Richard Drake

TomGilb emails someone who's long ceased to be a RecentChangesJunkie

Tom was in London. I hadn't heard from him since, well, shortly after we first made a friendly mess together on his page here. I was struck in 1999 how Tom edited Wiki on first sight of his page, put up by me a few weeks before, as I sat with him in his flat in CoventGarden?. By contrast, when I showed MichaelJackson his page, also started by me, I'm pretty certain, the Englishman said "Thank you, very interesting" but clearly was never even going to dream of touching it or any other page here. I wonder now if Michael's natural caution was wiser than I thought.

Still, this difference in reaction remains one of my most enjoyable memories of the profound differences between the two veteran gurus. The gulf was visible on more than one occasion, as NickSimons has also often commented on. It's interesting to us both because of our profound respect for both men, going back to personal contact with them in the 1980s. And Nick has only just learnt that JenniferStapleton used to work for Michael way back at Hoskyns. As Nick said, that puts one of our most famous Gilb-Jackson shoot-outs in a different light again.

Edited highlights

I co-founded ObjectiveComputerSystems Limited in 1983. The SevenPillarsOfCred summarized what we'd learnt by 1996.
I believe that widespread adoption of the SoftwareManagementManifesto, EvolutionaryDelivery and the recently discovered NonlinearityOfXp will greatly affect software development. Maybe it's time for an AccidentalRevolution.
I remain interested in untyped languages with incremental, uniform environments, like Smalltalk, in functional languages such as the HaskellLanguage and in reflexive end user environments such as that pointed to by Microsoft Excel and VBA. Mostly to ask this question: CanEndUsersScript.
As an OpenAuthor, I assert no copyright to my signed contributions on Wiki but I'm certainly tempted by DrakesEquation.

Philosophical preamble

I think the MistakesOfRogerPenrose may be even more significant than what he's got right. Interestingly, I find myself supporting so-called HardCorePlatonists in this area but questioning the influence of Plato on Christian thinking over the centuries. And I never even met the guy. I wonder if Plato would be interested in my NearDeathExperience. Would he have lent a hand in moving it to WhyClublet?

Pages I'm glad I started on Wiki

WikiRewritesHistory
ExtremeOxymoron
RhetoricalQuestion
RogerPenrose
WikiUncertaintyPrinciple
SmalltalkBlockVote? - surely my best ever pun on Wiki, and all the voting pages it links to. They're not always used perfectly (in fact they never are, that's the beauty of it) but at least they are used without too much bother, thanks to the wonder of:
ReferentsOnWiki
TooGoodForFeedback
MinoritiesOnWiki

As of time of writing. A couple on wider social issues of software that I'd still like to understand better are

Pages started that are slightly more borderline

PlainEnglish is less punchy than it used to be but has probably done good overall

Reduced to clear

I continue to be against PseudonymityWithUntraceability, such as that once used by VickiKerr. FacelessRulers and MaintainingSunir have the latest angles.

Contact details are on my page on Why - just click the logo below.

CategoryHomePage, CategoryPerson

Page last edited April 3, 2010, WhyClublet down -> RichardDrakeDiscussion --ManorainjanHolzapfel