en-us http://www.keithwatanabe.net/index.php Keith Watanabe's Website http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/8/8/dd813dee5dbb08b567377b63eb18ab72.html
Whenever you're tempted to do any of these things, you need to sit back and think about what will do the most good for you and your neighbor over the long haul. If you're going to pour your creative energies into a lump of code, why not make the world a better place while you're at it?

This can really apply to any language. The fact that this statement occurred in the Perl book made me realize the connection of programming, programming languages and their attribute as a philosophical mode of thinking.

Think about the flamewars between Java and scripting languages such as Perl. The core arguments that Perl people have against Java is the verbosity while Java programmers call Perl programmers obscure and lacking thoroughness. Shouldn't the real result be about results you bring to a business?

All of these statements above are loaded philosophical questions. The best programmers, in my view, are those that have an issue or stake involved in such questions. Should each little optimization be so critical for a business? Why not just lie to the company and say optimization is impossible that issue?

Again, it's all philosophical. But the intention behind that philosophy is equally critical. The person who refuses to optimize places importance on immediate results at the sacrifice of performance so that his end of the bargain is complete. The person who prefers verbosity emphasizes thoroughness and process. The person who favors obscurity prefers succinctness.

I think those who practice programming philosophy rather than simply programming are those who are looking or have their own set of best practices. This is one area which isn't well defined. Certainly, there are tons of books, online articles and whatnot prescribing sets of best practices, but like any philosophy, there are numerous variations that really fit with a person's core value system.]]> Wed, 08 Aug 2007 18:11:57 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/8/8/dd813dee5dbb08b567377b63eb18ab72.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/12/5/00a6ae9f5c4bfac288831b5c434e72bb.html
That said, I've been pondering something for the past few days that struck me hard. And it's that humanity is about to embark on one of its most glorious Renaissance evolutions. And the best part is that it will be isolated in a single geographic location. The whole world, via the Internet, will be able to unanimously participate in this Renaissance and this period would some day be described as one of mankind's great achievements.

Except for one problem.

Copyright.

The barrier for mankind's next evolution as a species is being held back by the notions of old tyrannical beliefs that prohibits people from creating. Only the few in power such as the megacorporations are privileged enough to afford the lawyers (who are the purveyors of this bureaucracy) to control our immediate destiny.

Truthfully, that's what it is. We are now held back artistically, scientifically and socially because of a few lawyers, politicians and wealthy shareholders. Recall what the past CEO from Intel said about the medical community: they cannot achieve greatness because of patents and horrible review board that holds up ancient doctrine. Watch how an artist like Prince sues websites from using his likeness to spread their enthusiasm for the artist. Or see how courtrooms disallow and spread fear of merely copying a file.

It's about controlling resources and dumbing down the populace.

The sad part is that the US isn't the only country that's abetting this issue. But all countries that believe in this notion of international copyright, of rights management, etc. are prohibiting the widespread possibility of allowing people to experience this renaissance.

And here's the sad part: copyright has nothing to do with the spirit of the matter. If I remember correctly, John Locke was a huge proponent of this and wanted the average person, who created some work, to be able to control and own it, rather than the kings or his lords. However, when we work for a company, all our creations are moved to the ownership of the company and only the company's rights are protected, NOT THE INDIVIDUAL'S. Copyright globally has NEVER been about the individual's welfare. It's always been the institution/entity in control and about the money.

A REAL artist only would care about copyright when it comes to receiving credit for their work. That's how copyright *OUGHT* to work. Instead, the lawyer mafia has made it into a business that revokes these rights, move the issue away from the individual into numbers and figures for their grossly overloaded pocket books.

Think about how the world could work without copyright. For instance, let's say you're a DJ online. You could create numerous mixes with all types of song samples from multiple sources. That in itself is creation and works because that's how DJ music operates. Or think about a cool TV show one could write up that injects old music to help dramatize certain elements. Or imagine how people could write up examples in essays without fear of stupid convention in backing up their arguments online. Or perhaps we could accelerate the cure for AIDS if something like Open Source was available for medical scientist.

But because of copyright, the world is severely restricted. Our progress as people is limited and you can blame these lawyers, politicians and people in control for slowing the pace of humanity down.

I see what's before us. I'm certain many others do as well. Some are welcoming it with open arms. Others fear it as it destabilizes their power base. But I can't help to think how things like my dad's stroke condition would've never occurred if something like copyright was in place as perhaps scientists could've already discovered a cure for it.

We have everything at our disposal to make mankind the best. I'm begging the world to remove these ancient artifacts of copyright and control and take a chance to better humanity. If you don't, you should know that you're accountable and complacent in the detriment of mankind.]]> Wed, 05 Dec 2007 10:22:08 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/12/5/00a6ae9f5c4bfac288831b5c434e72bb.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/12/6/f4416bec742583ade4838e5ad83097d2.html
I think these miscues focus on the wrong issue.
His write up targets mostly the issue of PHP not being serious as a language because the object support enforcement is non-existent. He claims that a lot of the internal procedural style libraries disengage PHP programmers from using more OOP programming, which apparently allows for highly scalable, enterprise-class software.

Let's be honest here. He's full of shit.

PHP's problems as a language being ready for the enterprise has little to nothing to do with not enforcing OOP structure. Actually, that's a huge benefit because the ability to learn something like PHP is far quicker than something that enforces OOP concepts like Java. PHP is primarily a functional language, and functional languages have been traditionally easier to teach than OOP languages. My old professor in college once mentioned how difficult it is to teach OOP to new computer science students. Just to create Hello World, you have to teach about OOP theories rather than just allowing something to use:

echo "Hello world";

Not to mention not enforcing the OOP paradigm simply allows people to build software quicker. You don't have to worry about transforming your object into byte classes or anything complicated.

That said, the real problem with PHP has been the fact that most people who are programming PHP do not typically (nor probably) have fundamentals in computer science to create large scale software. Any language can be faulted as being unmaintainable if 1) there is no architect guiding the younger programmers; 2) there is no vision nor design for the piece of software; 3) the people building and maintaining the software are simply "script kiddies."

From a functional perspective, PHP is one of the richest languages around, having numerous libraries that can support many enterprise related task. You have persistent DB connections, XML parsers, XSLT functions, SOAP, WSDL, caching, graphics manipulation, etc. As a language it can scale too as you can create your own cache or use the PEAR caching system or even use horizontal caching with the memcache piece. And you can't say that PHP is not worthy of large scaled projects since companies like Yahoo, Friendster, etc. all implement PHP in their online applications.

Him calling PHP a framework is ludicrous. It's a programming language. A framework would be Zend, PHP Cake, etc. that do enforce to varying degrees (depending on the framework) the notions of good design patterns.

To say that you cannot promote good design patterns with PHP is also ridiculous. I've been my own frameworks based on the outdated MVC models, using numerous design patterns such as business delegates, service layers, MVCs, singletons, factory/builder patterns, iterators, etc. Heck without some of the newer OOP features since PHP 5, I would've had a much more difficult time designing my systems.

I think a better comparison would've been Ruby on Rails to VB6. The thing with PHP is that you can use it as a decent teaching language since it has all the qualities of a decent programming language (you can even enforce types in parameters and do limited pass-by-reference in function calls!). With Ruby on Rails though, you're teaching a limited paradigm, not the fundamentals of a programming language where you can expand the purpose outside much of a web context. VB6 likewise was limited to GUI client and perhaps some server programmer. With VB6, you're limited in the type of paradigm you are programming so the type of thinking that goes into a VB6 application is more bent towards rapid prototyping, just like Ruby on Rails.

PHP provides you with the tools and basics to build enterprise scalable applications. Rails shelters you into a paradigm and makes you think that scaffolding is king, compared to understanding how certain fundamentals like types, function callls, etc. work in a regular programming language.

The other thing is that I just don't buy the excuse that PHP is bad in his context because of not enforcing OOP thinking. And his bad being the equivalent of not being able to build scalable applications. Well, so what would you call all those C and C++ systems out there? C++ does not enforce programmers to program in OOP like Java either. I've seen so-called enterprise level systems for trading securities written in C++, where everything looked more like a csh-script than some elegant piece of reusable code.

As I mentioned before, the language itself does not impose bad thinking. It's that people who adopt a language themselves were never good programmers to begin with and never learned fundamentals of design. I've been on both ends of the spectrum where I saw horribly designed (for lack of a better term) systems built with C++, Java or these heavily praised languages as well as partaking in building monstrously scaling open source systems like Ticketmaster. And I'm certain his much beloved .NET can easily fall prey to poor design in the hands of an incompetent programmer.

I truly wish people stop blaming the languages themselves in the end for poorly designed systems. The only thing languages offer is a slight difference in taste for syntax with a few more features here and there or syntactic sugar coating to make some developer's weener hard because they enjoy the mental masturbation of the puzzle like ways of twisting a language apart.
]]> Thu, 06 Dec 2007 10:26:31 -0700 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/12/6/f4416bec742583ade4838e5ad83097d2.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/3/15/6fe5d0f4867da94a01151a9fd11eb7bf.html Have's and Have-Not's. This issue has been around forever and has been a leading subject of political discourse. Two well known philosophers, John Locke and Carl Marx had differing but yet similar intents in describing the notion of capital, property, one's rights.

On the one hand, John Locke essentially felt that when one creates something, they therefore own it (link to Wikipedia's entry) This is the basis of intellectual property in that ownership is an effect of one's work. I think part of his writings were due to the environment of him living in a period where kings essentially owned their peasants. So if a peasant grew a fruit, the king, as owner of the land, had all the rights to it. In response, Locke came up with a way of repudiating monarchy through his theory on intellectual property (or just ownership).

While Marx's philosophy is socialist and his views on ownership differ, I think the intent for his writings is not too dissimilar. One key point in Marx's writing was the notion of how capital and production works. Essentially, the means of production are what enables people to have control. (link to Wikipedia's entry) The book Dune paraphrases this idea with saying, "He who controls the spice, controls the universe." The similarity in intent goes to the fact that people want and need control and want to do away with the middle man to live a prosperous life.

This is the biggest point of contention in society now with regards to media labels and file sharers. The media people, in Marx's words, are the ones who keep control over the means of production. They are NOT the people who are the laborers creating the objects as John Locke would state, but they end up being owners because they have the power to back themselves up. They are the middlemen who have fields of corn, rice, and other pieces of food that we think we need. They stand in between the artists and the consumer, reaping the rewards, controlling what can be released and how much they can get in return.

Obviously, the biggest threat to these big media companies are the threat of removing them as a middle man through these new manners of distribution (which is something that Locke nor Marx had failed to address in their writings). The media industry essentially at this point are parasites, living off like the monarchs of old, enslaving labor and threatening neighbors for picking up fruits that fell to the ground. These industries, along with other middle men distributors like retailers, are not the creators and in truth do not own, in Locke's view and from a spiritual point of view, the true intellectual property of the artists. The media companies only own the legal rights because of the contracts that artists, desperate for money, end up signing.

Naturally, TV and movies get more complex because the means of production are far more complex compared with recording music. You have more people involved in the labor, giving them a certain amount of rights as entitled to the writers, actors/actresses, directors and whatnot. Then you get the investment money for production and this is where probably the studios hold the most power and are able to legally bind people.

At any rate, as I've said continuously, the world is constantly reverting towards medieval monarchism or oligarchies. The people on top want as few people to join them to retain control and maintain the slave mentality so that they can enjoy their materialistic lives. Sometimes I consider that the only recourse is the same philosophy that you'd see at the end of the movie The Godfather, by replacing the old to create a new wave of thought.]]> Sat, 15 Mar 2008 22:27:34 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/3/15/6fe5d0f4867da94a01151a9fd11eb7bf.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/3/15/d20d562883f8c10ee6e32f94f09c1e3b.html
Adam Smith did not seem to address in detail what occurs in the trickle down economy when a recession/depression or negative stimulus occurs. But I think many people favor his beliefs because it allows people to act selfish (something that apparently even he remonstrates as immoral to his system). The other thing he never considered is how to placate those who convert a capitalistic system into a monopoly. Supposedly, America has a checks and balances system, but I think that system has long been corrupted by lobbyists, special interests and those with deep pockets to regain the mentality of the monarchy.

Also, America is definitely not a free market economy. All those trade restrictions and rules imposed kill the idealistic version of a free market economy. I hate the fact that people call America a mixed free market economy. Call it what it is: whatever the flavor of the time government chooses to support their ideology.

So how can one survive in this world? There are no new lands that people can move to, with the governments imposing more restrictions to continue to control us. Mars is just a fantasy just like the moon. Only the elite of the society can have any hopes of venturing into space.

Well, I think the answer lies in two parts. The first part is that you can move to a desolate mountain, forest, or part of a country side, cut off your TV and other forms of media access and live off the land in a commune. Maybe even not be part of a commune. Grow your own vegetables, fruits and be located just close enough to the outskirts of a town to get your necessities. Of course, you should pay your taxes and whatnot but essentially you have to become invisible to the world.

The second method is to establish a large corporation with all your friends, purchase a large lot of land, develop on it, and create your own city. Don't believe this is possible? Just think of some of these companies like Google, Yahoo, MS, EA, etc. These are all self-sustaining communities. You still do everything legally like pay for property tax, etc. but you don't let outsiders come in. You create your own elite club, just like how the governments have their golf clubs and fraternities that more elites pay to get into so they can maintain these communities of mutual thought. In these situations, you cannot allow your own selfishness to alienate you from the realization that others are attempting to control you by some means. Only by subscribing to a limited collective where beliefs are common between people, are you able to survive in the postmdern world.]]> Sat, 15 Mar 2008 22:47:23 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/3/15/d20d562883f8c10ee6e32f94f09c1e3b.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/7/14/f0a73fceb9e836ec45d77bf8d8e309c1.html
Reflecting upon these words made me realize how corporate America values certain degrees. So all the technical majors in college like engineering, sciences and mathematics, and to a degree, economics, stats, etc. receive high praise and payment while majors like humanities and arts suffer a great deal in the respect and job options area. Of course, some of these areas have been corrupted (political science/English => lawyer/politician), but it's interesting to note how the vast majority of respected jobs involve some non-critical thinking position.

That isn't to say that humanities and arts have no value in terms of job opportunities. Obviously, directors, actors, musicians, etc. are some of the most prestigious positions (despite the fact that they produce little social value outside of entertainment). But those that become successful are either lucky or are sellouts (not to mention typically not having any true great talent).

But you don't really see a lot of jobs for say a person graduating with a degree in critical theory or philosophy. Most of those people are relegated in underpaid, underfunded positions at universities. Those that decide to move away from academia enroll in simple office jobs that underutilize their studies (except for things like communications).

Perhaps the closest thing is a position in HR. But most positions in HR are accounting, maybe some Visa work (law) and simple paperwork. You might even see recruiting as another form (psychology). In general though, you rarely see a position like social engineering. I mean, how to improve work conditions and seeing it through. Or what about other applications of philosophical readings to work?

It's kinda sad that the humanities is completely underappreciated. But I guess people prefer to be content with their SUVs, 60" plasma screens, XBox, Netflix rentals, and other forms of materialism than realize just how screwed they are.]]> Mon, 14 Jul 2008 10:24:43 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/7/14/f0a73fceb9e836ec45d77bf8d8e309c1.html