Category: language

By the light of Dynamic Silverlight

Keeping secrets is tough. Hearing about the Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR) from John Lam in February this year was one of those secrets that kept well.

John Udell interviewed John Lam, and has a backgrounder here. Some in the Ruby community didn’t see this coming.

Jim Hugunin has a posting on the new DLR, open source nature of the DLR on his “Thinking Dynamically” blog.

In addition to the Silverlight release, we’ve also made the full source code for both IronPython and all of the new DLR platform code available on codeplex under the BSD-style Microsoft Permissive License. All of that code can be downloaded today as part of the IronPython project at codeplex.com/ironpython.

The reality of being able to debug Ruby in a client-side UI framework on Safari on a Mac using Microsoft Silverlight tickles me, and others, greatly.

Blog from the keynote today, with all the ups-and-downs. Good to see I am not the only one who craves demos and has subversive thoughts in the midst of formal sessions.

Ryan Stewart has comments, and further links. The DLR adds 400K (what the!) to the Silverlight download. Wow.

zdnet has a sort of transcript of the Q&A that occured with Mike Arrington, Ray Ozzie and Scottgu.

Does Microsoft get Web 2.0? Yes.

Aussie Lingo, Again

Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi

Australian lexicon can leave you a few roos loose. And it’s been a corker for years – well, at least since cocky was a chick.
Not as dry as a dead dingo’s donger is the book Tobruk, by Australia’s smartest footballer Peter FitzSimons – a dead easy read, even for non-war history lovers. Highly recommended. Whilst I have read a couple of books on Kokoda, it is next on the list.

Our Valuable Virtual Meta-verse Future

In 1988 Mitchell Waite sent me a small paperback to read: Vernor Vinge‘s True Names. I was a mere, lowly Hypertalk programmer from Adelaide, South Australia. He was an important person.

This book has stuck in the neurons, and now the virtual is becoming real. It really goes to show how hard science fiction depicts a future that current living humans will not see. Based on some work I was doing to Tricks of the Hypertalk Masters, creating what would be now known as a “skin” over CompuServe; the book was just science fiction.

True Names published in 1981, describes a world called “Other Plane” were people interact online. The premise of separating your online from your physical indentity; and the concept of a future Singularity pervade my personal world-view today.

Thanks Mitch.

Now, what does this have to do with today?

Second Life. It’s more than the technology; it is also about the platforms involved. It is also how it impacts real people: such as Dave Wallace. Second Life is what I visualised as “Other Plane”

Watch the first half of this video: Jim-Cory-SecondLife.wmv, Lang.NET Symposium.

The first half of the video is light on technology; but heavy on the economics, and wider-world impacts of the virtual world. The user creation rate (Writeness in the Read/Write equation) is over 60%; compared to the web which is less than 10%.

A key reason seems to be the economic value attached to virtual objects scripted in Second Life. As items in the SecondLife virtual world are intellectual property; an item can be created, sold and purchased.

Ensuring that intellectual property is valued is going to be one of the toughest challenges for upcoming generations.

Is the scripting in Second Life the new HyperCard?