The Careful Programmer

What's often missing when trying to learn a programming language is something between the 10 thousand feet overview and the medium to high tutorial assuming you've bootstrap yourself.

Eric Normand is offering insanely affordable Clojure learning videos. It's a Kickstarter campaign with only 6 hours left!

You can donate in all confidence, the main goal has been reached, but we need your help to reach the first stretch goal.

If you've ever wondered what all the hoopla about Clojure is, you can find out for a few bucks.

This is the last push for the Redline Smalltalk indiegogo campaign.

I give my heartfelt thanks to everybody who lent a hand, be it a donation or getting the word out.

We got an amazing spectrum of persons helping, from friends who donated so I would stop pestering them about Redline to pillars of our field like Grady Booch.

From the Redliners emerge these qualities: kindness, excellent programming chops, and a non-negligible amount of geekness 8)

Why would anybody be interested in an old language like Smalltalk?
I know quite a few of my readers are, among other languages I am sure, Scala programmers. I quite like Scala and its balance of OO and functional programming on a serving of static typing with inference. Scala has been the perfect vehicle for me to grok functional programming.
I am fond of learning different languages who makes different trade-offs and are suited for different architectures or goals.

Dear Darcula^H^H^H^H^H^H^HSanta,

I've been a huge fan of Intellij IDEA ever since I worked somewhere which had commercial licences. I moved on afterwards to a .net shop and coerced my boss into getting me a ReSharper license, without which I felt I had gone back to a vintage noir movie where I was a clueless detective in front of the source code conspiracy, unable to spy without Jetbrains binoculars.

Redline Smalltalk is a real Smalltalk for the JVM.

Redline Smalltalk is nearly done, but needs a little push to get out polished and in a timely manner.

Don't miss out on getting Redline passed the tipping point!

Click here to donate to the indiegogo campaign 8)

A rant.

Google newsgroup mobile site:
If there's a place I need my "mark all as read" option, it's more on my cell phone than my desktop.

Gmail Android mobile app:
I can create a new label using the mobile website but I can't using the app?

LinkedIn app on the iPad:
I can't edit my profile or add a new group? Is my iPad a read only device?

Hopefully these options are there but I just haven't figured out where/how.

PS: is there a mobile friendly way of writing a Blogger post on a mobile device?

I participated in the Cloud Robotics Hackathon in Montreal at the beginning of March.

It was my first hackethon and it was great. I registered with two friends, Alain & Benjamin. We joined forces with 3 strangers, Aurélien, Renaud & Stéphane, who turned out the be not only competent, but decent friendly persons.

The scene :
a human is working on his computer while a robot is standing idly by.

Robot: Hey! I've got a joke for you.
Human: Not right now. I'm busy. Aren't you supposed to do the laundry?
Robot: Seems to me you're not so busy as not to be chatting up about your dirty clothes.
Human turns around to stare are at Robot: You're starting to annoy the crap out of me. You know?
Robot: Well, there's no robotic law against that.
Human: I'm gonna write one.

Redline Smalltalk is a file-base Smalltalk targetting the JVM. I've posted about it before.

Some of the goals are outlined here: Why Smalltalk on the JVM?

If you'd like to watch and listen a presentation about it: The journey So Far.

I've been unable to go though my programming books lately; I can't find the energy to read it all or do the exercises.

I finally picked up Practical Clojure and it's a perfect guilt-free book: small and no exercises 8)
For some reason the first chapter did not flow very well for me, but every chapter after that is concise and readable. They really managed to boil down every important concept of the language without losing its essence. It's Clojure distilled!