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by Adrian Kosmaczewski,
The filmography of Christopher Nolan runs along a common thread: a never-ending obsession with human memory. In "Memento" (2000), Leonard Shelby must solve the horrendous rape and murder of his wife while dealing with short-term memory loss. In "The Prestige" (2006), memory is self-deception. Dom Cobb, in "Inception" (2010), keeps building an emotional and subjective reality around the souvenir of his wife. Cooper's memory in "Interstellar" (2014) is non-linear, and oblivious to time dilation issues. "Tenet" (2020) opposes the existence of our memory to our capacity for free will. Finally, "Oppenheimer" (2023) gives a moral perspective through the regretful memory of building the ultimate weapon. Nolan screams at us that human memory is non-linear, repetitive, unreliable, and most importantly, in a perpetual conflict with that thing we call reality.
by Adrian Kosmaczewski,
Today we are going to talk about a person in a quest to let everyone know that the most popular functional programming language in the world is none other than Microsoft Excel. Yes, the claim sounds outlandish, debatable, laughable, even ridiculous, but she has both data and anecdotal experience backing her point, and this month's Vidéothèque movie is a brilliant presentation of it. Also, let us be honest; as software developers it is our duty to use our beloved brains, and go past the mocking stages in order to learn and embrace the unknown; in this case, the language used by most of the modern business world to communicate: spreadsheets.
by Adrian Kosmaczewski,
As in any human group, there are certain pilgrimages, certain rites of passage that all software developers apparently must go through. They are various and equally anecdotical: to compile and boot their own Linux kernel; to read "The Art of Computer Programming" in its entirety (and then send their CV to Bill Gates); to give a presentation in a conference; and finally, to sit through the whole duration of "The Mother of All Demos", the recording of the unavoidable presentation made by Douglas Engelbart, Bill English, and their team. And this month's Vidéothèque entry is, precisely, said recording.
by Adrian Kosmaczewski,
Hard to believe as it is, it has been already almost 20 years since the days when Apple plastered the halls of its Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) with huge posters proclaiming "Redmond, start your photocopiers" or "Mac OS X Leopard: Hasta la vista, Vista". The decade of the 2000s, coinciding with Steve Ballmer's tenure as CEO, is widely perceived as a lost one for Microsoft, and one of the most visible signs of that decline was, without a doubt, the "Longhorn" saga.
