September, 01 2003

Richard Jones comments on a Melbourne Age article reporting the federal Communications Minister’s suggestion that the ABC become a registered charity.

This is worrying in light of the government’s current attempt to remove funding from charities that are perceived as agitating for change of government policies. One more step down that particular road, and a registered-charity ABC would not be allowed to critically review any policy, announcement or action of the government of the day.

I’d go as far as to say that, if the Liberal party wins another term in 2004, the ABC is dead.

Note: This was written in honour of Post pictures of your cat to Javablogs Day.

They say managing software developers is like herding cats. Looking at my two cats, I see the wisdom in this. It’s a bit of stretch, please bear with me…

Over many, many years, we finally taught our cats not to sit on the lounge. It was a long process, involving simple rules, constant discipline, and a much used trigger squirt bottle.

Here is a picture of number one cat, DJ, not sitting on the lounge.

As you can plainly see, DJ is not—technically—on the lounge. Instead she has found a place to sleep on the headrest. This is better than the lounge because it gets more sun in the mornings. At least when she is up there she doesn’t groom herself, which leaves great gobs of fur to stick to people’s clothes. Plus, sometimes when she wakes up suddenly, she loses her balance and falls off the back of the lounge. Then we can say, “Serves you right, young lady.”

Here is a picture of number two cat, Oscar, also not sitting on the lounge.

Oscar is not on the lounge—he is on a blanket. As usual, Oscar pulled the blanket off the back of the lounge onto the seat so that he could lie on it. We let him get away with this because we can at least wash the fur off the blanket. That, and the fact that we just can’t bear to be continually yelling and squirting him in the face.

Programmers are similar. Given any rule—code reviews, unit tests, getting in before 9:00am, or wearing a tie—we find out exactly how little we can obey it.

I hope my manager doesn’t decide to get a squirt bottle.

Via Ted Leung, a thoughtful essay by Tom Lord on two possible directions for open software.

Tom hammers home the old free as speech vs. free as in beer distinction. He goes on to make the point that free software developers need to think very carefully about how to go about keeping free software, free, and lays out his model for the task.

I really like Python, but there are a few rough edges I would happily see knocked off it.

In the big picture, there are two big problems with Python:

• The basic documentation is good, but out of date. To really understand what is going on in Python, you need to keep up to date with the development mailing list summaries and the Python Enhancement Proposals. Update: Not really true—see this new post

• Python does not have a great record corporate acceptance. The best way to increase its acceptance would be to use an alternate spelling for the name “Python”. I suggest “J-A-V-A”. That would to work.

Some language features get up my nose too:

• There are no closures. The Python syntax makes this a difficult addition. Update: Completely not true—see this new post

• Ditto with the ternary operator.

• There is no broad agreement on Python coding style. This is particularly annoying when it comes to class and method names, the number of spaces to indent¹, an how comments should be written.

• There are no true declarations. The class and def statements for creating classes and functions look like declarations, but their exact effect depends upon the program’s run time state when the class or def statement is run. While very powerful, this can lead to obscure bugs.

David also points to 10 Python Pitfalls by Hans Nowak and Python Gotchas by Steve Ferg. Both good reads.

¹ Or indeed, whether to use tabs instead of spaces.

A wise man once spake:

All Friday afternoon demos are the same. They go, “Look, I type something in over here, and something happens over there.”

Green’s corollary: The more separate computers, keyboards and displays you have, the better.