Free Computer Books

Andrew Cooke has a list of online books.

Matz Interview

Bill Venners interviews Ruby’s Yukihiro Matsumoto:

I need to guess how the compiler works. If I’m right, and I’m smart enough, it’s no problem. But if I’m not smart enough, and I’m really not, it causes confusion. The result will be unexpected for an ordinary person. This is an example of how orthogonality is bad.

JavaScript

I used to despise JavaScript out of ignorance, because I don’t like the way it’s often applied on Web pages. Now I’ve been reading more about it, and it’s actually a pretty neat language. Objects in JavaScript are based on prototypes, like in AppleScript.

DrawBot

DrawBot (binary, source) is a great example of the power of PyObjc, and it’s also a useful program in its own right. It’s a basic Python IDE that lets you edit scripts (with syntax highlighting) and display the results of Quartz drawing commands.