Tools for Reverse Engineering Binary File Formats

On Quora I asked a question : https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-good-tools-to-help-reverse-engineer-obscure-binary-file-formats What tools are there to help reverse engineer obscure binary file formats? So far the answers aren’t particularly informative. Basically hex editors. But I feel there must be something more. Here’s a comment I replied to someone there : Well, if I try to imagine “something better”, …

2019 – Time for Python 3

OK, it’s 2019 Finally time to upgrade to Python3 for all my Python projects. In particular that means ThoughtStorms wiki and Project ThoughtStorms If you are using either the project or the thoughtstorms library then be prepared that they will all be moving to Python3 in the near future. Given that Python2 is going to …

Extra thoughts on "Assemblage" Oriented Programming

Brief followup thoughts on the previous article. Read that first. Classes? Classes are really just techniques to help construct objects. In an “Assemblage” language the Assemblage or Pattern itself is the way you construct the objects. The grammar explains how to parse a plain EDN or JSON-like data-literal into the assemblage. So perhaps we don’t …

What’s wrong with OO?

Some thinking over at Quora : What’s wrong with OO? Continuing some thoughts that have been haunting me since I originally phrased them in the answer about designing the perfect programming language : Phil Jones’s answer to How would you design the perfect programming language?. And in response to Alan Mellor‘s comment on Phil Jones’s …

A Tower of Simple Systems

I posted this on Future Programming at Quora : A Tower of Simple Systems Re-reading the answer I reposted here a couple of days ago about the “Holy Grail” of programming language design : modification. https://www.quora.com/q/qqylyzqgpwisoecc/What-is-the-Holy-Grail-of-programming-language-design So here’s a question. A dumb solution … But what if we created a system as a tower of …

On Architecture and Modules

Another long Quora Answer Why is it important to agree on software architecture principles? In a sense, some of this is an update on my thinking on “modularity” (eg. ThoughtStorms:DecompositionByLanguageIsProbablyAModularityMistake Well, possibly it’s only important in an “organizational” sense. In that people in your team or project need to be aligned in their conception of …

Future Programming on Quora

Quora has introduced the idea of “spaces”. A kind of “blog” or curated collection of existing answers from different people, to help organize answers around particular themes. I just created a Future Programming Space to gather my answers about various ideas in the future of programming languages. I still intend to move my answers to …