Scala, Java, Unix, MacOS tutorials (page 192)

These are a few notes on Apple’s Swift open source development project, taken from this mailing list post by Apple’s Chris Lattner:

- Open source is pretty great. It has been incredible to see such a vibrant community working so well together, and to see you come together practically overnight.

- Open source also brings challenges.  I think it is fair to say that “open design” is slower and less predictable than “closed design”. However, the end result is significantly better, and therefore the tradeoff is worth it.

- Software scheduling (particularly with open source) continues to be difficult-to-impossible to predict.

- It is *good* to have high goals, but we need to do a better job of communicating that “goals” are not “promises” so that people don’t feel misled.

I can now officially add “hernia” to my list of medical accomplishments this year. Thank you, thank you very much.

(Personal note: the hernia came before the tequila.)

When I was young — ages 0 to 8 — my family lived in Chicago. One day I was walking down a sidewalk, and some older boys were walking the other way.

I was a little kid and pretty much just going “La la la la ...” down the sidewalk when the boys stopped me. One of them asked, “Are you M’s brother?”, where “M” refers to one of my sisters. I said something like, “Sure, yes, how you doing?”, when he hauled off and punched me in the stomach. “That’s for your sister,” he said.

(As the saying goes, Hurt people hurt people.)

“Knock, knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“Opportunity.”

“Could you maybe just shoot me a text?”

(From someone on Twitter I can’t link to because their page is not PG rated.)

“If I were to pick a language to use today other than Java, it would be Scala.”

~ James Gosling, the creator of the Java programming language

(Quote from the back cover of Programming in Scala, Updated for Scala 2.12.)

I learned today that Bactrim conflicts with another medicine I’m taking. I’m also allergic to Cipro. Which makes it hard to treat an infection.

Back In The High Life Again by Steve Winwood is a great song for those moments when you think, “Phew, that didn’t kill me, let’s celebrate.”

If you’re interested in ScalaFX, here’s a link to their brief documentation, their tutorials on Github, and here’s a link to the ScalaFX versions of the Pro JavaFX book examples.

“A language memory model is a specification that describes the circumstances under which a write to a variable becomes visible to other threads ... a purely functional programming language, which doesn’t support mutations, does not need a memory model at all.”

(From Learning Concurrent Programming in Scala)

I saw the acronym “TWTW” posted by Buster Olney this morning, and didn’t know what it meant. Turns out it means, “The Will to Win.” It was apparently coined by Ken “Hawk” Harrelson of the Chicago White Sox back in 2013. He used the term in a debate about the use of sabermetrics in sports, arguing that there was no sports acronym that could account for that.

“Inspirational Dissatisfaction” is a term that I read a very long time ago, possibly in a book called Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude.

The term basically means, “I am so unhappy in my current situation that it is motivating the heck out of me to do something about it.” Rather than become sad or depressed about your current situation, you become motivated by it, so inspired by it that you become willing to do whatever it takes to change your situation.

For those who have been waiting for it, Sandy Clough will be returning to 104.3 The Fan this coming Monday.