Next up for Code Reads: “Notes on Postmodern Programming”

I’m on the road this week with my family, and posting will be light.

Thanks to everyone who weighed in on the Code Reads discussion of Guy Steele’s “Growing a Language.”

For the next Code Reads I’m going to continue down the slightly more literary path we trod with Steele and have a look at “Notes on Postmodern Programming,” a paper by James Noble and Robert Biddle from 2002. (The link provides further links to a PDF or Postscript version of the paper.)

It’s both more recent and considerably more offbeat than some of the other stuff we’ve read. I heard the authors present work at OOPSLA in 2004, and I think their in-person style of delivery — well-timed to a rich slide-set and loaded with carefully calibrated ironies — isn’t fully captured in plain text. Nonetheless, it’s a provocative read, and one that offers a good counterpoint to some of the discussions we’ve been having on the woes of the programming field.

I’m now trying to work on about a two-week schedule for these readings, so I plan to post on the “Postmodern” essay some time next week. Happy solstice!