Rob Chamberlin

Robert Chamberlin - member of the Programmer's Guild

Currently residing in Rochester Minnesota. Retired from IBM in 1993 where I worked as a programmer -- I became an advocate of the REXX Language and prototyping as a programming development philosophy.

e-mail me at rchamberlin@yahoo.com

Interested in all types of programming. Especially where it leads to machine problem solving.

I have some really narrow viewpoints of programming technique. You may agree or not, but they have served me well. Such as:

Strong Typing - A BadThing. The developer is forced to compensate for a poor compiler design and/or implementation. Shun those compilers and languages they support.

End-of-line - Developer is forced to remember when to end a line with ; or some other such token; the compiler should recognize the E-O-L, either with cr-lf or context.

Documentation - The source code should be human language and structured for clarity. Therefore self-documenting.

Interpreted vs Compiled - BOTH - in the interpreted form can be used to prototype a task or function - proof-of-concept, while the compiled version would provide speed and security.

Errors - Either during coding, compile, or execution. If the editor, compiler or run-time support found an error, it MUST share that information with the developer or user. There is nothing worse than getting a syntax error on line 2368 message with no additional information. The processing program knows just what caused the error, and needs to share that information.

Go To - While not necessarily a GoodThing, my early years were spent in machine coding - yes in binary. I have always viewed the Go To as an unconditional JMP and have used it (sparingly) as such. The option to use should be supported. End user choice should be respected.

I've just discovered the Zeno project in Germany, and sent them an e-mail directing them to check out wiki.

A link to the Zeno white paper in PDF may be found on the ZenoDiscussion page.

Also of interest to me is the Delphi Process, or iteration leading to consensus as a means of mapping future trends. Which was/is a community discussion technique. Does anybody care? DelphiDiscussion

Another topic I am gathering information about is that of design. Why is it done? Should it be done? How does it relate to programming and human interaction? My starting point is http://www.tcdc.com/default.htm, but since everything I am interested in is really a process or can be defined as one, I need to include research into Deming http://curiouscat.com/guides/deming.cfm and his ContinuousImprovement philosophy - as applied to processes.

DistributedComputing projects seem to be springing up like mushrooms in a fertile environment. Some pay for your spare computer time, some look for volunteers. Is it worth it? Is anyone working on a registry of projects?

Proofreading and Editing copy is another thing that is of interest to me. Anyone who is involved in the creation of a document, technical paper or treatise is often not "up to speed" on the finer issues of detecting errors. I am interested in tools which assist one in developing quality documents. Links to the tools I have found to be of help are to be found at ProofReadingLinks.

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