David Wong's JDATE could have been written by localroger's little brother. Maybe he is. Quote from the site:

...like being run over by a truck made of horror, hauling four tons of stupid...

So true... As Volker said, you just cannot stop reading.

Kiczales, des Rivieres, Bobrow: The Art of the Metaobject Protocol (AMOP)

I have been reading AMOP for the past few days, and found it quite enlightening, even from a general object-oriented viewpoint. Now I am inclined to buy some extra copies and have them delivered to some AOP folks in the neighborhood (you know who you are! ;)).

Well, that, or I will try to understand why Gregor took off the AOP tangent, instead of continuing to evolve reflective capabilities of languages through defined protocols.

From my perspective, formal protocol design would have been the way to go, at least I would expect it to make my life not harder. With random code insertions at random places, AOP might scratch an immediate software engineering itch, but in the long run it will also be verification hell. Oh joy...

Almost 15 years ago, Barry Margolin wrote a review on AMOP, with which I quite agree:

Part I is the part that should be of most interest to OO programmers in general, as tour through the OO design process. In effect, the reader is watching over the shoulder of an expert OO designer in action. I don't know about most of you, but I learned most of what I know about good programming by sitting next to colleagues while they worked, or by making later modifications to their programs; there's no substitute to looking at good code, and having the programmer explain *why* it is written the way it is. This book does this.

The description is good, but the extensive use of prose underscores a missing facet of most OO languages, including CLOS: formal protocol specifications. [...]
Maybe now that the CLOS designers have polished CLOS and reached a milestone in the MOP design, the next step should be a language for formally defining protocols.

Finally, it has a beautiful cover.

Funny aside, quoting Irina:

It should be forbidden that such [computer-related] books have such beautiful covers. It's misleading!

An extraordinary life, an extraordinary book! During a vacation in Africa a young Swiss falls in love with a Masai warrior. She exchanges her comfortable life in Europe for a humble hut in a Kenyan village. The book is an honest report about 4 years of marriage in Kenya, that inspite of poverty, diseases and cultural differences were full with beautiful experiences. Life can be more interesting than any film...

Apropos film, the filming of the book comes to German cinemas on 15th of September. I definitely want to see it!

Als deutsche Lehrerin in Jerusalem

Margret Greiner lebt im israelischen Teil von Jerusalem und unterrichtet als Deutschlehrerin an einer palästinensischen Schule in Ostjerusalem. Jeden Tag sieht sie, wie zerrissen die Stadt ihrer Träume ist, und nie war es schwerer zu sagen, zu welcher Seite sie gehört.

Greiner describes the situation (as it is commonly called) as an observer without taking sides. The book reflects more or less exactly my experiences and memories from Israel. Except that nobody there behaved reserved to me in any way for being German (or for any other reason), while Greiner mentioned one or two such incidents.

Recommended reading. Unfortunately, the book seems to be available in German only.