Hi Tech Luddite

Luddite on Rails

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 13:35:00 +0000

Heard much about Ruby And Rails of late and decided to do a hello-world. Ruby/Rails is another attempt at a panacea. Maybe one day disaster will strike and somebody will find it. It would put a lot of us out of work - The industry is for the most part a haven for intellectual tinkerers and equivalents of Maytag repair men, driven by deadlines and necessity, dealing with messy, labor intensive legacy code and myriad imperfections. The Quest for Beauty and Simplicity takes the backseat, more's the pity, but at least we accurately reflect the state of the rest of humankind: Semi-random chaos overlaid by dreams of what we'll be when we grow up.

Thus, as real-world relevance is king, the quest for a higher standard in hello-worlds:

Let's get a full-blown IDE with debugging & all.
The real world demands CRUD. Let's make something which actually stores & retrieves data.
It has to be Web 2.0-ish because it sells better.
It has to be test driven. Not just because it's so useful. It's also cooler.

Stay tuned.

The Ring Of Truth

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 03 Dec 2006 19:42:00 +0000

Ever now and then the Luddite runs into the Ring Of Truth. Truth of the matter is that with something so vague and complicated he couldn't possibly lay claim to any kind of universality. Hence, it should truthfully be called the Truth According To Ludd. If run-ins become more frequent, he'll eventually create a category for posts about it ("Categorical Truth"...?) in this blog. For now, the only truth is:

http://zedshaw.com/essays/master_and_expert.html

Do not click this link if:

Martial artists aren't your thing.
You aren't a geek.
You are an expert software developer and/or architect.

The Swedish Touch

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 03 Dec 2006 02:26:00 +0000

Who could resist interior design sounding like Oksekjoet, Gulost and Fiskeboller? Sometimes the Luddite succumbs to the allure of assemble-yourself Swedish furniture. The act of taking it home in flat awkward boxes and putting everything together gives him a sense of accomplishment. It's probably because although his daily work is gratifyingly creative, it's all about making things appear on screens: It never results in anything tangible in a three dimensional sense.

The assembly instructions are wordless, using images as the sole means of communicating the necessary how-to, bridging cultures and linguistic complexities with ease. He feels that should we ever encounter alien intelligence, Swedish Furniture's authors of chair bodgering instructions for two left thumbs will be uniquely qualified to initiate communications.

However, this weekend's assembly of a new computer cabinet had no less than 39 steps. They should supply raw logs and a handsaw, for simplicity's sake.

Regarding The State Of The Art Of Machine Translation

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 26 Nov 2006 15:35:00 +0000

Mann hats hart ....

Mann steht unter dem staendigen Verdacht des Neanderthalerseins. Hunderte von Beweisen der Wertschaetzung und der Sensibilitaet gelten nichts im Lichte eines einzigen Missgriffs, egal ob echt oder auf Missverstaendnissen beruhend. Frau hat staendig ein Ohr auf dem Boden, auf das geringsten Zeichen der Geringschaetzung witternd, zum Sprung ansetzend. Frau sieht Respektsbezeugungen mit Misstrauen - Mann sagt ja im Zweifel doch nur was immer noetig ist um Frau zwischen die Felle zu bringen, wahr oder nicht.

Manchmal moechte Mann im Frust die fliehende Stirn gegen die Hoehlenwand haemmern und sich die Keule ueber den Schaedel ziehen.

http://translate.google.com/translate_t

Man hats hard….

Man stands under the constant suspicion of the Neanderthalerseins. Hundreds of proofs of the appreciation and sensitivity do not apply for anything in the light of only one mistake, all the same whether genuine or being based on misunderstandings. Woman has constantly an ear on the soil, on the smallest indication of depreciating witternd, for jump setting. Woman sees respect testifying with distrust - man says in the doubt nevertheless only which is always necessary around woman between the skins to bring, truely or not. Sometimes man would like to hammer in the grind the fleeing forehead against the cave wall and to pull himself the club over the head.