Rubyist will join their team and make the same old mistakes in a brand new way :-)