What is the least understood thing in computing that if only it were understood, everything would change? (via acm)

edit: some things are coming back. reflection.

the web.
hm; how to link?, make it stick? aggregate and merge¿?, ...

missing the ease.

the chief software architect got to speak at the supercomputerist's gathering in seattle. the official press is here, brian unfolds his weapon there.

hackers and painters, paul graham "The more you have to say to get something done, the harder it is to see bugs"

To become popular, a programming language has to be the scripting language of a popular system. Fortran and Cobol were the scripting languages of early IBM mainframes. C was the scripting language of Unix ... So if you want to design a popular language, you either have to supply more than a language, or you have to design your language to replace the scripting language of some existing system.

"Bookstores are one of the most important places for learning about new languages."

"three things any language needs—a free implementation, a book, and something to hack."

for the typoists and universal language nihilists: "The most important kind of succinctness comes from making the language more abstract."

language designers would do better to consider their target user to be a genius who will need to do things they never anticipated, rather than a bumbler who needs to be protected from himself. The bumbler will shoot himself in the foot anyway.

if you want to make a language that is used for big systems, you have to make it good for writing throwaway programs, because that's where big systems come from.

history of perl: didn't know, that it was thrown away itself and originally a tool for system administrators.

actually not so hard to guess, if you take it from a living creature perspective: libraries, the future programming language needs great designed libraries, graham says - ok, true, different world, different meaning, having fun here ...