From the Wierde

Apple's protectionism woes

Rob Vens — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 06:07:16 +0100

There are no translations available.

Some unrest has been created by the visible impact (that is, banning from the Apple AppStore) of the enforcing of certain clauses in the license agreement all developers need to sign in order to get access to iPhone development.

This license agreement has been in the news earlier. It is an interesting license agreement, since part of the agreement is that the agreement itself may not be publicly discussed (section 10.4). In fact posting this blo...

Podcast on Reinventing Programming

Rob Vens — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 07:44:07 +0100

With many thanks to Frank Leemhuis and Pieter-Joost van de Sande who have worked hard to put several hours of ruminations on a garden terrace in Usquert into a podcast, here is the link to this session: http://devnology.nl/podcast

Note: I regret the podcast is in Dutch.

Verslag Reinventing programming

Rob Vens — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 07:44:03 +0100

Tjeerd Hans Terpstra heeft een verslag geschreven van de Reinventing Programming avond bij Devnology:

http://devnology.nl/blog/7-verslagen/44-verslag-re-inventing-programming

Gemiddeld is niet normaal

Rob Vens — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 09:18:00 +0100

Een groeiende ergernis bij het aanhoren van nieuws- en weerberichten is de gewoonte om de volgende soort uitspraken te doen:

"De temperatuur morgen is 17 graden, ca. 7 graden meer dan normaal." (nadruk van mij)

Wat is in hemelsnaam normaal? Is het normaal dat de temperatuur altijd gemiddeld is? Is iemand met een IQ van 140 abnormaal? (gezien het feit dat een IQ van 100 een standaard definitie is van de gemiddelde intelligentie). Zou het "normaal" zijn als iedereen een IQ van 1...

The DCI Architecture: A New Vision of Object-Oriented Programming

Rob Vens — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 22:00:00 +0100

There are no translations available.

Trygve Reenskaug is still active, although approaching 80, and I am actively reading his articles on his website. His work has been undervalued, at least in my country. Trygve has been one of the first people actually thinking about object oriented modelling and design, and his work on OORAM (role oriented modelling) is groundbreaking.

Together with Jim Coplien, whom I often refer to as one of the few computer people who actually understand meta...

Metaphors can blind our understanding

Rob Vens — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 22:00:00 +0100

There are no translations available.

In my country, The Netherlands, a discussion between creationism and evolutionism has been rekindled. In this blog I want to share with you a few observations. I think this event is of interest to anyone involved in requirements engineering because it shows that we can become blind in our understanding if we are not aware of the metaphors that colour our vision.

Curious enough the discussion was prompted by a private initiative to distribute do...

At 200, Darwin Evolves Beyond Evolution | Wired Science from Wired.com

Rob Vens — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 22:00:00 +0100

There are no translations available.

At 200, Darwin Evolves Beyond Evolution | Wired Science from Wired.com

People who have heard me talk know that I try to take a different approach to the theory of evolution. Especially the popularised version that circulates among the populace. Since this is the year of Darwin, many articles appear on the subject.

What bothers me about these articles is that they as a rule remain on the main road, the popularised version. In that myth evo...

Slashdotting

Rob Vens — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 22:00:00 +0100

Just wondering: what would you think would be the Slashdot response to an announcement like the following: A new open platform for devices is in the making. A group of several tens of developers are working hard on a new open platform that is an alternative for Android. But while Android is targeting mobile devices and will include an operating system, middleware and key applications, the MOSQ project is actually delivering a system that is targeting mobile devices, smartphones, ultra-light comp...

Multitasken is te leren - Deze week - intermediair.nl

Rob Vens — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 22:00:00 +0100

There are no translations available.

Multitasken is te leren - Deze week - intermediair.nl

Interessant en dit keer redelijk objectief getoonzet artikel over een veelbesproken onderwerp. Vaak hoor ik van collega's dat moderne kinde...

How to Save Time by Watching Videos at Higher Playback Speeds

Rob Vens — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 22:00:00 +0100

There are no translations available.

How to Save Time by Watching Videos at Higher Playback Speeds

I have been advocating friends and colleagues to acquire the skill for some form of fast-reading or speed reading. It is a skill everyone can learn, and will bring with it many advantages. But this can not only be done for reading, but also for listening to audiobooks (which I do a lot) and watching video's.

Read this blog entry.

Note: after experimenting a little...

Video of eXploratory Modelling at ESUG2008 available

Rob Vens — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 22:00:00 +0100

Today James Robertson published his video of my talk on eXploratory Modelling at ESUG2008: http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/blogView?showComments=true&printTitle=eXploratory_Modeling_at_ESUG_2008&entry=3404625062

Have fun watching it, and please do not hesitate to contact me if you have questions or if any pa...

Meet WALL•S!

Rob Vens — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 07:57:41 +0100

There are no translations available.

Though not called WALL•S by Michael Haupt who posted this blog, the little NXT robot in the picture immediately reminded me of WALL•E. So meet WALL•S, the first robot that actually speaks and understands Smalltalk!

Some of you may know that Smalltalk originally was quite popular ...

Smalltalk on bare metal blog

Rob Vens — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 21:00:00 +0100

There are no translations available.
Nice blog by Cees de Groot about the SqueakNOS project that has been revitalised. This project has my special interest since it clearly demonstrates some features of Smalltalk in the sense of it's completeness. We are not talking programming language. We are talking system.

The Smalltalk Trap

Rob Vens — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 21:00:00 +0100

Smalltalk's fundamental flawSmalltalk's blessing - or curse?The writing is on the wall. The signs are unmistakeable. Smalltalk is back, on the beginning of a new success journey. I will not write about why I think this is so in this blog. I want to concentrate on my opinion that, unless as a Smalltalk community we make some radical moves, this success spiral will be a spiral into death. Not hibernation, which more or less defines what happened to Smalltalk in 1995. Death. Final and irrevocable. ...

Exploratory Modelling followup

Rob Vens — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 21:00:00 +0100

For those who attended my talk at ESUG 2008 on Exploratory Modelling or xM, I have collected some references.

The slides of the presentationPodcast contains a discussion of my presentationVideo of the presentation, with many thanks to James Robertson

Several articles on this site cover one or more aspects of the subject of my talk:

To read more on the reverse time pattern, you can read the article Time Inversion PatternThe aspect of mirroring is covered in many arti...

The Dead Simple Squeak Tablet For $200. Help Us Build It.

Rob Vens — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 21:00:00 +0100

There are no translations available.

Michael Arrington has created a little buzz with his blog post We Want A Dead Simple Web Tablet For $200. Help Us Build It.

We can do better.

Instead of Linux and Firefox, the Smalltalk system will provide an open-access environment on this thing, even for many end-users because the development environment will be part of the system.

It will of course be called the Stablet. It will contain a multi touch screen, which by the way wi...

In Good Order, Smalltalk

Rob Vens — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 21:00:00 +0100

There are no translations available.
Smalltalk programmers have, for a long time, looked at their Smalltalk image with mixed feelings. They were happy to immerse themselves in the world of objects and learned to live in it like a dolphin in the ocean (which, as you know, was originally a land animal, turning to the sea), and make grateful use of the facilities it offered because code, applications, and objects lived in the same space happily together.
They were also slightly envious o...

The end of privacy

Rob Vens — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 21:00:00 +0100

There are no translations available.

Of course, the famous quote from Scott McNealy, chairman and co-founder of Sun Microsystems, "you have zero privacy anyway. Get over it.", has mostly been repeated out of context. But it created quite a stir at the time, almost a decade ago. Since then the situation regarding privacy has increasingly changed in a direction that most would describe as worse. I am not sure I would - although it certainly is not an easy subject and I hope not to simplify ...

Back to the future for Smalltalk

Rob Vens — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 21:00:00 +0100

There are no translations available.
Attributes of Smalltalk As many of the Smalltalk community know, Smalltalk was originally designed to be a multi-headed beast for the Xerox Alto and other personal computers incubated at the Learning Research Group at Xerox:
operating system development environment applications But, of course since it all was Smalltalk, there were quite a few differences with "modern" operating s...

The Mundaneum Museum Honors the First Concept of the World Wide Web

Rob Vens — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 21:00:00 +0100

There are no translations available.
The Web Time Forgot

The Mundaneum Museum Honors the First Concept of the World Wide Web - NYTimes.com

Vannevar Bush has been referred to on this site, but despite being Dutch, I never heard of Paul Otlet, who seems to have pre-dated Bush by at least a decade. There is no evidence that Bush knew of Otlet, but seeing that Otlet in his time was rather famous I would not be surprised if that was the case.

Otlet set out his visionary work on li...