Windows Development

Until last week, I'd never done any Windows development. That's mostly because I think Microsoft is a little gross; and I don't like Windows. But it's also because I've mostly been doing Java or JVM related development, and so I haven't needed to specifically target anything Windowsy. Last week though, I got an assignment that involved coding a Windows service, and accessing a C API on Windows, so I had to learn.
It hasn't been as terrible as I thought it might be; though some parts have been terrible. One thing I hate is that, if you're going to be doing Windows development, you're almost obligated to use Visual Studio; especially if you're doing anything besides Java development. For me, cause I had to interact with some C, I needed access to the Microsoft compiler, and so I had to use Visual Studio. Plus I was exploring .NET, and I think Visual Studio is like the only .NET IDE. I would just as soon use emacs for everything, but then I'd have to use the command line c compiler, which wasn't written for humans. I don't mean GCC, I mean the microsoft c ompiler -- which was never meant to be used from the command line, and is completely unintuitive and alien (from my perspective, having tried to use it.)
On the plus side, installing Python, Perl, and Ruby (the most important scripting languages I can think of) was painless. They all come with msi installers that make everything a breeze. I imagine compiling them from source, which is easy to do on Linux, would be much more painful on Windows -- but, as they say, when in Rome, do as the Romans do, and therefore: when on Windows, do as Windows does -- meaning: use the fricken msi installer.
Because I cannot live without multiple desktops anymore -- osx and linux having addicted me to them -- I cannot live without an Ubuntu VM on my Windows partition. Since Windows doesn't offer multiple desktops, at least not on Windows XP, I've ended up using my Ubuntu VM for a lot of my development work, and just using Windows to compile and deploy stuff. I hop into the vm to do my work, I hop out to run the tests. Also, what irks me about XP (and I don't know if this will be an issue with Windows 7), is that you cannot create custom keybindings without making esoteric changes to the Registry. The evil and mysterious registry, that strikes terror into the mind of every sane developer, or even every sane IT person. In Ubuntu, or any Linux distro, it's as simple as editing xmodmap, or whatever the equivalent keybindings config file. But in Windows, nooooo. Not that simple. You have to do some black magic and possibly corrupt your whole machine. Vomit.
I think .NET is cool. The only thing I wish is that it wasn't tied to Windows. I know there's Mono, but Mono's implementation is kind-of sketchy. If Microsoft wasn't so self-possessed (and perhaps didn't own so much of the desktop market share) they'd make a proper port to Linux and to OSX, like Sun does for Java; though the Apple guys have taken the OSX Java port into the own hands recently and screwed everything up. Anyway, it'd be nice if I could use .NET, and especially nice if I could use .NET languages, just not on Windows. I'd like to program F# from the comfort of my own Ubuntu, in emacs, with a nice Linux runtime. Unfortunately, the dark gods of Microsoft software imperialism say no.
In conclusion, Windows development hasn't been the awful experience I thought it might be. It's been new and interesting. I've even experimented with the satanic Visual Basic .NET -- though just enough to learn the wretched syntax so I could follow examples. And for the record, I think C# has way too much syntactic sugar for its own good. It makes me lightheaded just looking at it. Finally, ctypes for Python is totally awesome. And that's all I have to say about that.

Clojurey

Clojure went 1.0! w00t. And in the meantime, my blog languishes for lack of attention. What kind of blogger am I? to Leave it lying here for so long. Soaking in its own silly juices.But I'm back, for a moment. I must consolidate my web presence; fortify it; make it strong again. But it was never strong to start; yet it will be again! Imagine if James Joyce wrote a blog -- it wouldn't make any sense at all. It shocks me, no... flabergasts me, that one can get anything done in Clojure, cause afterall, it is a "functional" language; and aren't functional languages all universally useless? Don't functional languages just burn up cpu? It must be as the Great Maestro Hickey states: that Clojure is the most friendly face ever put to a functional language. Clojure is easier than Haskell because it doesn't have Monads. There was a guy... Ted Neward (I think) who said that the only way a functional language can ever take off outside academia is if it doesn't have monads. F# doesn't have monads, and look how well it is doing. And neither does Clojure, so it's sure to be a success. Instead of Monads, Clojure has mutable reference types; in that sense, it deviates from being a pure functional language. However, the semantics for mutating said reference types are strictly defined by the language -- it's not anarchy, not like Java. Clojure is much safer. The only way you can get yourself into trouble is my calling out to Java; if only Clojure had an effects system: then I would label all my Java code impure and be done with it. That'd be tricky though, being that Clojure is dynamic and everything. I've written several thousand lines of Clojure in the past few months, and its so dynamic: it could change any minute. In fact, as anyone who has ever worked with me will tell you, it does change every minute. and every half a minute. and not just little bits change. no, the whole thing changes. constant mutation! Most of it I've written over and over again in sundry different ways, since it took me a while to figure out what I was doing. But it's always that way with strange new languages. Some people are lulled into thinking that one programming language is much like another -- but it isn't so. C and Java and C++ and all those other gross static imperative languages may all seem pretty much the same, but beyond their provincial pale is a whole galaxy of strange and unnatural languigy artifice. I recall that Shakespeare line about living in a nutshell and thinking yourself king of infinite space. That's how people get. I'm probably that way. Clojure isn't nearly as hardcore as Haskell; I know, I've tried to write Haskell: and I've failed. You'll fail too! and if you don't fail... well.... then shame on you for being so smart. Remember, it wasn't me, it was Ted Neward who said: No Monads!