John Rose @ Sun: John Rose's weblog at Sun Microsystems

Just about 24 hours ago, I was working on invokedynamic compilation in my hotel room with colleague Christian Thalinger. I have since learned that around that time, my dear grandmother, wise and loving to the end, slowly breathed her last and went to be with her Maker.

I suppose this is a strictly personal event, but as beautiful things deserve be shared, I would like to provide a glimpse of what this woman was like, in a photo of her and me taken 18 months ago. That picture shows Grandma Ev's authentic, habitual brightness of expression. It shone brightly even on days when the mortal machinery was breaking down. "Don't ever get old", she'd say then, with a gentle smile. In her life, hardship was met with integrity and grace, and deep-set habits of peacemaking and service were always at work building up what had been torn down. Her family and friends found her to be an earnest and perceptive encourager, ready to celebrate any of our well-doings.

As her systems slowed to a halt, she remained the woman she has been for 90-odd years, the woman who gave me some of my first lessons in kindness. Those at her bedside say that as breath for speech became scarce, she continued to bless her family with assurances of love, with smiles, kisses, and mouthed words of comfort.

Ev's signature motto, given as an answer to "how are you doing?" has long been a cheerful "I'm Happy on the Way", meaning specifically the way of Jesus. Grandma, your way has been a gift to many, and has brought you to earthly completion with the honor of family and friends. May such happiness be in our way also. Thanks for an example worth following.

Christmas can be enjoyed as a much needed vacation day, a cheery cultural pageant, or a profound spiritual observation. For my part, I’ll take generous helpings of each. As it is a widely shared holiday, the first question is where to put it on the calendar. Thanks to Julius Caesar and his calendrical reforms, and to their enthusiastic adoption by the early Christian Church, we possess a clear date for Christmas.

But, why did the eventual consensus settle on December 25? Accounts vary, and it is a curious mystery. I think our date is equal parts historic reconstruction, arbitrary convention, and high art. [Read More]

Today I was late for lunch. As I walked to the cafeteria, pondering my work, this haiku came to me:

It will take more time:
If you touch it, it will break...
Software is wily.

Relaxing the syllable count limit in favor of word count gives each epigram a fuller and more independent expression:

Somehow it always takes longer:
If you touch it, it will break...
Software is a wily opponent.

Those latter three lines express the way I feel about my chosen craft.

I think of the middle line as Kempf’s Law of Software. It was a favorite expression of Jim Kempf, who was on the Sun Common Lisp team with me, long ago.

The last line expresses a stance I call “defensive programming”, which is what we programmers do when we take Murphy’'s Law seriously.

Some of my colleagues have noticed the news flurry about home schooling and the sudden declaration of its illegality by a panel of federal judges in Los Angeles. The formal decision features a spicy stew of judicial threats to parents, in a section entitled “Consequences of Parental Denial of a Legal Education”.

That certainly got my attention and that of many friends, since (dare I now admit?) I've been home schooling my children since 1987. Two have finished with honors at good universities and are now productive taxpayers, two more are now making their way through college, and the rest are ahead of grade level and nicely socialized, thank you. Who knew my wife and I were guilty of Parental Denial of a Legal Education? (Gotta get some of that Legal Education. It must make you as wise as a Judge.) To those of us in the home schooling community, the general consensus is more adequately phrased in a San Francisco Chronicle Op-Ed: “What planet are those judges coming from?” I realize the education of one’s children is a culturally subversive thing to do, but since when is California suddenly shy of cultural deviancy?

One can only wince in wonder at the ideal California those judges are contemplating. The state has an interest in many children’s rights beyond mere education, such as nutrition. Perhaps we should require parents to be certified dieticians before they cook their children’s lunch. Or, let’s just go all the way and eliminate the inconvenient families, by requiring a parental license before the first child is brought to term. That would bring everything nicely under control, and our Wise Judges could rule a utopian, aristocratic Plato’s Republic—which is really a nice place to study, but a terrible home.

In my own home town of San Jose, I just noticed a reasonable Mercury News editorial on the subject. Common sense still rules in San Jose!

I make one key exception to the Merc.’s editorial position: All else being equal, I as a private citizen greatly prefer benign neglect to any form of regulation. But unlike us private citizens, editorial writers and politicians seem to have a professional rule: Never make ringing calls to do nothing. (And the corollary: Never be without a ringing call.) I am thankful that, somehow despite all the political fidgeting, life goes on anyway.

Also, I’m proud to say that the two debaters the Mercury mentions are from our group’s debate club. I think it is not too much to hope that, in their day as judges or other community leaders, they will write better opinions.

In the end, my advice to judges, and even to friendly editorialists and politicians, is: Leave parenting to us parents. It worked when all of us were growing up, and it works now.

August 2008 Update: The court has reversed its decision. Here is Governor Schwarzenegger's take on it:

This is a victory for California's students, parents and education community. This decision confirms the right every California child has to a quality education and the right parents have to decide what is best for their children," he said. "I hope the ruling settles this matter for parents and home-schooled children once and for all in California, but assure them that we, as elected officials, will continue to defend parents' rights.

And Superintendant Jack O'Connell says,

As head of California's public school system, it would be my wish that all children attend public school, but I understand that a traditional public school environment may not be the right setting for each and every child... I recognize and understand the consternation that the earlier court ruling caused for many parents and associations involved in home schooling. It is my hope that today's ruling will allay many of those fears and resolve much of the confusion.

(Source: LA Times.)

I just browsed the gift catalog at Heifer International, http://www.heifer.org. Here is a truly great antidote to all those worst-of-the-season ads urging you to "give yourself a gift" of whatever the advertiser is selling. The idea is to give a family in some other part of the world an animal which can help them create food and clothing. What a cheerful, hopeful charity!

My grandmother, Evenlyn Ashbrook, has been giving us "kids" Heifer gifts for Christmas over the last half century. (Bless her, she keeps us supplied with National Geographic subscriptions too.) When we were very young we were disappointed that we got just a slim envelope, and some other family elsewhere got a farm animal. But soon enough we saw the wisdom of redeeming the process of gift-giving from the passions of acquisitiveness, by giving gifts to people that need them. Rather than to us kids (of whatever age) with full toy boxes.

This year, at the instigation of relatives (thanks, cousin Kris!) there's a little old lady in Texas who is going to get a menagerie from her family... Shhh, don't tell her.

Merry Christmas, all!

I was struck by Roger Penrose's words in his recent book The Road to Reality, as he describes the difficulties physicists face in evaluating each other's mathematical accounts. It sounds like he knows the difficulties we software designers face:

...Mathematical coherence [let alone mathematical beauty] need not itself be readily appreciated. Those who have worked long and hard on some collection of mathematical ideas can be in a better position to appreciate the subtle and often unexpected unity that may lie within some particular scheme.

[Read More]

We are each of an unsocial, taciturn disposition, unwilling to speak, unless we expect to say something that will amaze the whole room.... (Austen, P&P, ch. 18)