blog-j: Symbolizing, Coding, Objectifying, Processing

Another year, another rockin’ festival, for some another 3 (or 4) hangovers. FITC was, yet again, incredible. Highlights for me included John Maeda (who is a very quirky and engaging speaker…a low key presence with a whole lot of personality), North Kingdom, and Danny Stillion of IDEO. Not to mention meeting (and re-meeting) people, including - Paul Ortchanian, Gary Stasiuk, Evert Pot, Kristin Henry, and loads of other people (and by loads I mean not too many, but anyway…).

Of course, being mistaken for Justin Everett-Church was fun, for no particular reason.

Which, surprisingly, brings me to my point - what is it that is just so unbelievably bad about Hungarian Notation? (Or, rather, why do so many people seem to just hate it?)

I was chatting with Paul Ortchanian after his talk (we’d met at FITC last year, briefly, which is apparently why he mistook me for Justin), and I mentioned that I thought his presentation was great, but his use of Hungarian was killing me - oCamera in particular. In a flight of genius, I even showed him the Framework Design Guidelines book (yes, I’m that big a geek that I carry it around with me), expressing the opinion that it is perhaps the most important book for the Flash community - we’re very good at solving problems and writing code that works, but writing solid, usable APIs seems to be beyond all of us (I include those writing the Flash equivalent of the BCL - come on: stage.stageHeight, for crying out loud? what were you thinking??).

Back to the point - what is so bad about Hungarian Notation? You know, naming things like oMyObject, iTreeSize, bIsThisTrue?

You may even see the problem right there.
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MC 900 Ft. Jesus?

This is the first in a series of posts about things that used to be but don’t seem to be anymore. Case in point, MC 900 Ft. Jesus. He had a song back in the early 90’s (made CFNY’s (now known as the Edge) Top 102 of 92 (which I still have sitting on a cassette tape somewhere)), While the City Sleeps - really, really cool - slow groove, “rap” on top, the lyrics are a first-person monologue from the mind of an arsonist/pyromaniac (chorus includes “I light the fires while the city sleeps”).

For whatever the reason I was thinking of that song. Did a quick google, and got a wikipedia page (surprise, surprise).

No, I’m not burning down the building.

Read the deets @ wikipedia.org.

And, hey, hit the dude to get back in the music biz. He’s got a pretty cool groove that I think is ridiculously unique (the thought coupled with the music), and unheard of (imho) in today’s rap scene. Not that I’m a huge rap fan - haven’t really been able to get into it since…um…elementary school. And even then I think it was more the rebelliousness than anything (which is, of course, fine and good, but I seem to have lost that in the years since…).

So go pick up an MC 900 Ft. Jesus album now. You won’t be disappointed.