Big Hairy Objects!

I had a bit of a chuckle when I stumbled upon this post by Justin Angel (who? *shrug*, he works for Microsoft). Big Hairy Objects. Most people on the face of the planet would think “pfft.. programmers what planet exactly do they come from”. But to the discerning programmer, those 3 words are most probably redolent with bad memories, dodgy ex co-workers, days spent untangling hidden assumptions, and perhaps the first BASIC program they wrote.

Going off topic, I gotta also say, coming from the php(ughh)/linux(getting there, thanks Ubuntu) world and having worked in .NET for the last 2 year, has made me more rational in my decision making process. .NET is quite sexy, for what it is. So is the DLR. So is Silverlight. The fact that we have Mono & Moonlight (to keep us ‘hippies’ happy), plus the weight that Microsoft is putting behind Silverlight, it really looks like it is shaping up to give Flash/Java/* a real run for their money. And, seriously, Ruby and Python in the browser? Hats off fellas, in this case anyhow. Now if only they would open source the .NET Javascript compiler/interpreter. It is slightly strange that they havent, but then again this smacks of latter-day decision making approaches from within the Redmond camp: Hoard Hoard Hoard. Combined with their fumbling attempts at coming to terms with an Open Source world. Hmm, perhaps this is the makings of a new post.