[San-Diego-pm] Meeting Notes: Monday 2005-08-08

[Emile Aben]

One think I promised to do was to provide some info on how to get to
the SDSC building for Damian's talk. General info can be found here:
http://www.sdsc.edu/Visitors/directions.html

And google maps also has the area of course:
http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=32.886038,-117.239442&spn=0.006291,0.011823&t=h&hl=en

If you want to save a couple of bucks, the nearest free parking I know
of is on Torrey Pines Scenic Dr. (connects N Torrey Pines Rd to the
Gliderpoint).

People who know UCSD campus will know what shortcuts to take to get
from Torrey Pines to campus, I'm not going to try to explain these.

The longer, but safer way to walk (5 mins) from Torrey Pines Scenic
Dr. to the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) :
- Go to Torrey Pines Rd
- Turn left (North)
- Take the first right into North Point Dr.
- After a little uphill you'll see a UCSD info booth (North Point Dr @
North Point Ln), take a right here onto Ridgeway walk
- You'll pass the Rimac sports fields on your left and the Rimac
complex (first structure on the left)
- Next building on the left is SDSC, don't take the steep road down
between Rimac and SDSC, but walk past the SDSC west wing and you'll
see a little walkway to the main entrance (that's the only one that
will be open, so don't try other entrances).
- congrats you're there.

hope this helps

Emile

On 8/8/05, Tkil <tkil at scrye.com> wrote:
> 
> [Apologies to the list; I tried to send out a reminder for tonight's
> meeting, but I sent it to the wrong address.  Sigh.]
> 
> A rundown on the topics of conversation:
> 
> * CPAN Namespaces
> 
>   Emile brought up the fact that CPAN namespaces are essentially given
>   for a long time, and for exclusive use of one developer.  Slight
>   tangents about the best way to handle this (mob rule?  the old alt.*
>   newsgroup creation rules?).
> 
>   A few further tangents about how big software projects rarely seem
>   to survive without a benign dictator who is both thoroughly
>   technically competent yet also able to deal with people.  Larry Wall
>   and Linus Torvalds were mentioned.
> 
>   [Personal comment: I think that Apache might qualify as a project
>   that has survived and thrived without a single benign dictator.
>   Also, this line of thinking brings up a lot of my issues of
>   "meritocracy" vs "politics" in my head.]
> 
>   We later talked about Java namespaces, and how they tried to remove
>   the conflict by tying into the DNS namespace.
> 
>   [Personal note: what I'd really like to see in Java is the ability
>   to import a long namespace / package name as a short one:
> 
>     import com.foo.bar.baz.something.whatever.big.long.deep.thing;
>     // ...
>     thing.Widget w = new thing.WidgetImpl(...);
> 
>   Unfortuantely, that's just not there.]
> 
> * Versioning of interfaces:
> 
>   A segue from CPAN Namespaces to interfaces.  If you want to refactor
>   the interface provided by a class, what's the best way to do that?
>   You have to rename it unles it provides exact same methods and
>   models as before.
> 
>   Best way seems to be create new name, and either let the old version
>   stay alive for a while, or reimplement the old interface in terms of
>   the new one.
> 
>   [Personal comment: I remember the linux firewalling people doing
>   this when they would introduce a new and incompatible networking
>   framework into the kernel: they provided a command that would take
>   arguments like the old framework and translate them into the new.]
> 
>   Issues / solutions from other languages were brought up:
> 
>   + Win32 used Foo, then FooEx, then eventually Foo2 and Foo3
> 
>   + _Effective Java_ implies that one cannot ever add anything to a
>     published interface; I infer that this is because the vtable uses
>     a precise copy of the interface, and if that interface is changed,
>     you lose binary compatibility.
> 
> * Importing Namespaces.
> 
>   What's your preference?  Do you import individual functions
>   explicitly, or do you grab them all (or at least all the default
>   exports)?  Or do you import none, and use fully-qualified names on
>   everything?
> 
>   That is, do you prefer (in Perl):
> 
>     use Config qw( %Config );
>     # ...
>     print $Config{sig_name};
> 
>   Or would you just
> 
>     use Config;
>     # ...
>     print $Config{sig_name};
> 
>   Or you can even
> 
>     use Config qw();
>     # ...
>     print $Config::Config{sig_name};
> 
>   In Java, you have similar options:
> 
>     import java.util.List;
>     import java.util.ArrayList;
>     // ...
>     List<Integer> myList = new ArrayList<Integer>( initCapacity );
> 
>   Versus
> 
>     import java.util.*;
>     //
>     List<Integer> myList = new ArrayList<Integer>( initCapacity );
> 
>   Versus
> 
>     // no import statements at all
>     java.util.List<Integer> myList =
>       new java.util.ArrayList<Integer>( initCapacity );
> 
> * Markup Languages
> 
>   Emile discussed the benefits of "YAML" and how it's more readable
>   than XML while [apparently] being both simpler and still complete.
> 
>      http://yaml.org/
> 
>   I played devil's advocate for a while, but it seems that YAML really
>   is pretty well-thought-out; I wonder how much of XML was just
>   hangover from SGML...
> 
> * Collating Sequences; Evolution of [Human] Languages; Grammar
> 
>   We were talking about Damian Conway's upcoming visit, and how he
>   wrote a module to let you program Perl in Latin:
> 
>     http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~damian/papers/HTML/Perligata.html
> 
>   Which got into a side discussion of what the phrases "case",
>   "declination", and "conjugation" meant in a technical sense when
>   talking about grammars.
> 
>   I provided a few German and English examples, while Nolly threw in a
>   few Russian samples.  Joel tried to map this to his understanding of
>   Spanish and how it's changed even in his lifetime (but that's just
>   because he's OLD OLD OLD.)  Emile also compared the various
>   languages he'd found himself involved with.
> 
>   Nolly mentioned Suzette Elgin, a sci-fi author and linguist who has
>   an interesting LiveJournal:
> 
>     http://www.livejournal.com/users/ozarque/
> 
> Anything else mentioned?  Comment away.
> 
> t.
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