Status-Q

Zen and the art of Bug Removal

We often think of programming as architecture or as engineering - the construction of complex working machines out of many small parts. Build it properly, and it doesn't fall apart. Here's a different view, which probably has limited validity and no useful purpose, but which I thought was interesting.

Computers can do things without any human intervention. If you power up your microprocessor and point it at a large chunk of memory containing random bytes, exciting things may happen. Your disk may whirr. Your screen may display colourful rubbish. If you're lucky some lights on your computer might flash on and off. Or it may just stop dead. Whatever happens will probably be chaotic, unpredictable and, above all, not very useful.

Programming, then, is the art of taming this wild behaviour. Of imposing order on a system that would otherwise run wild. Of reducing the almost infinite number of possible actions to the relatively small number that are useful. Of producing order from chaos.

To pick an analogy suitable for this part of the world, you might compare it to digging irrigation channels so that you could reclaim agricultural land from a flooded plain. Programming languages provide the component parts - the ducting, the pumps, the weirs and sluice-gates - which make this process easier than simply digging with a spade. If you use higher-level programming languages, you might get complete viaducts and locks ready-made. But the natural state of the water is one of chaos. If you misuse the components or forget anything, you get bugs. One day, a high tide, combined with a westerly wind and an unfortunate usage of sluice gates, will allow the water in one channel to leak out and cause another flood.

The perfect irrigation system would use the minimum number of channels in the perfect locations with exactly enough sluices and dams to control the possible flooding situations, but no more. The most aesthetically pleasing programs are those that provide the most complete and elegant order out of the chaos with the minimum amount of intervention from the programmer.

Enough for now - I have to go and tidy my desk...

Strength through diversity: I like Dave Wilson's "Windows, Windows Everywhere".

Ahh, nostalgia! You can find some very elderly versions of Netscape still available for download on Netscape's FTP server. Still have a Windows 3.1 machine? No problem! Just grab a copy of Netscape 2 or 3.

Today's Sunday Telegraph has an interview with Gore Vidal. Does he think there's immortality in books?

"I would doubt it now. Do you see anybody reading anything in the near future? The book is almost irrelevant. Poetry has the best chance. Fiction, I'm not so sure. I see the essay as probably the last necessary form of prose. I can imagine Montaigne outlasting Shakespeare, who will have become too difficult."

Weblog entries must be amongst the most transient of writings.

The auction of the Trojan Room Coffee Pot has closed on eBay with a bid of over £3000, which will apparently go towards purchasing a new coffee machine in the new Computer Lab. The coffee should be a bit better now.

I've just come back from a fabulous holiday in Austria, where I was woken each morning by cowbells, as the cows from the farm where we were staying meandered down the road to their green and pleasant pastures. Hiking in the mountains, we would sometimes come across large numbers munching away, and it would sound like a wind-chime factory.

It's a wonderful thing that nobody has yet replaced these bells with electronic beepers, or even silent radio beacons. This is a fabulously appropriate technology, a location system which uses no electricity, is rugged and weatherproof, and actually enhances the environment in which it is installed.

So here's a challenge to mobile phone manufacturers: Can you produce a phone which, as well as being small, light etc, has a ringtone which does its job of alerting the user, while actually being pleasant to listen to? By 'pleasant' I mean actually pleasing, rather than 'not annoying'. You could use that built-in microphone to choose an appropriate volume level, too. Oh, and I'd like mine to play extracts from The Sound of Music, please.

I’m experimenting with MacJournal, considering it as an alternative to my paper notebook (which I don’t seem to be able to search with Spotlight).

It’s quite cute, and if you can read this, it means that I’ve been able to get it to post an entry to Status-Q. The posting facilities are fairly basic compared to a dedicated blogging tool, but I quite like some of its other features.

The real problem with using an electronic log book in place of a paper one, for me, is that I think it’s very rude to be typing and looking at a screen while somebody else is talking. Maybe society will get over this in time (or I will). And it’s well-nigh impossible to record anything while talking on the phone unless you have a headset or good speakerphone.

Anyway, in situations where keyboards are appropriate, MacJournal looks good as an option. It does seem to have lots of happy customers.

I've just downloaded the latest build of OpenOffice.org, the Open Source package that used to be StarOffice, and I'm thoroughly impressed. The quality of the software was always pretty good, but they've made important changes in the way users interact with it.

First, they've got rid of the most-hated feature in StarOffice: its attempt to provide a whole new desktop, including a Start menu, within a window on your regular desktop. Each document is now a separate window, as it should be. I knew they'd have to drop the Start menu when they started porting it to MacOS X. It would have been too ridiculous.

Secondly, they've removed two big features, which makes a wonderful change in this world of ever-increasing feature bloat. The web browser and email reader weren't bad at all, but they were never going to be my browser and emailer of choice. There are good alternatives available, and abandoning these components concentrates effort on the more important parts. I certainly won't mourn their departure.

The third very good decision was to switch to XML as the file format. Each document is actually a ZIPped set of files and directories - the contents are in contents.xml, the styles in styles.xml etc. If your document has embedded images, they will be in a Pictures subdirectory within the ZIP archive. This has to be the Right Way to do it. If something is broken, you can open the document with WinZip and fix things yourself with a text editor. I've done it. I changed the style of some text. I tweaked some colours, sizes, and positioning of items in a drawing. I then saved the files and closed WinZip, and reopened them in the word-processor and carried on. Try doing that with Word. Manipulation by other software, and conversion to and from other formats, should be very straightforward.

So, for the big question. Would I actually use it myself in preference to Microsoft Office? Well, I'm very tempted. There are still a few rough edges, and there is no 'Help' documentation yet, but the conversion filters are good, and the underlying philosphies are so sound that there aren't many reasons not to switch. I can also run it on all the operating systems I use.

But if you are interchanging data frequently with Microsoft users, then however good the alternative, it won't be as convenient as if you used Microsoft. If you're to switch, you need incentives which make it worth the inconvenience. And the problem is that most users of Office don't pay for it. It is provided by their employer. Otherwise, I think, the £350 price of Office would now be sufficient incentive for most people.

Seditious thought for the day: Is the phrase 'Strike while the iron is hot' really a call for industrial action amongst housewives?

Tom Bradford's 'The Future of XML' is a timely warning. Perhaps the motto for the W3C should be one of my favourite quotes, taken from Antoine de Saint-Exupery:

You know you have reached perfection in design, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to be taken away.