Brooders.net

First I spotted Meet Your Future McDonald’s Register Babe! over at Cyberpunkreview.com. So we move closer and closer to the Replicants dreamed up in “Bladerunner” from “Do Androids dream of electronic sheep?“.

This pointed to a news article set in Japan.

I dropped a few viewpoints and comments over at Cyberpunk review, but I have included them here to give more context:

Interesting stuff. I always wonder what consumer backlash will be. Here in Australia many people get angry when outsourced operators with strong accents call up on behalf of Australian companies.

I wonder whether the same will be true with Android. Also, the Android will probably call a real manager if a customer gets irate and angry.

I wonder how much an android would cost comparative to a human?

Would the android cost sales to a company if people didn’t like it?

Will they be cheaper than a $5 an hour kid who also cleans the floor, tables and windows?

I think that as someone previously commented, there might be some “different” customer service uses where people are willing to pay more than a macdonalds burger :}

Seriously though, people now can get frustrated wth phone queues and Interactive Voice systems.

I am sure this is probably still a few years off, but I am curious to see the possibilities.

So we’re not quite at the replicant level yet, but it’s interesting to see the improvements.

I got caught up in the moment over at Oreilly while commenting on How does a programming language stagnate?

I admit, it turned into a bit more of a rant than a comment.

But I guess that’s because I like the line of thinking in Chromatics article.

Here it is in it’s full glory !

I still use Perl for my sites (brooders.net, neoscholar.net), as well as tidbits of code, prototyping (even if the app will end up being in Java) and a whole host of things.

My work bought me Komodo from Activestate so I could do my Perl and Ruby coding when needed. I agree that more of the focus now is on modules like CGI::Application, Catalyst etc etc and not so much in the language itself. Yes .. there is a big gap between 5 and 6, but perl 5 is still useful.

I am also a little embaressed to admit it, but I probably still largely have a coding style like it’s perl 5.005_003. I first learnt Perl 4 at university, then upgraded from 5.001 to 5.005_003 in my first job. Perl 5.6 came and I didn’t change that much, even with Perl 5.8 .. same thing.

Perl still fills a gap. If need to grok a log file, do some web scanning (WWW::Mechanize is cool) or prototype something, Perl still helps me out. I do like Ruby as well, and Agree the whole Rails thing has made web dev easy in that environment compared to CGI::Application with Class::DBI, but you know what? I still maintain an Perl Web App I wrote 6 years ago .. with a homegrown templating system, and it still works.

I think the whole “perl is dying” thing comes from people seeing other languages and frameworks in the limelight. I think one of Rails biggest successes was a build a web application in 15 minutes tutorial, and watch the video if you can’t be bothered doing it .. and it looked pretty. C still has its place in microprocessor programming and OS level stuff. Perl also has it’s place as well as PHP. The whole Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (which Ruby language creator Matz talks about as well) talks about language influencing thought, and perhaps our thoughts influence the programming language we want to “think” in.

I think the language grows through the modules, and it’s still growing. Like you mentioned in the comments, CPANs modules for Perl5 are a huge strength for the language.

I guess even in the real word from a english language point of view, new ideas and products generate new parts of language. Think back 10 years .. would you have said “google it”?

Language evolves and extends .. not everyone uses every part, and not everybody uses the new parts as quick as others. I am sure my Grandmother wouldn’t know what Google is. Most professions I know (and companies) generate their own acronyms, names of processes etc that have meaning in that context. Programming languages are extended in their specific uses just like spoken/written human languages are.

Garden Path Sentences are quite an interesting abuse or use of language.

From Wikipedia:

“Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.”

“The horse raced past the barn fell.”

The reader usually starts to parse this as an ordinary active intransitive sentence, but stumbles upon reaching the word “fell.” At this point, the reader is forced to backtrack and look for other structures …. The correct reading is then:

“The horse (that was raced past the barn) fell.”

It’s interesting how we double take on sentences like these. The first one is more of a play on words, and is my favourite. The horse sentence indicates an unclear sentence that is jumbled and syntactically and semantically incorrect (that’s my take).

Something that bugs me with buying books online is that you never quite know what the total cost including shipping is.

This is a problem in Australia, as shipping costs account for most of the cost of the book.

Anyway .. I scratched my own itch and finally implemented shipping based on destination. At the moment, it only works for Australia, USA and UK and then only in US dollars. Currency conversion will hopefully be coming soon.

Check out http://neoscholar.com/books/