algebraist's Journal: generic blogs

One problem with ezine-like blogs is that sometimes, a body just wants to rant or comment and, like Michael Swaine and Hypercard, to do it properly with a topical blog, it has to be bent to fit. Hence, a Slashdot blog.

My other blogs are On Middle-earth and Visiting the SAS zoo. The former is about Tolkien-related fantasy and the latter is ostensibly about SAS, the overpriced statistical, business intelligence, and data mining package. That blog actually covers a lot of ground, principally through a loophole where I interpret gawk to be a "poor man's SAS data step". (See also another explanation.)

Although like a lot of people doing software and information technology, I've been short of work in the last year, I have realized once again that programming and coding is a true love, something far more organic than was satisfied by a lot of the artsy software engineering fluff practiced during my final days with the IBM Federal Systems Division in Owego, NY, after we had been sold to Loral which later sold the facility to Lockheed-Martin. The need now is for lightweight code, applications and utilities written without formal specifications or requirements, done quickly, cheaply, smartly, and and reliably. Deflation and international competition demand these of businesses today, even of governments and universities.

So, I've been doing scripting languages, ANSI C, PERL, and gawk, primarily to support embedded software development and data warehouse development.