Software Generalist

Windows code, Unix code, MSDOS code, BeOS code, Cantor code, PDP code, x86 code, … Every such code has its distinct semantics and pragmatics, converging, evolving and coming to extinction, backed by economic, social and political forces, having its readers and writers. A few years ago I bought and started reading the book “Empires of the Word” by Nicholas Ostler and while thinking today whether I should buy its Folio edition I finally realised that there are also empires of the code intertwined with modern history. As usual, I reserve an ISBN number for this (978-1906717810) yet unwritten book and starting to think about collaborative writing.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ SoftwareGeneralist.com -

Not in the usual sense as worshiping the memory of someone deceased or something passed. Here is the full blown religion of Memory with its own philosophical foundation called memoidealism:

Memory Religion

This is a case when powerful software metaphors provide novel insights into Nature.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ SoftwareGeneralist.com -

The subtitle of this blog has changed from “All you need to know to become a successful software engineer” to “Connecting Software with Engineering, Science, Philosophy and Religion” to reflect the shift in content towards the broader spectrum of topics since its foundation almost a year ago. The original idea to provide short independent survey articles about various aspects of software engineering now becomes one of categories of posts on this blog.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ SoftwareGeneralist.com -

In philosophy this term means the absence of sources of external ethical authority (*). In software when something is abandoned it has lost control or its referent lost the last reference to it, for example, abandoned threads, processes or data blocks. The latter usually known as heap or pool leaks. File abandonment is frequently the source of user frustrations when they are not able to find why there is not enough space. When we find something that doesn’t have external referents we know that the object has been abandoned. Thus we understand that we cannot say that an object is abandoned when looking at it from outside the containing system, we must look within that system, similar to an existentialist threatment of the concept of abandonment when someone must reflect to find an ethical authority and values.

(*) The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, 2nd edition, p. 1

- Dmitry Vostokov @ SoftwareGeneralist.com -