Older blog entries for nuncanada (starting at number 19)

I dont believe there is still people trying to do their own PHP Templating Engine, its amazing. We have already 100+, mostly half-solutions. Some months ago there was lots of discussions because someone wanted to put another Templating Engine in PEAR (a 'standard' library for PHP) besides the 4 already existent.
There is a pearl of wisdom i have read somewhere (certainly a book on philosophy/history of physics, but i cant remember which one) which i think applies perfectly to this:

If a question raises too much debate, it is a signal that it is the wrong question.

Meaning: people are building solutions (Templating Engines) to the wrong problem, that's why they never agree what's the best way to do it.

I have fallen in love with FlowDesigner.

I have been thinking about making a framework in php. If following that road, i would like it to be able to generate code from a flow diagram a lot like that from FlowDesigner. Besides that use a O/R Mapper, type hints for the inputs in the flow designer, as well some post checks on the outputs.

Something also useful would be an automatic population of nodes from functions found in the framework directories.

Have put a stop on programming for a while. Dropped out of the math course, so i am studying to get in the Computer Science course. Here in Brazil, the best courses are on public universties which are non-paid, and so there is a lot of competition to get in them.

Been doing good on tests, will pass without much problems... But i want to keep studying to see how well i am able to do...

Look how our social systems evolve, a common feature is the increase of 'Separation of Concerns'.

Programming is much more of a 'social problem' than a mathematical one. Programming needs to evolve towards a bigger separation of concerns...

Movies i liked the most till now:

- Gattaca - Dark City - The Cube - Memento - Run, Lola, Run - Muholland Drive - Matrix I - Forrest Gump

It's the first book that my father said i should read which i've been able to read to the end: 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' by Robert M. Pirsig.

I won't even bother reading any book my father recommends now on. It's just that he's 'an artist while i am a mechanic'. ;) We've completely different book tastes.

I guess the only non-technical/scientific books i really like are those which make me forget human reality... Authors like Douglas Adams, Neil Gaiman and Tony Vigorito...

If you have pretty 'linear' code, exceptions might be a good solution to lessen the quantity of error handling code. Maybe when making a library that is the case... Still for most real programming out there, it is about reusing diverse components, lots of interrelationship between you code.

From experience, when trying to use lots of decoupled parts which call up each other without a previous knowledge of the paths, you will have to catch exception as close as possible to the problem.

This makes it worst than using simple return statements for errors....

I am not the only one...

Congratulations to John Cox (niceguyeddie)
Xaraya's Leader got a very deserved interview on php|architect commenting on the (in?)famous nukes past and future.

About me:
I dropped off from my math undergraduate course missing 5 classes to finish, couldnt stand the lack of purposefulnes, and the boring differential equations classes were the finnishing incentive i needed.
I really like puzzles, but i dont see much point in math as a job, it would be like a being a professional chess player... It's interesting, but what's the point?
Worth, computers are soon going to be the best chess players around and not that latter will also be the best mathematicians...

Open Source Movement is missing better tools to allow code reuse. We have been mostly trying to copy what's out there in closed source. In the closed source environment, core reuse is a secondary problem, while it's crucial when you have open source.

Right now languages seems to be heading towards problem area specialization (perl, php, prolog...). That's one way to quickly advance into the given area, still wouldnt be better if all area specific languages were just local dialects of a mother language?

Some interoperation between languages is going on between php/java, this has also existed with c/with almost anything. This seems a trend to divide work between languages, so you can use the best tool for each particular job.

I think this is the future of programming. The usual saying 'Use the best tool for each job' will meant more than it did before. Where we will have problems segments being solved by different languages.

Now that comes the part about code being modular: if the particular problem local language is 'simple' enough so that its programs can be trivially be evaluated to equivalence classes then this 'i think my way is best' attitude will be overthrown. The problem is constructing such languages/a mother tongue compiler...

I kept reading papers about Open Source, 'The Political Economy of Open Source Software' explained to me what i was thinking (or i think i was) about oss being more than gift economies, besides a lot of other subjects over oss motivations, organization etc. It's an awesome paper, the best i have read so far about general oss economics.

Reading it makes me think that all 'infrastructure' software sooner or later will be oss, the possibility of commercial profit will remain only on suprastructure (especialized or niche) software...