Java Quotes

A couple of quotes about Java. Tim Bray on the complexity of Java generics:

Java worked so well because it hit the 80/20 point; for my money one of the loudest, cleanest 80/20 technology victories ever. Subsequent attempts to fill in the 20% were, well, mostly harmless. Until generics, which are a disaster; they have made Java harder to learn and to understand, and you can't avoid them.

Steve Yegge on Java's tendency to produce code bloat:

Bigger is just something you have to live with in Java. Growth is a fact of life. Java is like a variant of the game of Tetris in which none of the pieces can fill gaps created by the other pieces, so all you can do is pile them up endlessly.

Hate Mail for Linguists

From an interview with Steven Pinker:

... you wouldn't believe the kind of hate mail I get about my work on irregular verbs, ...

Multi-Track Hollow Ways on Kempswithen

Kempswithen is a hill near Kildale in the North Yorkshire Moors.  It is crossed by the old road that runs from Guisborough to Westerdale and at several places alongside this road there are traces of earlier routes that the road took.  The section shown above is only about a kilometre north from the Little Hoghrah Moor hollow ways mentioned here and the latter is very probably where the road used to cross Baysdale Beck (instead of further down-stream at Hob Hole). 

As I said in my earlier post, I like to think that these multiple tracks were formed by the road meandering over time: people used one track until it became too muddy and rutted, then they moved over to one side and took a slight different, less muddy and rutted, route.  However, I suspect that it is more likely that most of the parallel tracks were in use at the same time, as herds of cattle and sheep were driven along them in the middle ages.  If that was so then they would have appeared as broad gashes in the landscape, much like motorways do nowadays.  The North Yorkshire Moors, which are nowadays so quiet, must have once been much busier.

Yor Divorced, Lol

Yesterday evening my daughter Zoe was playing on Runescape (an on-line role-playing game).  I happened to glance over to her screen  and saw,  instead of the usual "You get some willow logs", the words "You may now kiss the bride".  I asked her "Are you getting married?" but she just laughed.  Then, as it was getting quite late, I told her to get ready for bed and this is what she typed before logging off:

gtg
yor divorced
lol

Immediately, two of the other players chipped in:

marry meeeeee!

no marry me!  me me me meeeee!

I do hope this is not what things are going to be like when she gets older.

Upgrade from Vista to XP!

Coming from someone who says of Microsoft "I like their technology and I make plenty of money from their stack",  this is quite funny.