Lambda the Ultimate

Well, Emacs is essentially a language and an operating system (though in need of a good editor), so I guess he counts!

Stephen Wolfram fits that bill

Isn't Wolfram a physicist?

I mean, he did design a language. That alone makes him a language designer. Never mind the fact that people use and, hell, pay for it!

Wolfram is a polymath, his identity is much broader than language design.

Poor Brendan is having a hard time at it right now.

Poor Brendan?

For the record and not meant to invoke a debate here:

Substantial political donations are a matter of public record. One of Eich's was to a campaign that sought to ban same sex-marriage in California and to invalidate same-sex marriages that had already taken place. This led some to question his suitability as CEO and leader of an ostensibly public interest, freedom-fighting organization. In his subsequent statements, Eich has chosen not to reverse his political stance on that issue. Recently, Mozilla staffers have begun calling for Eich to step down.

Additionally, three Mozilla board members are reported to have resigned over disagreements about the technical direction Eich is expected to favor.

I don't agree with banning same sex marriages, I'm a typical liberal scientist, but damn, when did we become so intolerant and unforgiving? Diversity of thought goes both ways.

While the information about the brouhaha is of interests and updates would be appreciated, I think the politics (including meta-politics) are better left for other sites. The only discussions of religion we allow here concern views about type systems.

Ok let me try again:

I don't agree with Brendan's views on type systems; I find javascript's haphazard treatment of typing to be distasteful, even for a dynamically typed language. However, we should also be open minded about it and not ostracize the guy for his beliefs (wrt to type systems), he deserves to be given a chance as CEO.

PS. It is April 1st where I am. Not that this is important.

Truth is timeless. Of course, in a dynamically typed language you don't know if something is TRUE or if it is supposed to be a datetime.

Fortunately, the double negation of a datetime is always TRUE. Oh, except on January 1st, 1970, at 0h. So if you're not on the epoch, I'm not I'm not now is true. At least by the time you read it.

... that time is truth, and many times are likely to be TRUE times.

At some point, many of us decide not to support unsound judgments any more. Open-mindedness up to soundness is great. But Brendan's understanding of equality is all wrong (of course I'm talking about propositional equality in type systems -- maybe he should take a look at HoTT).

Yes, I guess his type systems' philosophy was just too broken for the world to accept. A sad day in PL.

I left behind architecture and pursued software as a career choice based on a (then correct, imo) assessment that this field was meritocratic and unencumbered by the nonsense that I witnessed first-hand observing (world renowned, top tier) faculty and guests at my grad school. This was early 90's.

Now I feel like a chump. Besides the insidious effects of VC money, blatant ageism, and the lack of moral compass in application of computation in the field, now we have b.s. like this.

Could you please elaborate on "the insidious effects of VC money, blatant ageism, and the lack of moral compass in application of computation"?

how i can get on that gravy train?

Sell your soul to the devil, and you are in.

hah already worked for msft once ;-)

The "Seattle sell your soul" is quite different from the "bay area sell you soul." The former just brings a bunch of rain.

(lol @ rain ..)

Agreed. Social engineering and pushing social norms that only benefit established power centers is of an entirely distinct category of wrong doing.

A CEO is the public face of a company, any kind of company. His job isn't to make software or any other product, it's to represent his company to the public. If he does something that embarrasses the company, he's out, period.

It is sad that we have digressed ourselves to the level where the leader is merely a ceremonial figure head, and otherwise not in charge of strategic direction or anything actually useful.

Steve Jobs wasn't successful because he was a good figure head. His fame only came from his ability to lead and execute, and he had plenty of negative qualities that would have detracted from him being a good figure head.

It is sad that we have digressed ourselves to the level where the leader is merely a ceremonial figure head, and otherwise not in charge of strategic direction or anything actually useful.

That's quite the false dichotomy.

Steve Jobs wasn't successful because he was a good figure head. His fame only came from his ability to lead and execute, and he had plenty of negative qualities that would have detracted from him being a good figure head.

Steve Jobs is a great example, because "ability to lead" is a big part of the issue here. For some relevant insight into Jobs' ability to lead, read this article - right up to the part about how he dealt with Ronald Hayden's insurance coverage. Behavior like that tends to inspire fierce loyalty from employees.

In 2008, Apple donated $100,000 to oppose prop 8, and later joined consortiums of companies that devoted resources to directly opposing prop 8 and DOMA in court. Apple also participated in the "It gets better" project, releasing a video of its own. Actions like these requires the leadership and support of a CEO who fully supports equality and all its implications. On this issue at least, Steve Jobs was a shining example of corporate leadership and social responsibility, who anyone with CEO aspirations could learn from.

Edit: One of the best overviews of this issue was written by Ian McCollough on Quora, and reposted on Forbes. It addresses many of the bad arguments that have been raised, a few of which have already appeared in this thread.

Weak Finalization is expected to make it into EcmaScript 7, but is already available on the Mozilla Platform, as just demonstrated by Brendan under heavy memory pressure.