Wikipedia has a great summary of the Javascript/ECMA language. It beats the pants off of the average ad-laden Javascript site, as it’s easy to read and covers a useful subset of the language.

Random wiki page of the week: Sakichi Toyoda’s 5 Whys, a simple method of solving problems by looking for the root cause.¹

1. The principle applies directly to software development and troubleshooting. ↩

Dr. Alan Kay talks about the Meaning of “Object-Oriented Programming”. His summary:

OOP to me means only messaging, local retention and protection and hiding of state-process, and extreme late-binding of all things. It can be done in Smalltalk and in LISP. There are possibly other systems in which this is possible, but I’m not aware of them.

The Mozilla2 platform aims for mobile market. It’s about bloody time. It looks like webkit has already schooled Gecko in the embedded space, so the Mozilla team has some catchup to do.

Here are Wikipedia’s articles on the DRY principle, YAGNI principle, and MCV pattern. Also check out C2’s article on DRY (via).

A thorough outline of code indenting styles (via).

Ken Rockwell compares a $150 and $5000 camera. Guess which one he prefers?

An interesting take on the 3 kinds of software developers. If you’re ever asked, “what kind of developer am I?”, be wary if they’re a perpetually intermediate developer (they won’t like the answer). Purgatorio is no fun.

The classic nethack game (tile screenshots) is now available for the Nintendo DS. Some background on the ubercool Nethack, a game that captured the essence of the nerd hacker in the 80s.

[stars: 5] Sicko (Michael Moore). A disturbing look at the HMO-infested health care system of the USA. I’m proud to be a Canadian today, with our view of making sure all of our nation is covered by reasonable health care. Moore’s depiction of Canadian Health Care was accurate too, mirroring my many experiences with it.