Triumph of the Nerds Part II

The key growth of any company is think of the future. Technology is advancing too fast so if you have a company dedicated to technology with a good idea, you should look for improve the idea or, think of anything else, you never settle for something. This is what happened to IBM, a technology company that had to suffer to adapt to change and to be on par with the competition.

IBM employees had to find a quick solution if they wanted to stay alive in the market, Apple had launched its first laptops which were being successful in the marking. The solution was of an IBM employee, rather than manufacture the computer components, they buy them and in this way they could save production time and could have their product ready quickly.

IBM did not count that they were going to need a language and an operating system for their computers, so they decidet to contact to Bill Gates. Bill Gates was one of the few people who had a language to interpret the instructions of computers, such language was developed by him and then he developed his own operating system.

The IBM mistake was be overconfident, luckily they were able to stay in business and today are a strong company in the technology field. What this video made me think is that we must exploit all our ideas, I do not know if Bill Gates is right about that after  30 years of age the good ideas end up, but if this is right, we must seize our age.

Finally we can not ignore the creativity of IBM, their repertoire of songs is so funny, in addition to they have their own dress code, which we can not forget the socks fasteners, if we want to enter their offices.

Revenge of the Nerds

Every programming language has its purpose or its strong point. What with a language programming can do it more or less acceptable time, with another can perform it faster and efficiently. Depending on the requirements of the program is that you must choose the language that suits us.

Seems to me amazing how LIPS being a language that was created ago many years (60 years to be exact) and, it is today considered such a powerful language, due to the way that it  was developed. I agree that when a new language is developed, you should think ahead, not only trying to solve the problem that we have in front, and that not only we must consider when creating new languages, but rather to everything, for example when a program is being developed.

Another important aspect that it can be highlighted of the article is that it gives us an advice, whenever we are developing something, we have to think of the customer, we must design our programs to please the client, because if we win the customers confidence, we will have more opportunities to grow as a new company.

Something that is true, LIPS is a comfortable language in a matter of that, usually, the programs developed are short in terms of lines of code. Another advantage of LISP is that it has an extensive library where you find methods for almost everything, without having to implement it on your own, so you can focus on other aspects of the program rather than on simple things like sort something.

Of this article we can conclude that any decision on what language we must use should be based on the approach of the company and competition, you can not define if one language is better than another, but experience in the development industry will help us to choose the one that suits us.

Dick Gabriel on Lisp

I felt a lot of curious about to know about the life of Dick Gabriel, for this motive I decided to research about his life. His real name is Richard P. Gabriel and is an important American computer specialist, who was born in 1949 in Merrimac, a small city located to the north of Massachisetts.

His main contributions to the computer industry was the work related to the Lisp programming language. Many trials done by him, relate his experience with language, and shows a comparison with other different languages (benchmark).

He was nearly accepted to MIT and Hardvard, but an argument with a teacher ended those prospects, and he ended up going to Northeastern University, where he earned a B. A. in Mathematics. Afterward, he persued gradueted studies in mathematics al MIT but, funding difficulties made it impossible to retain him. Finally, he was able to carry out their research at the University of Standford, where he was finally accepted.

Gabriel tells that one of the main uses of the Lisp language occurs in artificial intelligence projects, since language has a lot of resources and properties which, making a comparison with other languages, it is more comfortable and easier to develop using this language.

Gabriel explains that Lips includes structured data, besides implementing functional programming. It is said that Lips was the first and only language that allowed to implement functional programming in the age in which it was created. One of the characteristics of functional programming is that you can change a value in the memory location which reference variables.

Another issue that was mentioned in the potcast is CLOS, the Common Lisp Object System which is part of Lips focused on programming object-oriented such as classes and methods. CLOS has powerful tools which are understood to conforming are implemented.

Beating the Averages

LISP language was difficult for me to related to parenthesis to me is very confusing to have so many parenthesis and major problems with this is that sometimes the program does not compile by the lack of one, or not use it properly. After reading the article I understood the purpose of the parenthesis and are not just a whim of the creator of the program. Still I do not understand fully how the macros work, just I know that are programs that can make programs, and this sounds well.

At the beginning, LISP program it may seem insignificant, in which you cannot do many things. This impression is due to its syntax, because usually we consider most powerful one in which its syntax is complicated, and assembly type (at least that's my impression). But after reading the story of Viaweb and the advantage gained over your competitors, I realized that LIPS is a language that can give you great advantages over other developers.

The way startups operate goes hand in hand in the way they grow, using the example that is mentioned in the article, if you do the same as your competitors, your growth will be slow or just the same way your competitors, but everyone knows that when you create a company, which is looking for is to stand out from others. For this reason it is important to seek do things that differentiate us from competitors.

LIPS efficiency is something that I would try, I know it's not a language well known by developers and therefore it is an advantage. The little time I have used LIPS I found a convenient language in which I could work without any problems, I cannot say that LIPS is my favorite languages but it has a lot of possibilities to be.

The Semicolon Wars

I never imagined that there were so many programming languages around of the world, I think that would be interesting to try to learn as many as possible languages. Maybe I couldn’t become an expert in each of them, but at least know the basic things. It’s sad, I thought that knew enough languages and now I realize that I don’t even know the least amount.

The syntax that each language adopts sometimes could be a problem for people who use different languages at once, because you can confuse and, sometimes, use operators to something that works well in one language, but on the other has another behavior.

Conflicts generated by the programmers about which language is better seem to me absurd, I think that each language has its pros and cons, depending on the problem to be solved, the language that solves it most efficiently will be selected.

In my opinion and from my experience, I believe that no language is better than another, each person chooses the language that like, and it's silly that for this reason they consider a language better than other. On the other hand I always thought that, as programmers say, "marry" a language is not a good option, you never know if we can find a better opportunity. For example, I like the Java language, but not for that would leave to learn other languages, I might find one that I like it more.

Finally, the way how Dijkstra describes different languages, I found very funny. I think people should not bother for his statements, but rather take it with humor, since all languages have their value and if someone does not like, this does not harm language performance, we must remember that everybody doesn’t think like us and there will always be differences between humans.

Triumph of the Nerds Part I

I always thought that when you love what you do, things go in a better way, and seeing this video reaffirm my idea, I even think that work can become fun when you are passionate about your profession.

The only thing that I disagree with the video is that by doing what you like, forget another important part in this case health. I understand that is difficult to have proper eating habits and we do not have the time to make the meals that are recommended, but I believe that we can try to eat as well as possible and from my point of view, avoid drinking a lot of soda, this is my opinion in order to live a longer and healthier life.

Something else that I liked about the video is showing you it's not enough to be a programming genius, but also must have enterprising attitude (enterprising lightning: D) that allows you carry out your plans, because it is useless know a lot but not knowing how to implement your idea.

Something that I found funny in the video is the amount of things that Paul Allen has purchased with the profits from Microsoft, as a nice car, a basketball stadium with the team included, and other extravagant things that are not mentioned in the video but we can imagine.

Finally, I do not like to tag people who are very intelligent as neds, but also think it depends on the way that they do, since many people do in an offensive way. Making fun of someone for being intelligent and dedicated to their studies is so ignorant, it's like making fun of someone because it will be successful in the future. I think after watching the video we all want to be nerds, and I'm doing everything possible to be.

About Me...

My name is Miriam Gutierrez and everybody call me Miri, I feel weird when someone calls me by my full name.

What I expect for the course is to strengthen techniques to improve the performance and efficency of my codes. In addition, I have the opportunity to learn a new lenguage and I consider that learn a new lenguage increase your job opportunities.

Among my personal interests are mainly, finish my major and then, start a master. I would like to specialize in something related to Artificial Intelligence, and even getting a certification as Project Management.

I have a lot of hobbies but now I have only just two, reading and do exercise. I enjoy do exercise everyday that I can, because it is an activity that frees me from stress and relaxes me.  Reading makes me forget for a moment of reality and also relaxes me. My favorites books are two: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez and Looking for Alaska by John Green. I am currently reading the Harry Potter saga, and I hope to read all the books this year.

I like TV series, if someone recommends me a serie, I see it, but if the first episode does not seem interesting, I do not continue to whatching, that is my condition. The series that could see again and again are, Gossip Girl, Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead, Soy tu Fan, CSI (all), Dr. House and The Big Bang Theory. I also like listening to music, my favorite genres are pop and rock in English and Spanish. I like bands like One Republic, U2, Imagine Dragons, Muse, Radiohead, among others.