For reason’s I’ll explain next week, I’ve had really spotty access to the Internet most of the past week. I have been able to connect about 10% of the times I’ve tried, and even then it’s not worked very well (unless you count 50+% packet loss as working well). Right now it seems to be working somewhat, so I’m going to try to write up this quick post before it stops working again.
Anyway, what I was going to write about is how much it sucks when you can’t get on the Internet. I’ve realized just how dependent I’ve become on using the Internet to do such things as:
- check the weather forecast
- lookup some information about some thing or place
- find directions
- compare products before buying
- stay in touch with friends and co-workers
It’s possible to do all of these things without the Internet, (people survived quite a while to get us here) but now that we’ve got it, it’s really hard to go back. There’s just so much information available online trying to compare products by reading the boxes in a store just really seems frustrating.
In the future, I imagine Internet access will be so ubiquitous that it will be hard to get offline. Until then I guess I’ll just have to look at some options to make sure that I always have Internet access wherever I go, if I need it. I’ll let you know how that goes — assuming that my Internet connection works.
I figured this would be a good time to talk about the programming languages I’ve used, am using and will use in the near future.
I recently overheard Kevin telling someone: “You’re old, you must be what? 30?”. I’m sure to him I’m ancient. Never does that feel more true than around my birthday.
Birthdays seem like a reasonable time for reflection so I’ve decided this time around I’ll reflect here on the programming languages I’ve used and the programming languages I’ve been using recently at work and the programming languages I’m interested in spending more time with soon.
I think the first program I wrote was on a TI-99A/4A. My dad got one and I thought it was amazing. You could hook this machine up to your TV and write programs that actually made the computer do stuff. I’m pretty sure my first program looked something like:
10 PRINT "JOSH IS AWESOME"
20 GOTO 10
after that, I was hooked.
I remember spending some time playing with BASIC, but I think most of what I was doing until Jr. High was just messing around. It was around that point I started using BBSes and learning C (on my own) and Pascal (in school). These two languages let me do way more complicated stuff than what I could do with BASIC. It was around this time (1994/1995) that I also started using Linux and BSD. It was also around this time that I started using the Internet via a shell account at CyberPort Montana. It was awesome!
Since then I’ve used C on and off (on as my primary language for quite a few years, then off more at Layerboom) and Linux or other UNIX-like OSes almost exclusively. Before working at Layerboom, I think I spent time working in (roughly from most amount of time spent to least):
- C
- PHP
- Perl
- Bash
- Python
- TI-BASIC
- BASIC
- C++
- Assembly
- ColdFusion
and probably a few others that I spent a little bit of time with.
Since I started at Layerboom, I have been coding almost exclusively in Ruby. I have spent a little bit of time using Bash or C, or reading through someone’s Perl, but it was mostly Ruby. Sometime I’ll write another whole post about my experience with Ruby.
As you can tell from the fact that the Smart platform’s written in it, Joyent’s big into Javascript among other things. So, for the foreseeable future, while it seems like I’ll probably continue to be spending the majority of my time using Ruby, I think I’ll also need to start using Javascript as well. Specifically, what I’m interested in getting started with is server-side Javascript using Node.js. As such, I’m going to try to spend some time over the next while getting myself up to speed on Javascript and Node. I hope to post more in the future regarding my progress!
For the past year and a bit I’ve been working with an awesome team on awesome stuff at Layerboom. It’s been a lot of work but I’m proud of what we managed to build, and proud of our team. Apparently I’m not the only one who thinks both our team and the stuff we’ve made is awesome because Joyent decided to buy Layerboom. This means I’m officially a “Joyeur” now. We have joined the Joyent team and will continue to build awesome stuff.
The people I’ve met from Joyent so far are also awesome. That means that surely the stuff we’ll produce together will be extremely awesome. You might think I’m exaggerating. I mean, how many times can I use the word awesome in a post? In reality though, it’s pretty amazing. I’m really excited about what we will be able to build along side and on top of what both companies have already built. Keep watching, I’ll be awesome.
I can’t really go into any more detail than what’s already been stated elsewhere, so this post will be shorter than usual. This is exciting enough though, that I couldn’t not write about it!
See also:
It seems like many people’s vision of the future has included flying cars for some time now. For some reason though it seems flying cars are still not that close to reality. The problem, I think, is not with the technology but rather with people. There are several companies working on flying cars and in fact there are working vehicles. Getting these released to the public and in widespread use seems like a disaster waiting to happen. At least until people aren’t allowed to drive them. If you’re a regular reader, you’ll already know what I think about cars, and I think that people can be trusted even less to drive flying cars. Unless they’re Korben Dallas.
I’ve been thinking about this recently due to the giant oil spill that seems to have been caused by a combination of incompetence, corner-cutting and operating near (or beyond) the limits of current human capability.
I think in general, the future seems full of things that could be very powerful but also potentially dangerous for people to be involved with. Beyond flying cars, these include (off the top of my head):
- Genetic Manipulation (bio-weapons: on purpose or accidental)
- Life extension (you think it’s crowded now?)
- Attempts to correct climate change
- Nanotech (think Grey goo)
- Commercialized Space (oops, dropped asteroids on NYC)
- Surveillance everywhere (1984!)
- DRM / Intellectual Property (you can’t think that!)
I could go on, but the point I’m trying to make is that the thing all of these technologies have in common is that they’re generally things that are considered by someone to be a good idea, but each of them has potential to cause a lot of problems. I can personally see good reasons to pursue almost all of these (except the last one). I even think work on most of them will lead to really good things. I’m just worried because I see so many people running things who seem to be criminally incompetent.
Maybe I tend to have too little faith in humanity.
Maybe others have too much.
Either way, I expect the future will be interesting!
Happy Canada Day!
I hope everyone is enjoying doing Canadian things like eating poutine, playing hockey, watching or listening to the CBC and going to Tim Hortons.
This post is my 26th this year. That means we’re now exactly halfway through the project 52 challenge, so I figured it’s about time to post an update on the progress so far. It’s been tough some weeks to come up with either ideas or time to write something, but I’ve found a way to get it done.
In case you haven’t checked the scoreboard recently, the current status at the time of this post going live (Howie and Kevin still have a few more hours to make a post this week) is:
| |
Kevin |
Howie |
Josh |
| Pass |
10 |
14 |
26 |
| Fail |
16 |
12 |
0 |
| Weeks |
26 |
26 |
26 |
| % Pass |
38% |
54% |
100% |
As you can see, after challenging Howie and I to do this, Kevin’s the one who has failed the most.
The only people who have failed more than Kevin are the Project 52 team themselves. They’ve even posted a semi-apology on their site to people who have actually been keeping up with the challenge since January 1. Since then (that post was March 18th) they haven’t posted anything on their site. I find that amusing.
Despite the fact that I have pretty much guaranteed myself a winning position, I’m still planning to post every week for the rest of the year. It seems like a good challenge, so I’ll try to push myself to keep it up. Even if I have to stretch some weeks to come up with topics. Who knows? Maybe after the 52 weeks are up, I’ll keep going.
