Cool Code by Kevlin Henney.
From the description:
In most disciplines built on skill and knowledge, from art to architecture, from creative writing to structural engineering, there is a strong emphasis on studying existing work. Exemplary pieces from past and present are examined and discussed in order to provoke thinking and learn techniques for the present and the future. Although programming is a discipline with a very large canon of existing work to draw from, the only code most programmers read is the code they maintain. They rarely look outside the code directly affecting their work. This talk examines some examples of code that are interesting because of historical significance, profound concepts, impressive technique, exemplary style or just sheer geekiness.
Some observations:
At about 3:11 or a little before, Kevlin has a slide that reads:
There is an art, craft, and science to programming that exceeds far beyond the program. The act of programming marries the discrete world of computers to the fluid world of human affairs. Programmers mediate between the negotiated and uncertain truths of business and the crisp, uncompromising domain of bits and bytes and higher constructed types.
I rather like the phrases “…marries the discrete world of computers to the fluid world of human affairs,” and “…the negotiated and uncertain truths of business….
It captures the divergence of the AI/Semantic Web paradigm from life as we experience it.
In order to have the Semantic Web, we have to prune “…negotiated and uncertain truths…” until what remains can fit into “…the discrete world of computers….”
You will enjoy Kevlin’s take on RUD (Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly). 😉
Or a chess program written in 672 bytes or 4.8 tweets. (On which see: 1K ZX Chess The code and numerous other resources.)
The presentation is marred only by the unreadability (on the video) of some of the code examples.
Kevlin closes with:
If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time or tools to write. (Stephen King)
Kevlin’s homepage, and his papers.
97 Things Every Programmer Should Know: Collective Wisdom from the Experts (Kevlin as editor)
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