JRRZZ blog

One of the best shows so far. Even though I had to stay overnight at a hotel in Amsterdam because they chose to play at the Melkweg.

The Ocean opened with some of their songs. The band is quite good at what they do, and didn’t bore me to tears like most of the support bands these days. Cynic performed very well, with a nice mix between their old stuff and the latest album. Too bad the microphone was tuned down a lot, since half of Cynic’s atmosphere is created by the unusual vocal line.

Anyway, Opeth. They completely obliterated the place, as usual. Playing the least progressive set yet, the crowd almost lost it. It might just be the venue, but there was some serious moshing going on. A friendly mosh though, helping each other out instead of beating people’s eyeballs out while pretending to be a windmill. One guy even managed to get on the stage after some crowd surfing and ended his seconds of fame with a stage dive.

Because of the heavy set list there wasn’t much time to get some footage. And I’m not that fond of looking at a little screen when the actual band is playing right in front of me. But, here’s the best part, including a very happy brother of mine.

Tags: Music by jorrizza
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Tomorrow, the 26th of November, Microsoft will visit my university to “inform” students about it’s “great” offerings in both software and technology.

Of course I’m not such a supporter of Microsoft’s track record. The company’s probably the most evil institution the software developing world has ever seen. I’ve always got my critique ready when another snob, conveniently placed on the Microsoft payroll, openly starts kissing his employer’s ass. But lo and behold: Microsoft has (indirectly) invited me, of all people, to a Q&A session “About Microsoft, with Microsoft”. Of course I humbly accept the invitation.

Because the session will only (surprisingly) last half an hour, I’ve limited my questionnaire barrage to two questions. Maybe some fellow free software developers will join me in this session.

• Why does Microsoft continue to challenge European law, both by abusing it’s monopoly and starting endless appeals in court?
• How does Microsoft think European software patents would encourage innovation, even now the U.S. system clearly shows it doesn’t?

I hope these will be enough to make my willing Microsoft victim, Ruud de Jonge, Director Developer and Platform Enthusiasm, want to develop NetBSD-only console games instead.

Update: according to Microsoft they won’t answer these questions, because it’s not within the scope of this tour. Too bad.

Tags: Tech by jorrizza
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The meaning of life is to give life meaning.

Ayreon’s brilliance. Now go buy his albums!

Tags: Music by jorrizza
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As some of you might know, I’m working on a new programming language.

It sure takes more research than I expected. I’ve already dug into lexical analyzers, compilers, virtual machines and that sort of stuff. It’s a huge amount of new information which I’ve overlooked at the start of this project over a year ago. The low level work that goes into making a programming language actually work is simply overwhelming. But it’s so much fun! It really requires you to take your logic to a next level altogether. Did you think nuclear physics is hard? Try writing a compiler!

With all of this new information stuffed in between my ears I’ve got to tone down my OOP stance even more. It’s still valid, but the everything’s an object idea isn’t that bad at all. It really simplifies both compilers and virtual machines. There’s no real overhead. I really like the idea of extending or inheriting from standard types. It makes the language so much more customizable.

As a part of my journey through the world of programming languages I’ve stumbled upon several really interesting concepts. One of these is aspect oriented programming. I’d heard of it before, but never really got into it. Try writing some Java using AspectJ or watch this Google tech talk if you want some more information about the subject. AOP’s actually very useful when used properly.

The other gem I’ve found is Ruby. What a great language. A lot of the radical ideas for my language are already there, fully functional. I’ve never thought anything of the language, especially when the Rails flood hit. Too bad I’ve ignored it, since it’s an excellent allround language. Ruby also implements closures the way I want them to be implemented, not the Java hack Groovy uses. It uses closures transparently and in a highly compatible way. I had all but abandoned hope for proper closures in a modern non-Lisp language. I think I might actually going to use Ruby as a Bash replacement for day to day programming tasks.

In the next year or so I’m planning to collect even more knowledge about compilers and virtual machines, learn some more languages and maybe have some time off every now and then. I’ve also replaced that horrid Drupal thing with a proper HTML website.

Tags: Tech by jorrizza
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