Robert Chamberlin - member of the Programmer's Guild Currently residing in Rochester Minnesota. Retired from IBM in 1993 where I worked as a programmer -- I became an advocate of the REXX Language and prototyping as a programming development philosophy. ---- e-mail me at rchamberlin@yahoo.com ---- Interested in all types of programming. Especially where it leads to machine problem solving. I have some really narrow viewpoints of programming technique. You may agree or not, but they have served me well. Such as: Strong Typing - A BadThing. The developer is forced to compensate for a poor compiler design and/or implementation. Shun those compilers and languages they support. End-of-line - Developer is forced to remember when to end a line with '';'' or some other such token; the compiler should recognize the E-O-L, either with cr-lf or context. Documentation - The source code should be human language and structured for clarity. Therefore self-documenting. Interpreted vs Compiled - BOTH - in the interpreted form can be used to prototype a task or function - proof-of-concept, while the compiled version would provide speed and security. Errors - Either during coding, compile, or execution. If the editor, compiler or run-time support found an error, it MUST share that information with the developer or user. There is nothing worse than getting a ''syntax error on line 2368'' message with no additional information. The processing program ''knows'' just what caused the error, and needs to share that information. Go To - While not necessarily a GoodThing, my early years were spent in machine coding - yes in binary. I have always viewed the Go To as an unconditional JMP and have used it (sparingly) as such. The option to use should be supported. End user choice should be respected. ---- I've just discovered the Zeno project in Germany, and sent them an e-mail directing them to check out wiki. A link to the Zeno white paper in PDF may be found on the ZenoDiscussion page. ---- Also of interest to me is the Delphi Process, or iteration leading to consensus as a means of mapping future trends. Which was/is a community discussion technique. Does anybody care? DelphiDiscussion ---- Another topic I am gathering information about is that of design. Why is it done? Should it be done? How does it relate to programming and human interaction? My starting point is http://www.tcdc.com/default.htm, but since everything I am interested in is really a ''process'' or can be defined as one, I need to include research into Deming http://curiouscat.com/guides/deming.cfm and his ContinuousImprovement philosophy - as applied to processes. ---- DistributedComputing projects seem to be springing up like mushrooms in a fertile environment. Some pay for your spare computer time, some look for volunteers. Is it worth it? Is anyone working on a registry of projects? ---- Proofreading and Editing copy is another thing that is of interest to me. Anyone who is involved in the creation of a document, technical paper or treatise is often not "up to speed" on the finer issues of detecting errors. I am interested in tools which assist one in developing quality documents. Links to the tools I have found to be of help are to be found at ProofReadingLinks. ---- CategoryHomePage