Blah, blah, etc

[ionelv]

Let's see what happened in the past three months. I got accepted at Colo State in the Masters program, but I haven't enrolled in a course yet (next deadline is Dec 15). I'm looking into taking some Java courses too (and maybe a Sun certification) since knowing just C++ seems to be getting old nowadays if you're looking for a job in the US.

We finally did some traveling: a week in Orlando (with a few side trips to the Melbourne area) with occasion of some job training, a week in Mystic, CT area (definitely worth going back especially Watch Hill and Block Island) and a few days in Chicago this past weekend for my bro George's wedding with Deb (seeing my parents for the first time since last Thanksgiving). Some pics from these trips are available on flickr. My dad finished building the house and is on the market now.

Just a few weekends ago we went to Portsmouth for the n-th time and first time ever we walked past Prescott Park and discovered a really nice Four Tree Island.

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Brain dump (from a few weeks ago):

HPL said this almost a century ago:

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

Upon reading this, me neurons started [mis]firing. We all are little cogs in a big machine that no one controls, right? We don't know what the machine will produce in the end, but we keep plugging away. Moreover, the machine and its cold inner workings determines the fates of billions of people and at the same time alienates them. The popular uprisings of the past century and the consequent slipping into dictatorial regimes will only intensify in this age of clueless sheeple pointing their shining beacons of democracy in the mirror and dropping their depleted uranium wrapped-gifts on the ungrateful and uncivilized. But, it will all turn out OK in the end as Hollywood have shown us over and over again, right?

Comments

[tarwatersghost.livejournal.com]

You and your wife look absolutely lovely dancing together. :-)

With regards to your quote (and I'm drawing a blank on HPL)... Have you ever delved into phenomenology / read any Husserl? Maybe even Heidegger?

[ionelv.livejournal.com]

I have not read Husserl nor Heidegger, but I read about their philosophy and I must confess that Husserl leaves me cold (he seems too abstract for my taste). On the other hand, Heidegger seems more approachable and his commentary on Nietzche might be an interesting read.

[mshonle.livejournal.com]

Congrats on your acceptance! I knew C++ before learning Java and the best thing that helped me was reading the Java *Virtual Machine* book. Seeing what Java is at the byte-code level convinced me it really is a different language than C++, even though they look so similar.

Bruce Eckel has a (free online, but also in print) book called Thinking in Java that is excellent.

[ionelv.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the pointer to Eckel's book (I'll try to read it). What would you say is Eckel's contribution beyond what others have already said about Java? As to Java vs C++, I usually approach a new language from the front mostly: how easy is it to use, how easy is it to shoot yourself in the foot, how much support is there for building real applications with it, that sort of thing.

What Java looks at byte-code, I never cared to find out more beyond the fact that it's one whole level further from the CPU than a C++ compiled program is, thus requiring real bytecode compilation on the fly at runtime. What would you say is so noteworthy about Java at the byte-code level beyond that?

[mshonle.livejournal.com]

Eckel is a clear explainer and gets to the story fast. Obviously you can go with other sources (I'm not trying to twist your arm), but that's the one I'd float up to the top.

"What would you say is so noteworthy about Java at the byte-code level beyond that?"

It's all about the semantics. It's easy to think something with the same syntax and roughly the same meaning is going to be "the same" as in C++. For example, you'll probably understand reflection a lot better.