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My favorite programming language, JavaScript, is quite possibly one of the worst named. It really has nothing to do with Java. I promise. Now that the ECMA is working on the next version, code named ES4, JavaScript needs a new brand. Steve Yegge agrees.
So what makes a good brand? Well I’m no branding specialist, but [...]

How would you get the current user’s name in your programming language of choice? Furthermore, how does this exercise reflect on the design of that language?
C#
string user = Environment.UserName;
Perl
my $user = getpwuid($<);
PHP
$user = $_ENV['user'];
Python
import os
user = os.environ['USER']
Ruby
user = ENV['USER']
Now that I’ve iterated through a few of these I’m wondering if the methods are equivalent. In [...]

We Americans have been taught that safety and security should be the highest goals of our lives. You should strive to work a “safe job” with “good benefits” so you can raise your children in the same fashion, perpetuating the cycle of excruciating mundanity until the guys you pay for your security cause the nuclear [...]

Sometimes when I write an article I know that there is a low potential value for comments directly on the article. In these cases, I close comments and encourage linking to the article from other sites, hoping to encourage more thoughtful replies and a richer discourse. Well that’s great, but it’s not much of a [...]

When starting a tech business it’s traditional to think that you must have representatives from each of the various roles present at the beginning: the business person, the tech person, the marketing person, etc. There is a strong cult of opinion on what it takes to create a successful business and most of that opinion [...]

Does anyone else find it strangely unsettling that Guido van Rossum’s blog runs on Java? Presumably, at least: the URL has .jsp in it.
http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=212259
It’s not the end of the world or anything, but I think eyebrows go up when the CEO of Ford drives a Toyota or the BDFL of Python publishes his blog on [...]