Conway’s “Game of Life”, the Glider, and Hackers

I just ran across ESR’s proposal to adopt the Glider from Conway’s “Game of Life” as a “Universal Hacker Emblem”. I’m no hacker, but as he says, “hacker”:

…is a title of honor that generally has to be conferred by others rather than self-assumed.

[If you're curious as to why anyone would want to associate or identify with hackers, you might be interested to see how hackers define themselves.]

So for some time-boxed fun, I threw together a my own version of Conway’s Game of Life, using processing. The source is available for the curious. I love how easy it is to do graphics with processing, even if the editor is horrible. But modeling it in Java really made me want to use Ruby, mostly because it got pretty verbose at the end. I’ve squeezed it down some, but it still feels clunky to me. Once I get around to bolting JRuby into processing, I’ll revise it. In the meantime, I’d be interested in hearing what people think of it…

New Job, No School!

I’ve been working for over 6 years for large corporations, but last week I accepted a job offer to work at a much smaller company — I’ll be employee 6 (or 7, if you count the intern). I’m really excited, my family’s excited, my current co-workers keep telling me I’ll be missed, and my new co-workers can’t wait for me to start, so it’s a pretty good time. And just because that’s how life goes, I’ll also earn my B.S. in Computer Science after 10 years of full- and part-time study.

But why mention it here? A few reasons:

• The new job is with .Net, and my background (so far) is in J2EE. I like the thought of seeing the other side, and doing a balanced compare-and-contrast. To borrow from Neal Stephenson, “nothing teaches you about your home country like visiting a different one.” [My first impression of the differences is that Java aims to be open, but at the cost of consistency, completeness, and cohesiveness; .Net is more consistent, complete, and cohesive, but closed. That's very general, so flame away.] Outcome: new posts.
• My copy of the pick-axe just came in. I’ll spend the week between jobs learning some .Net, of course, but also firming up my Ruby skills. Meta-programming, dynamic typing, closures, continuations…So many neat things to learn about! Outcome: new posts.
• I think it’s safe to call me an autodidact. Going to school was frustrating because there are so many neat things to learn, and I have to follow the curriculum. [What a whiner!] In any case, no class means I can brush off G.E.B., maybe Zen, finish Flatterland, and some other things. Outcome: probably new posts.

I’m really looking forward to the new job, and to no school. All within a few weeks of each other. It should be a good summer…