2009-06-23 True 3D

A geek joke:

"Knock knock"
"Who's there?"
(long pause)
"Java"

The true joke is that I've seen this on the Jade intranet. If you don't know the Jade language, you don't know why I'm laughing so hard. But if you do, and you use it for your own project, then you have nothing to laugh about.

An example:
In a good programming language, a primitive type is one that always requires the same amount of memory. Everything else is an object. In the Jade language, strings are primitives, and yet they have unlimited length. Which means there is no such thing as an array of strings. If you want one, you need to wrap it in a class (there are no templates, either, but that's a different story altogether).
Here are two lines of my discussion with a senior developer:

Marc: "I kinda wonder why people keep on telling me that Jade makes things easier for developers..."
Senior Developer: "It does.... except when you're used to a non-strongly typed language and/or used to dealing with pointers to variable length data.... but then where would all those buffer overrun trojan/worm/virus writers go if it wasn't for the looseness of some other languages... :D"

Of all the reasons why I quit my job, this is probably the best. I was afraid that if I'd stay there longer, I'd eventually assimilate that attitude through osmosis.

***

This month has been very technological for me, so it's only fair to end this post with links to two ultra-cool YouTube videos. This one is downright brilliant, and this one is even better. Two sides of the coin, if you think of it. It's about time for me to jump on the bandwagon and implement something similar.