On Feb 12, 2009, at 5:47 PM, Orlando Leibovitz wrote:
Owen,
John Cage the great 20th century composer used exactly this
methodology in creating his chance music and in collaboration with
others. Also, isn't following the protocols the way most scientific
experiments are done?
Well, of late, there has been an absolute frenzy of "agile languages"
which tend to be loose to the point of chaotic. And believe it or
not, many languages do not have a standard syntax .. there are slight
variations across systems: microsoft's Java will have additions that,
if you use them, weld you to Windows.
Hopefully this is dying out as industry finds out the horrific costs
of not being standard, but so far Greed Anger and Delusion is winning.
Really hip programming teams will define a subset of all these systems
that are platform independent -- i.e. work on all systems. They will
stick to these subsets, understanding that sometimes constraints
really are freedoms.
Unfortunately, most folks don't "get it" and like trout to a fly, use
the nice shiny "features" that hook them to a single system.
-- Owen
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