Thinking Inside a Bigger Box

1. Attributes. Keeps getting better ‘n better. Check out Extensible C#, Clemens Vasters new demos, and the underutilized ContextBoundObject


2. ADO.NET. The ADO.NET model for modeling and transporting data hits right on the spot.


3. Better FFI. P/Invoke wins against JNI, hands down (too bad it is probably overused, though)


4. Not EJBs! Getting rid of the defunct EJB model saves a lot of headaches.


5. Better UI. For the user, that is, not the developer!

1. Open Source Community. The number of excellent open-source tools for Java is staggering. Look at HSqlDb, BeanShell, Eclipse, Recoder, JGraph, Tomcat, JBoss, and many more. More importantly, the Java community has proven much more interested in doing it the open-source way.


2. Eclipse. Already mentioned, but it deserves a point of its own. Eclipse is a better IDE than VS.NET!


3. Checked Exceptions.


4. Less Native Code & more code reliability. .NET still has some weird crashes. Despite much improvement, I have still experienced DLL-Hell light.


5. More mature libraries.

1. The Psychology of Computer Programming (Jerry Weinberg)


2. The Pragmatic Programmer (Andrew Hunt and Dave Thomas) - from Journeyman to Master (the view of the software professional as a craftman is the only thing that will save the business!)


3. PeopleWare (Tom DeMarco and Tim Lister)


4. Extreme Programming Explained (Kent Beck)


5. After the Gold Rush (Steve McConnell)

Test-Driven Development describes in detail this technique from Extreme Programming. In addition, the author spends some time teaching the reader a useful set of mental tools for writing better code. TDD is a very fast read, but it is full of useful information. If I wanted my developers to only read one small book about software development, this would be it.

Note: The back of the book lists it as “Software Engineering/Testing”. This is incorrect. Test-Driven Development is not about testing, it is about programming.

Highly recommended.

Brilliant book. “How the Mind Works” is a tour de force over many of the puzzling aspects of the human mind:

• Why can our eyes be fooled by optical illusions?


• Why would we evolve emotions?


• Why would we evolve behaviour that makes us unable to fully control ourselves, like rage?

The book puts forth theories for all these questions and more.

The best part of the book, however, is the style in which it is written. Steven Pinker is a master at keeping the text interesting.

The main value of the book is not that it deals with these specific issues, but that teaches the reader a framework that can be used to understand the human mind: Evolutionary Psychology.

Recommended.

A view on the conflict from the standpoint of cognitive science/social science

• Steven Pinker (”How the mind works”): People may use “doomsday machines” (strategies that are both harmful to themselves and an agressor) to deter agressors.


• Hernando de Soto (”The Mystery of Capital”) An important reason a society with big differences are more prone to violence is that the underprivileged do not have any bargaining power.


• Personal opinion: In a conflict with two countries that are dramatically unevenly matched, we should expect the underprivileged to resort to “doomsday machine” strategies.


• Extending the argument from psychology to global politics is not supported by these data, but




• Iraq is controlled by a small number of people, which makes it more likely to act in accordance with the personal feelings of these people.


• The “doomsday machine” strategy was first used to analyse global politics and was there called “Mutually Assured Destruction” (MAD). (Pinker)

In the war, this is some practical predictions:

• Saddam’s forces will set the oil fields on fire


• Saddam’s forces will draw fighting into residential areas to cause massive civilian casualties


• Saddam’s forces will attempt to use civilians as human shields


• Saddam will attempt to enrage his neighbours to escalate the war


• Saddam will attempt any dirty trick to get back at the US (like terrorism)

At this point, Saddam is a man with nothing at the bargaining table. And as the saying goes: “If you have got nothing, you have got nothing to lose”.

Disclaimer: Modern “Darwinian ethics” are very clear on separating between explaining and defending behaviour. The stance of “Darwinian ethics” is that if we want as people to behave better, we need to have an understanding of the darker impulses within us all.

What does it really mean when they say stuff like “the fighting in order to capture Umm Qasr is heavier than expected”. What does it mean when the fighting is heavier? Do more people die on either side? Do any people die on either side? After almost three days of war, I have still to hear of any casualties in the fighting. Are we supposed to believe there are none?

The hawks in Washinton, and Blair, claim this is a “just war”. How is the public supposed to believe that claim when we don’t know

• how many people are being killed now


• how many people they expect will be killed (UN estimates 100,000 civilians killed in the war, and 400,000 from the humanitarian effects afterwards, Pentagon estimated 10,000 civilians killed - I have not found good confirmation of these figures)


• how long they expect the war to last


• how long they expect the aftermath to last until Iraq gets a lawful interim government.


• how many civilians must be killed for the agressors to declare their “just war” as unsuccessful?

The press also seem to have avoided these questions. Or maybe it is just the fog-of-war.

On the news yesterday, I heard Blair say that the british lawyer-general claims the present war on could be legal. I understand he finds his justifications in the UN resolutions 678, 687, 688, and 1441 (probably among others). These resolutions calls for disarming the Iraqi regime by any means necessary.

There are two fundamental problems with this argument:

First, the stated goals of the “coalition of the willing” are disarming Iraq and changing it’s regime. Only the first goal can be defended from the resultions. As far as the second goal is concerned, as Kofi Annan pointed out (March 20th), forced regime change is in conflict with the UN Charter.

I do believe it would be a good thing if we could help replace Saddam with a just government. I don’t believe that rushing to war will improve the likelihood of this happening. I am not even convinced that the UN Charter can’t be amended to include protocols for forced regime change. In that case, the question the “coalition” should have asked the Security Counsil is: “What checks and balances must we have in place to be able to safely implement a policy for regime change?” This includes what factors the counsil should give weight to decide whether the regime should be changed, and what preparations should be in place to ensure that the new regime would be an improvement?

Secondly, even if the resolutions do open for military actions to disarm Iraq, military action is not the only way of disarming. It is probably not even the best way of disarming. Why should military forces have greater chances of finding hidden chemical or biological weapons than inspectors? As long as the inspectors are able to inspect, even if Iraq is not cooperative, replacing inspectors with military forces can only result in better result in disarming if the coalition withheld pertinent intelligence from the inspectors. If the inspectors are directly confronted by Iraqi officials, a police force could prove more effective than military sanctions.

The resolutions do not open for military action if Iraq is non-cooperative, they open for military action if no other way of disarming is viable.

Of course, inspections are unlikely to topple Saddam’s regime. But the resolutions do not open for regime change.

This war is illegal.

Disclaimer: Ideologically I am a pasifist. This comes from the simple observation that common fallacies caused by statistical regression causes people to think that punishment is an effective way of changing the behaviour of others. Personal experience leads me to believe that enimousity just entrenches people’s positions.

This is exactly the kind of thing I have been looking for in C#. I am still some ways away from having looked at it as thorough as I would like, but it looks very good.

Basically: Attributes that are processed compile-time with any code you like. This is the basic building blocks for AOP.

A fairly decent-seeming RSS feed reader. This entry was written with it. Pretty cool