The Closing Down of Java
Could this be the closing down of Java?
Neal Gafter (commenting on Joseph D. Darcy's Oracle Weblog): We were told, before this and other JDK 7/8 JSRs started, that the expert group deliberations would take place in a publicly-readable forum. Not only did that not happen, now we are being asked to comment on the resulting draft specification without any reference to the issues and discussion leading to its formation. The record of the discussion would greatly help us in focusing our attention on potential problem areas. Please let me know when Oracle plans to fulfill its commitments to provide that information, and I will then be happy to provide detailed comments.
You Don't Need No @!#% Tests If You Are Knuth
Dick Lipton on Gödel’s Lost Letter and P=NP: Knuth began to explain how he wrote the first version of TeX. My faculty colleagues began to become more and more uncomfortable as Knuth spoke. The high level version of what he said was:I sat down and started to type in the entire program in Pascal. After X hours the entire system was entered. Then I tried to compile it all. After fixing a few syntax errors the system compiled. I then tried to typeset a sample piece of TeX. Again after fixing a few errors I got this all to work...