Timothy Fitz

One month ago I asked for spare RAM on the Twisted-Python mailing list. The response was overwhelming! Four people each donated $50, and with a $50 thrown in of my own the buildbot got two gigabytes of fast DDR ram and a new case! Huge thanks to Dan Heidebrecht, Terry Jones, David Reid and Drake Smith for donating! The buildbot has been up and running for a couple weeks now and has proven relatively stable at http://twistedmatrix.com/buildbot/ (win32-iocp). Pictures of her here and here

I just finished giving a presentation on my language, Luther. Luther is really just a slimmed down Python interpreter. It has strings, numbers, lists, dictionaries, functions and generators, though the syntaxt is slightly different. Nothing revolutionary, but it definitely was a lot of fun! You can read the documentation or play with a live console an http://www.cs.rit.edu/~tjf4904/580/lu/

Well I’m definitely not the first person to read this link (it’s something like 15 years old), but The Lessons of Lucasfilm’s Habitat is a fantastically interesting read. Sure, it uses terms like ‘cyberspace’ and ‘baud’ and discusses unthinkably squeezing multiplayer capabilities onto a 0.3 kilobit connection, but the massively-social issues they faced are timeless, worth the read.

“We were initially our own worst enemies in this undertaking, victims of a way of thinking to which we engineers are dangerously susceptible. This way of thinking is characterized by the conceit that all things may be planned in advance and then directly implemented according to the plan’s detailed specification. For persons schooled in the design and construction of systems based on simple, well-defined and well-understood foundation principles, this is a natural attitude to have. Moreover, it is entirely appropriate when undertaking most engineering projects. It is a frame of mind that is an essential part of a good engineer’s conceptual tool kit. Alas, in keeping with Maslow’s assertion that, “to the person who has only a hammer, all the world looks like a nail”, it is a frame of mind that is easy to carry beyond its range of applicability. This happens when a system exceeds the threshold of complexity above which the human mind loses its ability to maintain a complete and coherent model.”

Going to give this website thing a try again! To start it all off, here are seven fascinating books I’ve been reading, in no order:

Agile Database Techniques - Scott Ambler
The Agile Method requires small incremental changes. A database schema is extremely hard to icrementally change. This book explores the clash. It aims to be the book for users of databases with agile techniques and covers everything from the basics of UML and database normalization to object oriented databases, refactoring databases and test driven design.

Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman - Richard Feynman
Nobel winning nuclear physicist. Safe Cracker. Bongo Player. Strip Club Regular. Richard Feynman.

Blink - Malcolm Gladwell
In a sentence, our initial reactions bubble up from the unconcious and can often be more accurate than concious processes. Gladwell covers initial reactions with the same style as The Tipping Point.

The Design and Evolution of C++ - Bjarne Stroustrup
Stroustrup, C++’s language creator, covers the evolution and more importantly the design decisions behind the C++ language. Worth a read just to see Stroustrup rationalize the language. Also worth a read to see how wrong his predictions were about C++ garbage collection.

User Interface Design for Programmers - Joel Spolsky
Joel has a witty overview of usability testing and user interface design aimed at programmers.

Refactoring - John Brant, Kent Bech, Martin Fowler et al.
Refactoring is the process of making small changes which do not affect the behaviour of the code. Details the path to take a project and make it better.

The Design of Everyday Things - Donald Norman
Definite must read for anyone interested in usability. You will never look at a door in the same way again.