Computers

I'm making some software and documentation that either I've written or which needed a new home available on my website.

I'm interested in Computer Programming not only because that's my job, but also because it's just plain fun. I'm particularly interested in programming languages, operating systems, and development environments. On the other hand, I'm not impressed by most of the MS-Windows GUI-based development environments that I've worked with: they look cute, but don't actually help me get my work done.

I've always been interested in programming languages and the differing approaches and techniques they bring to programming.

One of the things that for the past few years has been a source of much of my enjoyment in programming has been the Scheme programming language. (See also Schemers.org.) I am also interested in other Lisp dialects, such as EuLisp. (I sure wish they would finish the definition!) The Caml dialects of ML, Caml Light and Objective Caml in particular, have also piqued my interest of late, as has Modula-3.

Because my first programming was on a PDP-8, my first programming class used a PDP-11, the college I attended used various VAX/VMS machines for its Computer Science classes, and my first programming job involved PDP-11s and VAXen I remain interested in all of Digital's computers and operating systems, although now I use a free Unix at home (Linux) and various Unix and Microsoft Windows platforms at work. I prefer the Unix programming environment for my own programming projects, but still think that VMS has many things to teach in the areas of commercial usability, organization of programming interfaces, and consistent and reasonably complete documentation; things the Microsoft Windows-based operating systems are still stuggling with, in my opinion.

I never got to use any of the 36-bit Digital machines or the operating systems that ran on them, unfortunately.

I've used Data General's AOS/VS operating system, which was interesting, to say the least.

I've used a lot of different commercial Unix variants: SCO, Intergraph, Unixware, Solaris, AIX, etc.

I've been a user of the Unix-inspired Linux operating system from reasonably early on in its history, and have also used various BSD flavors.

I found Richard Stallman's statements in the GNU Manifesto and the Byte magazine interview very interesting and have followed subsequent developments in the freely available software movement closely, especially the Free Software Foundation and the GNU Project.

I've also been known to play some computer games on occasion.