After my earlier post about Almost Live!, you might be wondering why they chose Kent as the small city to be the butt of all jokes. Perhaps this will help clear things up: CNN.com – Lava lamp left on hot stovetop explodes, killing man – Nov 30, 2004
Adam Bosworth has posted a transcript of his ISCOC04 talk on his website. I suggest everyone remotely concerned with Computer Science go read it.
He talks about the KISS principle: Keep It Simple and Sloppy. As opposed to a more formalised and rigid structure. This is one of the best arguments I have encountered as to why languages like PHP and C win more hearts and minds than Eiffel and Ada. Even when the C hacker will readily admit that Ada or Eiffel would prevent them from making some of the mistakes they do.
Basically, Bosworth says, it comes down to the fact that there are two styles of programmer: those who want to work in a clearly defined abstract space where all the rules are written and everything slots nicely into place, and those who just want to code and use the language as a tool to get the end result they want. The former start their projects with careful UML specifications and manage their classes’s coupling closely, while the latter think of something they want the computer to to and set about making it do that.
The majority of his talk focuses on the web (HTML vs. XSLT/CSS, RSS vs. WS_*) and his points are just as valid in that realm. All in all, a highly interesting piece.
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