Aug
12
2003
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Tuesday, 12 August 2003 |
Sometimes the inventor of a specific thing is the best person to explain it. There is no better way to learn about relativity than to go back to the original article written by Einstein; how better could anyone explain the value of existentialism than Sartre; Kernighan and Ritchie did a wonderful job at explaining C.
Stroustrup is not one of these. I recall the first time I read his book, back twenty years ago or so. I found it entirely unreadable, with so many exceptions added to the rule that you barely could remember either. There seemed to be no logic in the concepts, everything was very haphazard and unplanned.
Now, with twenty years of experience, a lot of programming languages in the back of my mind, I set out on a voyage of rediscovery, trying to impress myself with a book that I found cryptic and that I now would find insightful and revealing.
Not so. I read all of it for a second time, end to end, marking relevant sentences and trying to absorb the flow. There is none to speak of. The book is still cryptic. Only that now I know there are languages that are better designed, better executed and surely better described.
What made learning C++ so difficult, the astonishing number of rules and exceptions, is in hindsight poor design. Stroustrup tried to squeeze as many options into his language as possible, making C++ look and feel as bastardized as Perl would look after its 5th release.
The compiler tries to be smart, and does a lot of translation implicitly. Of course, this causes all sorts of weird errors, since it may become smarter than the programmer. To obviate, C++ allows you to override behaviors.
In general, C++ sounds like a language written at a time people still thought of memory as a precious commodity, while they were still not sure what they needed of the constructs provided by object orientation.
Take templates, for instance. Hard to tell what they are good for, if not to define collections and default operator behavior. But both cases would have been better served by a different approach, in which collections and operators are handled differently by the compiler, as native language types instead of as constructs.But aside from criticism to the language, the book itself is not well written. There is no general introduction to a concept, just an astonishing amount of rules that are listed in monotonous sequence, barely distinguished by their importance to the programmer. It somehow feels as if Stroustrup considers all rules children of his, and he doesn't want to favor one over the other.
The book, again, suffers from a lack of structure. Headings, highlights, emphasis are not well distributed, adding to the overall impression of an amorphous entity that becomes inextricable.
C++, as it emerges from this book, is a language for the initiated that has no desire to use any different tool. It is the Perl of the eighties, the language that everyone mucks with, but that very few actually understand.
If you have ever worked in a larger engineering group that uses C++, you'll have seen those frustrated emails come about, in which a poor chap asks why this piece of code doesn't work, and there is always some guru that (in the most arrogant tone so typical of the Initiated in the Arcane) tell you about some rule that is on the footnote of a page in the Stroustrup.
It is no surprise that languages with more explicit approaches, like Java and C# are moving on and winning converts all over. C++ seems, in hindsight, a really bad idea. |
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Aug
02
2003
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Saturday, 02 August 2003 |
One would have thought it quite unnecessary to read yet another book on Intel after reading "Only the Paranoid Survive". The latter, though, is written by exactly the person that is responsible for all the odd confrontationalism that is so typical of the company, so that I needed one more voice to get clarity.
Well, as I expected to be true, Inside Intel is indeed much more objective about the company, relating very extensively how the bully nature of the CEO could mold the company into a litigious, litigant and confrontational work environment.
The author spares nothing: how Grove pushed his legal team to sue without merit, just to prevent competitors from succeeding in the market; how Grove threw people out because he thought they were no longer fit, which meant they had fallen out of grace of their managers; how Grove introduced a host of measures to make the company an annoying place to work for - late lists being the most famous.
In the end, after reading about Oracle, Sun, Intel, and of course Microsoft, it seems that you need to be an egomaniac to be successful. I have not met any of the leaders of those companies, I admit, and I am just relating what books tell me.
The author compiled a compelling set of events into a dark and unfavorable history of Intel. If you want the dish, it's there. Successes seem to be falling out of the blue sky, while all failure is homegrown. You decide whether you want to believe that or not. The writing is good, the usual technical blunders aside. Why is it that people writing about technical companies never use a fact checker? |
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Jul
04
2003
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Friday, 04 July 2003 |
I finally finished the History of Byzantium and feel compelled to add a few comments to the previous ones.
Nothing changed in my assessment of the author's capabilities: the final chapters are as intriguing as the initial ones, and at no time was the infinite list of names confusing. Norwich succeeds in making all the parties involved come to their own life, personalizing each appearance of any of them and thus making it possible to discern the infinite list of Constantines, Michaels, Johns, etc.
While the first part of the book described an empire, the last part of it described a desperate culture trying to survive. The once powerful emperors of Byzanz find themselves required to send embassies to the rulers of the West, who will ignore them repeatedly, for centuries. The sadness of the situation is incredible, and the sympathy of the author for this lost cause is touching.Of course, from a neutral perspective the demise of the Byzantine empire just meant the ascension of the Ottoman one, which ultimately proved to be the real successor to Rome, reaching power and size that the Byzantines were able to held only for short periods of time. Neither can be forgotten that every peaceful moment of the empire's history was spent on fairly stupid intrigues, succession rules and theological disputes. Where the West had a Pope that commanded unity, the East was very happy with being disunited.
The history of Byzantium is somehow the typical history of an empire in the middle: at times it can grow extremely rich and powerful because you have to pass through it, but in the end the pressure from all sides eventually will destroy it. Happened to Poland, happened to the Habsburg empire, will happen in the future.
And yet, as much as I rationally knew there was no chance for the empire to survive, the final fate of the little despotate that once was so great moves me profoundly. Reading how the last emperor, Constantine XI, worked on the defence of the city, how the last mass was read in St. Sophia, to be interrupted by the invader pillaging and murdering - that all fills me with an infinite sadness, not mitigated by knowing that the Byzantines would have behaved the same, to enemies and to themselves, too.
The final days of anything are sad. The final days of an empire that lasted over one thousand yeats to die a slow, hemorrhagic death... Well, there are no words to express historic sorrow. |
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Jun
29
2003
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Sunday, 29 June 2003 |
Midway through the abbreviated version of the history of Byzanz. The author started out with a three volume history that he had to abridge for the general public - and since I am general public, that's what I chose to read.
First things first: the history of Byzanz itself is immensely fascinating. We are talking about an empire that understands itself as the SOLE successor of Rome (with a certain appropriateness), but is actually not a real power player. Instead of expanding and conquering, this empire never reached the size and power of its predecessor. Instead, it started shrinking early on, besieged as it was by enemies on all frontiers. Still it managed to thrive and survive for over thousand years, almost beating its forebear.
This said, the book is clearly an abridged version of a much more thorough oeuvre. The casual museum stroll that is so typical of history books feels like on fast-forward, and what would otherwise be an endless recount of things and events, with footnotes sprinkled left and right to make the reader feel appropriately bored, turns into a fast-paced, exhilarating experience.
Style: maybe it's the morbid nature of (at least this) man, but the hints to the disgusting tortures, unspeakable depravities and incredible religious finickiness in the face of overpowering forces are amazing. I am sure if there were a mini-series on the Eastern Empire, not one episode would be boring.
It stands to be asked what part of this amazement is an accomplishment of the author. Regardless, he is able to bring a dead world alive, and to make it feel real. An incredible achievement, considering how little we care any more about Byzanz, Constantinople and all that happened there until it became Istanbul.
Must read for anyone that thinks history needs to be boring. |
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