I am the Proud Papa of a Beautiful Blurry Blob The most beautiful blurry blob ever, in fact. Vivi and I went to her 20 week ultrasound last week, hoping to discover the sex of our baby. No such luck - it was lying face down and sleeping. There was little movement either, and not a hole lot was clearly visible to non-ultrasound-technicians like Vivi and I. We could see that the little guy was sucking his/her left thumb, which, according to Discover Magazine, is the best predictor of handedness we know of. Vivi will be getting more ultrasounds before giving birth, so there will be other opportunities to know the sex.On a different topic entirely, SourceForge has accepted my little Coinjema software project, and I had some fun with that last night and today. Even wrote up a little doc for developers. I don't know why it's so much fun to start a new software project, but it is. Plus SourceForge has so many bells and whistles, it can be very entertaining playing with all its fiddle-able bits. The software itself is just a tiny tool framework, and basically done and ready to go. But I feel strange releasing it since I don't yet use it myself at work or anywhere. What if someone actually tried to use it? Because it's an aspect-oriented framework, that'd be a little scary.Writing aspects is kind of like modifying the JVM itself, since the changes just automatically become an invisible part of the environment. Documentation of aspects would seem to be of the utmost importance as a result. I can't imagine how terrifying software development would be if virtually ever third-party library I use started using aspects in their code. Aspects could well be the worst thing to happen to software development since Perl.But it's so powerful, we won't be able to resist. The productivity increase that well-designed aspects generate will be enormous. But I don't know if it will balance the negative effects of poorly-designed aspects. And who can tell when two "well-designed" aspects interfere to create an unholy mess together?Nevertheless, I am diving in. Dangerous toys are more fun :-)

The most beautiful blurry blob ever, in fact. Vivi and I went to her 20 week ultrasound last week, hoping to discover the sex of our baby. No such luck - it was lying face down and sleeping. There was little movement either, and not a hole lot was clearly visible to non-ultrasound-technicians like Vivi and I. We could see that the little guy was sucking his/her left thumb, which, according to Discover Magazine, is the best predictor of handedness we know of. Vivi will be getting more ultrasounds before giving birth, so there will be other opportunities to know the sex.

On a different topic entirely, SourceForge has accepted my little Coinjema software project, and I had some fun with that last night and today. Even wrote up a little doc for developers. I don't know why it's so much fun to start a new software project, but it is. Plus SourceForge has so many bells and whistles, it can be very entertaining playing with all its fiddle-able bits. The software itself is just a tiny tool framework, and basically done and ready to go. But I feel strange releasing it since I don't yet use it myself at work or anywhere. What if someone actually tried to use it? Because it's an aspect-oriented framework, that'd be a little scary.

Writing aspects is kind of like modifying the JVM itself, since the changes just automatically become an invisible part of the environment. Documentation of aspects would seem to be of the utmost importance as a result. I can't imagine how terrifying software development would be if virtually ever third-party library I use started using aspects in their code. Aspects could well be the worst thing to happen to software development since Perl.

But it's so powerful, we won't be able to resist. The productivity increase that well-designed aspects generate will be enormous. But I don't know if it will balance the negative effects of poorly-designed aspects. And who can tell when two "well-designed" aspects interfere to create an unholy mess together?

Nevertheless, I am diving in. Dangerous toys are more fun :-)