Call me easily entertained, but I still find remixes inspired by the movie 300 funny, such as Brian Jepson’s remix of the Univac ad from the previous entry:
You can click the photo above to see the remix at full size or here to see it in Brian Jepson’s Flickr collection.
Here’s a computer ad from 1956 – it’s for Univac computers, a brand name that was as synonymous with “computer” in the same way that “Xerox” was once synonymous with “photocopier”:
Click the ad to see it at full size.
Ad courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.
Here’s the text of the ad. If it seems a little strange to your modern sensibilities, it’s because it’s ad copy from the era of Mad Men — that’s just how advertising was back then. Note that lack of technical jargon or specs, neither of which would’ve been useful back then, when very few people would’ve known what they meant:
“You’re Trying to Divide by Zero”
A scientist, testing a formula on Univac recently, was amazed to see the computing system stop, then automatically type the reproof: “You’re trying to divide by zero.” A quick check proved that Univac, as always, was right.
This graphic demonstration points out just one of the many Remington Rand refinements in the art of computer programming and operation. For Univac has been trained to spot human errors. It can now carry out commands given in simple business English. It can even manufacture its own program of instructions automatically – at electronic speeds, with unparalleled accuracy.
These skills have been developed as a direct result of Univac’s unique position in the field of electronic data-processing. Because, with every Univac delivered goes 10 years’ experience in electronic computing…5 years’ experience in the commercial type of data-processing. This wealth of background in programming and operation is unobtainable elsewhere.
The unprecedented savings of Univac data-processing have been proved by solving actual consumer problems – not by working out theoretical solutions with non-existent computers. You can be sure that, when you install the Univac, you’ll get under way faster, surer and more economically because the System has already handled similar work.
Univac is now at work in leading organizations throughout the country. And, in today’s competitive market, the company which cuts its overhead first comes out on top. So don’t wait until 1957…1958…or 1959 to cash in on the tremendous savings available to you now with the Remington Rand Univac System.
Some observations:
[Update: Looks like I got my programming language timelines wrong. “mistercow” points out on Reddit that COBOL didn’t appear until 1959 and suggests that the “commands in simple business English” language is probably FLOW-MATIC, one of COBOL’s predecessors.]
And finally, two things that a programmer in today’s economy should keep in mind. It’s almost as if they’re special messages sent through time:
Although these statements were made back when computers were rare and extremely expensive and well before there was a computer on every office desk – in fact, well before computers could even fit on desks – they hold true today. If you’re a programmer looking to make a living in 2009, it’ll pay to develop applications that solve actual problems and either help people make money or save it. To borrow a line from Don Dodge at Startup Empire, make sure your applications are aspirin (must-haves), not vitamins (nice-to-haves)!
It’s Christmas Eve and I’ve got a lot of family stuff to do over the next couple of days. You never know, I just might get the chance to sneak in a blog entry or two, but I’m going to play it safe and say that Global Nerdy (and its bigger, older brother blog, The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century) will return on Monday, December 29th.
Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, Joyous Festivus, Happy Holidays – however you choose to spend the next couple of days, stay safe, enjoy yourself, and I’ll see you soon!
The Merb/Rails rivalry could’ve gone as depicted on the cover of the science fiction “classic” shown below…
(I think Merb would be the Human Bat and Rails would be the Robot Gangster.)
…but instead, the two projects have merged! The result will be the upcoming Rails 3.
The merger is commemorated on a “plaque” page on the Rails site titled The Day Merb Joined Rails, which I’ve excerpted below:
Merb was started two years ago by Ezra Zygmuntowicz as a tiny framework to serve ERb templates from Mongrel. This quickly grew into much more and carved out a niche as an alternative Rails stack. Merbists focused on among other things a small speedy core, being ORM/JavaScript agnostic, and having a rigorous API for extensions.
Along with the expansion in ambition came the fact that Merb and Rails started sharing more and more of the same ideas and even implementation. This lead to a fair amount of unnecessary duplication on both sides of the fence and lead to some paradox of choice. When do I choose one over the other and when?
Rails 3
On December 23rd, we decided to end the duplication and the paradox of choice. That was the day we declared our intentions of bringing the best ideas of Merb into Rails 3. That was the day we announced our commitment to work together.
It’s nice to see this sort of thing happening. It’s more common to see projects forking over the tiniest disagreements, a la “The People’s Front of Judea” in Monty Python’s Life of Brian:
It’s a win for both projects, as well as the users. Rails gets some much-needed optimization, the ability to shed excess weight for speed, framework agnosticism and an API that won’t break with upgrades, and Merb gets a much bigger development community and mindshare momentum that Rails enjoys. Better still, the merger now has both teams’ big brains working on the same project, and isn’t that what the spirit of the DRY principle is all about?
Congratulations to both the Merb and Rails teams! And hey, congrats to all you Ruby/Rails/Merb developers out there too! 2009 just got a little more interesting for all of us.
These days, I try to get the PDF version of a computer book when it makes sense. When it comes to more timeless books — say Code Complete (the book from which Jeff Atwood gets the name for his blog, Coding Horror) and The Pragmatic Programmer – I think I’d still prefer a dead-tree edition. For books on a specific version of a language, platform or tool, which have a limited lifespan, I would argue that the PDF version is the better choice. I used to hate reading PDFs onscreen, but in these days of LCD screens with resolutions at least 1200 pixels wide, and especially with a dual-monitor setup, I find them pretty readable.
One book series that I wished was available in PDF form is O’Reilly’s Head First series. A co-creation of Kathy Sierra, who knows how to communicate knowledge and passion at the same time, this series features lively prose, story-telling and pictures aplenty to create some of the most comprehensible and enjoyable tech books out there. Consider the original “Gang of Four” book on design patterns and Head First Design Patterns: while the former is considerably meatier and more rigorous, I consult it rarely, and only as a reference work. The Head First book? I pick it up every now and again and re-read it just for kicks, and it’s the book I send people to when they ask about design patterns. It’s that way with all their books; when I was taking a project management course, Head First PMP was the only book that didn’t anaesthetize me.
O’Reilly has just announced that the entire Head First series is now available in PDF form – even the books that aren’t available in dead-tree format yet, namely:
The PDFs are all priced around US$30, which is about $10 cheaper than the print editions. These prices seem a bit steep compared to the PDF editions of Pragmatic Programmers books, which hover around US$20, but then again, the Pragmatics’ print books are also $10 cheaper than O’Reilly’s. Still it’s nice to have the Head First series available as PDFs. If you’re doing some last-minute Christmas shopping for a geek friend, you could always give one of these PDFs (especially for one of the not-yet-in-print books). If you’re feeling especially generous, you could give it on a USB key.
What happens when Toronto geeks decide to throw a party on short notice to raise money for the local food bank, using Twitter to put forth the initial idea and as a way to publicize the event? HoHoTO happens, and 600 people show up and over CAD$20,000 gets raised!
To find out more, go read my article on the HoHoTO on my personal blog, The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.
I had my first look at the next version of Windows – Windows 7 – at Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles back in October, a week after I joined the company. By the powers vested in me as a Developer Evangelist with Microsoft, I got my paws on an installer for a recent beta edition and a spare machine – a Dell Latitude D830 with a 2GHz Core Duo processor and 4GB RAM — on which to take the new operating system for a test run.
The installation of the Windows 7 beta went considerably better than my experience installing the Windows Vista beta back in 2006: this time, it worked.
Over the next little while, I’m going to spend some time – perhaps a day a week – doing actual daily work on the Windows 7 machine in order to really experience it. It’ll also give me a chance to try out some “developing for Windows 7” example code. I’ll post my observations here on Global Nerdy – at least as much as the non-disclosure rules allow.