smalltalk and lisp (was: strangest systems I've sent email from)

[Swift Griggs]

On Thu, 28 Apr 2016, Ben Sinclair wrote:
> it and Apple's SDKs felt, but appreciate a lot of that now.

I've heard they have a lot of boilerplate code, but it sounds like there 
is some reason to it, if you got cozy with it.

> I'm doing some embedded C++ work right now too, and often wish I could 
> use Objective-C there. I haven't done any C++ in years though, and have 
> found C++11 added some nice things.

Both C++11 and C11 really have me excited. It's a kick in the butt to the 
compiler makers. Gimme that sugar! I'm bucking for some polymorphism for 
C, next. IMHO, that'd be the icing on the cake for C. I don't want to bolt 
on anything else, just let me define the same function twice with two 
different parameter lists and I'll be one happy dude.

> I'll try whatever is new and fun though,

Same here. I'll do a tutorial or read a book for anything even if I dont' 
do much with it. Hehe, this might make you laugh, but my last two were 
AREXX (using AROS) and FORTRAN. I'm pissed at myself for not learning 
AREXX back when the Amiga was kickin'. FORTRAN was a mind trip. I felt it 
had some kind of relation to Pascal (just certain things). It made me want 
to go out and do some X-Ray crystallography just so I could write me some 
applicable FORTRAN code, hehe.

> and I've been enjoying Swift (the language!) quite a bit.

har har! Well, this is a not the first time my name has got me into 
trouble. You should hear when I went to a local meetup where folks were 
talking about the object store in openstack (called "Swift" also). Someone 
was cussin' it and saying that they made one mistake and blew up their 
object store. I was confused and I heard my name all around me. It was 
like an episode of the Twilight Zone. 

FYI, since everyone asks, Swift is my real name. My grandfather, Swift 
Lindley was born during the 30's when my great grandparents were so poor 
they couldn't pay attention. They had some sick scrawny cattle to sell and 
nobody would buy them. My great grandfather took them to a rail station 
near Pampa, Texas where they'd load up cattle to send on to Colorado and 
Wyoming to butcher and so forth. Still, nobody wanted to buy his sub-par 
stock. Meanwhile, unknown to him, my great grandmother had gone into labor 
and was giving birth about two weeks early. So, my great gramps runs into 
this cat named "Theodore Swift" and his crew (he was rich). He said he'd 
buy the cows since another deal had fallen threw and he wanted the train 
completely full. So, after this stroke of luck, my forefather came home 
victorious to find my great grandmother had given birth to a son. The 
first thing she asked him when he came home was "What will you name your 
son?" The story goes that he stood for a minute, smiled, and said "Swift" 

.... then of course I just got it as a hand-me-down from my moms' side. 
:-)

-Swift