It's been ages since I’ve visited a team that didn’t use some form of third-party software, something more than their platform. Often this software is integral to their work. Why don’t they treat that way?

I've just uploaded the latest Heron version which now supports classes, structs and delegations

When it comes to information reuse in multiple contexts, backpointers are critical. Doug Engelbart said so in 1968. I finally understand why...

For the umpteenth time I am changing my name about how to name traits/interfaces in Heron.

I don't know any language which is so perverse as to do such a thing, but I want to throw it out there as an idea to torment people.

So am I actually doing anything?

I thought I would share my latest attempt at writing a white paper describing the implicit behavioral subtyping mechanism I am using for the current Heron prototype (yes you can download it at http://www.heron-language.com/ ). Any comments would be appreciated.

A rambling discourse touching on my new job, the prospects for PyCon, and what's hot in python-dev.

Mike Levin has posted a new podcast interview with me, recorded 1/4/06.

Sybase's implementation of PreparedStatement does not use Statement.clearWarnings() automatically on repeated uses. This results in the accumulation of SybSQLWarning and SybSQLResultSet objects, one pair per call use.

I recently noticed in JRE1.5 that HotSpot is yanking loop controls as invariant when not marked as volatile. Have you encountered this?

The latest HeronFront prototype now provides traits which support structural subtyping (duck typing), and behavioral subtyping. This extensions should prove very interesting to people who are interested in agile programming methodologies, and programming with contracts.

I made a mistake in my latest Agile C++ article for C++ Users Journal, and I want to retract it.

I was working on specifying separate mixin and interface types, when I remembered Scala Traits / Ruby Modules.

There are tons of books and articles about how to design and write good Java code, but surprisingly little about the specific topic of API design. Here's a summary of what I've learnt on the subject from various sources and my own experience.