I’m Not Alone!
Two weeks ago, I made this post railing against the fact that so many schools are cramming Java down the throats of CS students, which is making them become less effective at coming up with their own solutions to real world problems.
I kept my rant short, but there are a few people out there that have talked in much greater detail about why they also dislike this trend in universities. Here are some related posts of people that agree with me:
RIP: Bobby Fischer
The news has broken that Bobby Fischer died yesterday.
I’m very glad that he lived, and I’m almost equally glad that he died. His contributions to chess have hardly been rivaled by anyone in modern times. His contributions to insanity, hatred, antisemitism, anti-American propaganda, and general craziness have steadily grown in the last couple of decades.
Most people like to talk about the first half of his life while ignoring the last half. You can’t talk about the man without considering the whole man. That’s true of anyone, I guess.
The first half:
I learned chess when I was 7 years old from a step-father, and dabbled with it until I was a freshman in high school. At this point, I met Mr. Charles Vetter. He was my history teacher, and sometime during the first week of class, he announced that he would like anyone that knew how to play chess to join him after school on Tuesday of the next week. He was the sponsor and coach of the chess club at my school, and would like to keep the annual tradition of having a chess club going.
I’ve always enjoyed chess, and I always thought I was good at it. It’s also competitive in a mental way, and there’s not much of that in this world. Most direct competition is physical. This was my chance to flex my mental muscles. I joined the team, and quickly established myself as one of the top players. I spent hours in the public library (which has an impressive collection of chess books), and read every single one of them. For Christmas that year, all I asked for was chess books, and I received a good number of them. I still have most of them, and some of them were by Bobby Fischer.
During that school year, I spent an insane amount of time studying chess. I studied openings, middle games, end games, gambits, feints, sacrifices, and all of the strategies that go with it. I also studied the “greatest games in the world” to see what the best of the best did when pitted against each other. Many of these games were Bobby Fischer games. Some of the books just specified the moves of the game with no more details on why a move was good or bad. I had to figure that out for myself, and that was fine with me.
I’m not sure how much time I spent doing all of this, but it paid off. Near the end of my freshman year of high school, I entered the Texas State Chess Championships. Mr. Vetter had managed to get it hosted in my home town mainly because of the huge (about 30 students in our school, 25 in the rival school, and another 20-30 adults) number of people in the local chess club. Instead of busing almost 100 people across the great state of Texas, it was more feasible to have everyone else come to us.
The tournament was a weekend full of chess. I did quite well. I played 12 games in 2 days. I lost 2 games, and had a stalemate in another. The two that I lost were fair and square. I was playing a person better than me, and I didn’t do my best while they did. The stalemate was an embarrassment, though. I remember the guy’s name was Todd, and he was on my chess team near the bottom rungs of the rankings. I got cocky, stupid, and overconfident. I got him to the end game, and was up several pieces. Too many pieces. This makes a stalemate easier to fall into, and that’s exactly what I did. I should have won that game, but I didn’t.
In the end, I came in 4th place. Had I not had that stalemate, I would have been tied with another guy for 1st place, and it would have come down to a playoff game. That other guy was one of the two that had already beaten me, so I probably would have landed second place anyways.
How does Fischer tie into all of this? His mind and mine (at least as far as chess goes) seem to work in the same manner, though he is much more brilliant than I am. This allowed me to take his discoveries and ideas, and put them into play in a very effective manner. While Fischer was creating these ideas and using them to surprise everyone, I was merely following in his footsteps and trying not to stray from the path. I did my best to try to understand why I was doing the moves, and why they worked. Most of the time I did understand, but there were times that I knew that the best move was the best move, but I didn’t know why. Either way, it worked for me.
Now to the second half:
Sometime before 1992 Fischer decided that he didn’t like publicity, being American, or just doing what he loved any more and dropped off the face of the planet. Then he surfaced again in Yugoslavia to play in a tournament that was somehow banned by the United States (I’m still not quite sure about the legalities of that.) Fischer wanted to poke the USA in the eye, and he did so. Of course, when you poke someone larger and more powerful than you in the eye, you’re going to end up on the losing end of the exchange.
Which is what happened to Fischer. After many years of living incognito in the Pacific Rim (mainly Japan), he was discovered, detained (fancy word for thrown into prison without being charged with anything), and almost handed over the US government for playing a few games of chess in another country. Iceland came to the rescue with citizenship, a funky loophole in their extradition laws, and a plane ticket for Fischer.
If I sound sympathetic towards Fischer, I am. I feel sorry for someone that attained greatness in their field, and through a series of missteps, pushing from other entities, and just plain stubbornness they lose it all. Did he bring some of this on himself? Yes. Was some of it forced on him? Yes. Who’s fault is all this? The list is really too long to get into it here, but Fischer is near the top of the list.
My sympathy towards Fischer ended on 9/11. While buildings were still burning (and several still preparing to surrender to gravity and fall into rubble) in NYC, he was on the radio announcing how happy he was about the attacks, the deaths, the harm to the President, the harm to his former homeland, and so much more. I have no sympathy towards anyone, no matter how dire their straights, that exalts the sufferings of other people.
Fischer once again makes headlines with his death, but this will probably be the last time we see this. Unlike other famous dead (Diana, JFK Jr., Elvis, Monroe, etc.) Fischer did not die in controversy, but, rather, obscurity.
Bobby: Thanks for the education of the greatest game ever made. I hope you found peace before your final moments. If you’re in Heaven, set aside a game of Chess960 for me. I’d like to play a game with you.
A Real Programmer Can Write in Any Language
This write-up by Dr. Robert B.K. Dewar and Dr. Edmond Schonberg makes me very happy. They are basically railing against the propensity that modern universities and colleges have towards forcing Java on first-time programmers instead of teaching them the foundations of quality software engineering. Most universities are ignoring the basics of how to actually get software to operate properly. Properly means keeping data and processes secure, functional, accurate, stable, and efficient.
Java may attempt to enforce some of these things, but by programming in Java, the person at the keyboard is not taught how to do these things. They take it for granted that their language will do it for them, and this is not always the case. It’s like not wearing a seatbelt because you assume your airbag will save your life.
One analogy that Dewar/Schonberg used was this:
“The irresistible beauty of programming consists in the reduction of complex formal processes to a very small set of primitive operations. Java, instead of exposing this beauty, encourages the programmer to approach problem-solving like a plumber in a hardware store: by rummaging through a multitude of drawers (i.e. packages) we will end up finding some gadget (i.e. class) that does roughly what we want. How it does it is not interesting! The result is a student who knows how to put a simple program together, but does not know how to program.”
Another quote from the write-up that really tickles me is this one, “Conversely, we want to say that a competent programmer is comfortable with a number of different languages and that the programmer must be able to use the mental tools favored by one of them, even when programming in another.” According to these guys, I’m a competent programmer. I’ve always been able to take my expertise in one language and translate it into usefulness in another language. I’d like to see a pure Java programmer claim the same thing.
I could rant on this for much, much longer, but I highly suggest that you click the link at the start of this blog to see more of what got me started. I agree with pretty much everything that they’ve written there.
My Oath To You
I have a cousin that sends the usual religious chain letter stuff around. I don’t mind the ones that she sends to me because the stories that are in them are great and wonderful. I’m not the kind of person that does the “forward this to 10 of your friends to capture an angel’s wish” or anything like that.
However, she sent me one today that included this portion at the bottom. I liked it so much that I thought I would share it with you here.
MY OATH TO YOU
When you are sad…..I will dry your tears.
When you are scared…..I will comfort your fears.
When you are worried…..I will give you hope.
When you are confused…..I will help you cope.
And when you are lost….And can’t see the light, I shall be your beacon…..Shining ever so bright.
This is my oath…..I pledge till the end.
Why you may ask?….Because you’re my friend.
Signed: GOD
This may be an oath from God, but it sums up fairly closely how I feel about friendship. Everyone has their family, and you usually don’t get to choose them. Friends are a different matter. They are the people that you choose to be as close to you (or closer!) as family. If you’re my friend, I’m there for you no matter what.
My Mud Is Dead
Almost a year ago, I announced Mudding Is Dead. I held on to my mud for as long as I possibly could even though no one was playing it. I built a new server, and put it online a few weeks ago. The new server had a new OS, new compiler, new libraries, new everything. I had to recompile my mud to get it to work under the new architecture. It didn’t compile cleanly. I spent maybe 30 minutes messing with the code fixing the east stuff, and then I hit a snag that wasn’t hard, but required some reworking of the internals of the mud. Entirely possible. Entirely easy. Not entirely trivial. I have the skill to fix the problem, but I just don’t have the time.
I sent an email to the staff (only one of whom cared enough to reply) telling them that the mud was dead, and those people that had shell accounts on the server would need to get their stuff because at the start of the new year, I was going to blow it all away. Today was the day that arrived for me to blow that stuff away, and I did. There were some really great things in the mud, so I did, of course, back it all up to a tarball.
While I was backing things up, I came across idea files, databases, notes, and other stuff… Man… we had some awesome ideas in there. We also had some awesome ideas that never got implemented.
It was really sad shutting down and removing everything. I knew that it was inevitable, but that makes it no less sad. My good friend died a long and wasting death. I knew that it was coming, and I made him as comfortable as possible during his passing, but it came time to shed a tear, bury the body, and say a final goodbye.
Fare Thee Well, Spear of Insanity. You will be missed.
