Interests meme

Meme, as invited by michiexile.

Comment on this post and I will pick seven of your interests. You then explain them in your journal and re-post. ...if you want to, of course. No pressure. And you can ask me about my interests, too.

The seven that Michi picked for me were autechre, b/h=(d+f)/(d+e), grim meathook future, punting, spinnwebe, universal algebra, and category theory.

( Read more... )

¹ Yes, I know what "incunabula" means. But that's just it: most people don't (I certainly didn't when I first heard the album), and it's wonderful as a semi-nonsense sound. When you learn what it means, you see what a fantastic name it is for a band's first album :-)

Musings on COBOL

In a world such as this one, filled with war, famine, impending ecological collapse and Celtic fans, it really ought to take more to horrify me than this. But I guess I'm shallow that way.

Before diving into the actual text, let's just take a step back and consider the implications: the University of Limerick was teaching their "introduction to programming" course in COBOL, in 2002 (and as far as I can see, still are).

[Non-geeks: COBOL is the Common Business-Oriented Language, an ancient language used on dinosaur mainframes with about as much style and joie de vivre as the name implies. The Jargon File notes that in hacker circles its name is "synonymous with evil", and Edsger Dijkstra famously commented that "The use of COBOL cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense."]

( Read more... )