[ale] Simplicity (in relationship to computers and programming)

[Aaron Ruscetta]

Carl Sassenrath is a "University of HP" graduate circa 1983.
Subsequently, in 1984, he designed the EXEC OS for the
groundbreaking Amiga computers.  It was a multi-tasking,
multi-threading, message based Operating System that
could run in as little as 256 Kilobytes of memory.

In my personal stack of respected icons from the computer
industry Carl Sassenrath sits right next to Dennis Ritchie
and Linus Torvalds. (There are only a few others, and
names like Jobs and Gates aren't even on the system).

For several years Carl's pet project has been developing the
REBOL language, which is fully supported across almost
all OS platforms (yes, including Amiga) with freely distributable
OS integrated interpreters / run time engines. I explored
REBOL briefly, and while I can't claim to have ever fully
wrapped my head around it's genius, the fact of the
language's genius seems self evident in its simplicity.

Carl's REBOL blog has been quiet for several months,
but I found his post from March regarding a definition
of "Simplicity" quite intriguing:
     <http://www.rebol.com/cgi-bin/blog.r>

His 2009 commentary on "The True Danger of Viruses
and Worms", written in response to the 'conflicker'
computer industry panic attack, is another particularly
cutting commentary:
     <http://www.rebol.com/article/0405.html>

Hope you find these enjoyable and thought provoking.

peace
aaron