Sunday, October 28, 2007
Evolution of Programming
In the very beginning of computer programming was binary coding. Y'all must have seen the cartoon with the caption "Real programmers code in Binary". If you haven't here is the link.
Anyhow, then came machine code when programmers were able to use HEX 1 thru F. After that it was assembler coding when mnemonics were developed, so programmers could use such instructions as JPNZ (that is on the Zilog 8080, I think) which was a branching instruction and stood for Jump When Not Zero. IBM 360 mnemonics were typically more cryptic so that M stood for MOVE rather than the MOV favoured by 8080.
But no one denied that this was an advancement and easier cf a series of 1's and 0's.
3GL's like Fortran and COBOL were significantly easier than mnemonics and 4GL's/CASE Tools like IEF (the only one that I am familiar with) made application development (as opposed to pure programming) even simpler. For example, developing a CICS screen was way quicker in IEF compared to doing it in COBOL/CICS Command Language.
I'd like to digress and say that CICS command language itself was a big step forward from CICS Macro level programming.
And when IEF/Composer/Cool:GEN introduced GUI development tools, it provided an opportunity for existing developers of Block Mode (i.e. green screen) applications a bridge to client server development without major retooling.
Similarly VB did the same thing for non mainframe development, didn't it? It made it so much quicker to create a GUI based app with database access- a huge improvement over using BASICA and QBasic. It spawned the likes of PB and even Access development.
Alas, along came Java and Web development and I feel application development took a major step backward. Someone developing apps for the web these days using JEE needs just so many skills- Java to begin with, then Javascript, JSP, frameworks like Struts or JSF or whatever, other frameworks like Spring, technologies like Hibernate and JLog and the list goes on. (Not to forget good ole SQL)
An IDE like Eclipse is so busy compared to the old VB! There are just so many bits and pieces.
Isn't this regressive? I mean, shouldn't it become easier to develop and deploy applications as computer technology progresses?
Java and .NET developers look down on VB apps as procedural and non portable and so on forgetting the obvious- they served a purpose, mainly to satisfy user requirements in a quick and pleasing fashion.
Labels: programming "application development"
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Languages
I was watching a Mallu flick the other day and Mammooty said something to the effect of "Vizhuppalakkunathu pinneyaakaam" meaning that the dirty laundry could be washed at a later time.
Which set me thinking how the same proverbs and expressions exist in different languages. Did somebody translate them at some time in the past or is it a reflection of the fact that humans tend to think of the same things wherever they are? A kind of corroboration of the homogeneity of mankind, as it were.
In this instance, did somebody in Kerala come up with the "Vizhuppalakkal" expression when they read the English "washing one's dirty laundry" and thought that Malayalam could do with an equivalent?
Or more common proverbs like "Minnuthellam ponnalla", "Palathulli Peruvellam" and "Vithachathu Koyyum" meaning "All that gli(s)tters is not gold", "Many a drop makes big ocean" and "You reap what you sow"... Did these exist in the Malayalam of the 16th century before any English speakers came to India?
While on the subject, English could be enriched with expressions like
"What place has a cat in a (gold)smithy"
"When I see the dog, I have no stone, and when I have a stone, I see no dog"
"What knows a barren woman of labor pains"
"Is a pickle as good as salt?"
On second thoughts- nah. They are just not as effective!
Which set me thinking how the same proverbs and expressions exist in different languages. Did somebody translate them at some time in the past or is it a reflection of the fact that humans tend to think of the same things wherever they are? A kind of corroboration of the homogeneity of mankind, as it were.
In this instance, did somebody in Kerala come up with the "Vizhuppalakkal" expression when they read the English "washing one's dirty laundry" and thought that Malayalam could do with an equivalent?
Or more common proverbs like "Minnuthellam ponnalla", "Palathulli Peruvellam" and "Vithachathu Koyyum" meaning "All that gli(s)tters is not gold", "Many a drop makes big ocean" and "You reap what you sow"... Did these exist in the Malayalam of the 16th century before any English speakers came to India?
While on the subject, English could be enriched with expressions like
"What place has a cat in a (gold)smithy"
"When I see the dog, I have no stone, and when I have a stone, I see no dog"
"What knows a barren woman of labor pains"
"Is a pickle as good as salt?"
On second thoughts- nah. They are just not as effective!
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
2 Malayalam movies
There was a time when most Malayalam movies were tragedies. Or so I think. Sarada, 3 time winner of the Urvasi award given to the best actress at a National level, specialised in tragic roles. Women went to the theatres for a good cry. Made no sense since the life they got back to when they returned home would hardly have been a bed of roses.
Anyway, I recently watched one called Vishnu on Surya. It was as if the filmmakers had decided they wanted to make a flick where Mammootty is killed at the end. So they come up with a preposterous story line where he kills a really bad guy, in self defence, and despite his lawyer putting up a very good case, the judge decides to sentence him to death anyway because the story demanded that. The court scene was actually quite comical with an occasional interjection of "Objection your honour" to be immediately, and I mean immediately, followed by a very curt "Sustained" or "Overruled".
And not being content with that, they spend the last half hour showing his life in jail, which includes his getting married and also the death of his mother from the shock of the sentencing. It all culminates in an execution that has the mandatory dream sequence where he gets a last minute reprieve, only to be denied cruelly.
And then we watched "Oru Minnaminunginte Nurunguvettom". Funnily enough we watched the second half first and never realised that we had missed half the movie. Woman dies giving birth and the child is brought up by "foster" grand parents. Everyone knows all along that the father is going to come back and take the child away and when he does do it, we are treated to 20 minutes of wailing and crying. After the second half got over, the dvd started to play the first part of it and we are like "Oh darn, we missed half the movie"
Which actually is not too bad compared to "Thalolam" which used a similar premise but spent more than half the movie treating us to the crying and sentiments of the couple who were going to give up the child at the end of it all anyway.
Anyway, I recently watched one called Vishnu on Surya. It was as if the filmmakers had decided they wanted to make a flick where Mammootty is killed at the end. So they come up with a preposterous story line where he kills a really bad guy, in self defence, and despite his lawyer putting up a very good case, the judge decides to sentence him to death anyway because the story demanded that. The court scene was actually quite comical with an occasional interjection of "Objection your honour" to be immediately, and I mean immediately, followed by a very curt "Sustained" or "Overruled".
And not being content with that, they spend the last half hour showing his life in jail, which includes his getting married and also the death of his mother from the shock of the sentencing. It all culminates in an execution that has the mandatory dream sequence where he gets a last minute reprieve, only to be denied cruelly.
And then we watched "Oru Minnaminunginte Nurunguvettom". Funnily enough we watched the second half first and never realised that we had missed half the movie. Woman dies giving birth and the child is brought up by "foster" grand parents. Everyone knows all along that the father is going to come back and take the child away and when he does do it, we are treated to 20 minutes of wailing and crying. After the second half got over, the dvd started to play the first part of it and we are like "Oh darn, we missed half the movie"
Which actually is not too bad compared to "Thalolam" which used a similar premise but spent more than half the movie treating us to the crying and sentiments of the couple who were going to give up the child at the end of it all anyway.
Thursday, October 04, 2007
Cricket Telecast
I saw this headline
Doordarshan to telecast cricket ties live: court informed
If this happened in the US, the Senate would mandate that all NFL/NBA games be shown on network TV (free to air) channels. Monday Night Football would continue to be on ABC as well as ESPN. Baseball playoff games could not be just on TBS any more.
I don't know which side to take.
The Americanized me says that, from a free-enterprise point of view this is a retrogressive step. I mean what business has the government to dictate telecast of a non public event. It is not republic day parade, it is a cricket match organised by a private body (BCCI) with private sponsors, right?
The cricket fan in me says that the ordinary people cannot be denied their entertainment. Just because people are too poor to afford cable, should they be denied?
What think you?
Doordarshan to telecast cricket ties live: court informed
The government on Wednesday informed the Delhi High Court that the private TV channels would compulsorily share with the public broadcaster Doordarshan the live feed of all official One-Day Internationals, Twenty20 ties and some Tests of public interest abroad.
Submitting a copy of a notification adding certain clauses in the Sports Broadcasting Signals (Mandatory Sharing with Prasar Bharti) Act, 2007, issued in New Delhi on Wednesday, government counsel Rajiv Sharma said all ODIs, Twenty20 matches and selected Tests would be shown live to the Indian viewers.
The semi-finals and finals of the Men's World Cup and the International Cricket Council (ICC) Championship Trophy would also be shown live, according to the notification submitted before the bench headed by Chief Justice MK Sarma.
In July 2007, the high court had issued notice to the government and public broadcasting corporation Prasar Bharti on a petition seeking direction for telecasting all cricket matches, including India-England series held in England earlier this year, live on Doordarshan under the provisions of a recent law.
The Akhil Bharatiya Grahak Panchayat, an NGO, had said Doordarshan was not telecasting the India-England series, which is mandatory under the provisions of the Sports Broadcasting Signal Sharing Act.
According to the act, any channel telecasting live sports events featuring India was bound to share the live feed with Doordarshan for the benefit of the public, the petition pointed out.
The petition was disposed of following the government's submission on Wednesday.
Doordarshan to telecast cricket ties live: court informed
If this happened in the US, the Senate would mandate that all NFL/NBA games be shown on network TV (free to air) channels. Monday Night Football would continue to be on ABC as well as ESPN. Baseball playoff games could not be just on TBS any more.
I don't know which side to take.
The Americanized me says that, from a free-enterprise point of view this is a retrogressive step. I mean what business has the government to dictate telecast of a non public event. It is not republic day parade, it is a cricket match organised by a private body (BCCI) with private sponsors, right?
The cricket fan in me says that the ordinary people cannot be denied their entertainment. Just because people are too poor to afford cable, should they be denied?
What think you?
Doordarshan to telecast cricket ties live: court informed
The government on Wednesday informed the Delhi High Court that the private TV channels would compulsorily share with the public broadcaster Doordarshan the live feed of all official One-Day Internationals, Twenty20 ties and some Tests of public interest abroad.
Submitting a copy of a notification adding certain clauses in the Sports Broadcasting Signals (Mandatory Sharing with Prasar Bharti) Act, 2007, issued in New Delhi on Wednesday, government counsel Rajiv Sharma said all ODIs, Twenty20 matches and selected Tests would be shown live to the Indian viewers.
The semi-finals and finals of the Men's World Cup and the International Cricket Council (ICC) Championship Trophy would also be shown live, according to the notification submitted before the bench headed by Chief Justice MK Sarma.
In July 2007, the high court had issued notice to the government and public broadcasting corporation Prasar Bharti on a petition seeking direction for telecasting all cricket matches, including India-England series held in England earlier this year, live on Doordarshan under the provisions of a recent law.
The Akhil Bharatiya Grahak Panchayat, an NGO, had said Doordarshan was not telecasting the India-England series, which is mandatory under the provisions of the Sports Broadcasting Signal Sharing Act.
According to the act, any channel telecasting live sports events featuring India was bound to share the live feed with Doordarshan for the benefit of the public, the petition pointed out.
The petition was disposed of following the government's submission on Wednesday.
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
Does grammar matter?
The short answer is, no. Except in the SAT's. At least in the US, that is. My take is that kids deliberately forget their grammar once they enter college and join the work force with near complete disregard for it.
For the most part I don't pay attention to solecisms but a few still continue to irk me. First and foremost is the apostrophe in a plural world (the so called greengrocer's apostrophe). Of late, this apostrophe has crept in almost everywhere a word ends in an 's' leading to such constructions as
"This software let's us automate our tasks".
It is almost as if people have completely lost it when it comes to the usage of an apostrophe. And as for the possessive form of "it", it's rarely that I see it correctly used minus the apostrophe.
Next on the list is the rampant confusion between the possessive pronoun and the abbreviated form of the "is" verb.
So "You're welcome" becomes "Your welcome" and "They're doing it" is now "Their doing it". People seem to forget the distinction between "their" and "there" as well.
And lastly, for now anyway, "lie" and "lay". Granted this is difficult given that "lay" serves as the past tense of "lie" and as a transitive verb in its own right whose past tense is "laid".
So whenever I hear someone saying something like "I was laying in bed last night", I am tempted to ask "what or who". Surprisingly a rock song gets it right when Bon Jovi sings "I will lay you down in a bed of roses". Of course it would have been equally meaningful, perhaps more so from a rock 'n roll perspective, if the "down" had been left out!
For the most part I don't pay attention to solecisms but a few still continue to irk me. First and foremost is the apostrophe in a plural world (the so called greengrocer's apostrophe). Of late, this apostrophe has crept in almost everywhere a word ends in an 's' leading to such constructions as
"This software let's us automate our tasks".
It is almost as if people have completely lost it when it comes to the usage of an apostrophe. And as for the possessive form of "it", it's rarely that I see it correctly used minus the apostrophe.
Next on the list is the rampant confusion between the possessive pronoun and the abbreviated form of the "is" verb.
So "You're welcome" becomes "Your welcome" and "They're doing it" is now "Their doing it". People seem to forget the distinction between "their" and "there" as well.
And lastly, for now anyway, "lie" and "lay". Granted this is difficult given that "lay" serves as the past tense of "lie" and as a transitive verb in its own right whose past tense is "laid".
So whenever I hear someone saying something like "I was laying in bed last night", I am tempted to ask "what or who". Surprisingly a rock song gets it right when Bon Jovi sings "I will lay you down in a bed of roses". Of course it would have been equally meaningful, perhaps more so from a rock 'n roll perspective, if the "down" had been left out!
