Sleep Interrupted

Via a couple of posts on [Planet GNOME](http://planet.gnome.org/), I bring you [passing by reference in C](http://mces.blogspot.com/2005/08/pass-by-reference-in-c.html) and [why you should arrange your animation frames vertically](http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2005/08/05/448073.aspx).

I’ve just read an interesting [article on Catalyst](http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2005/06/02/catalyst.html), an [MVC](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MVC) web development framework for Perl. While I’m all in favour of using frameworks to write less (repetative) code, I was slightly dismayed to see their example make fairly unnecessary use of [Ajax](http://www.adaptivepath.com/publications/essays/archives/000385.php), which is what the cool kids are calling JavaScript + [XMLHTTPRequest](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMLHttpRequest) this year.

Having suffered for many years on a project that used a precursor to this technology, I fear that lots of impressionable web developers are going to make the same mistakes we did as they jump aboard the next technology fad. I’m not against the use of this technology, but it exposes a slippery slope where too much code is pushed from the server onto the client. It’s too easy to end up with application and (worse still) business logic executing inside a web browser, making for a performance and maintenance nightmare. You don’t think that will happen? Would Sir care to make a small wager?

A few of you who know me will be aware that I’ve been following the [progress](http://dev.perl.org/perl6/list-summaries/ “Weekly summaries of the Perl 6 and Parrot mailing lists”) of [Parrot](http://www.parrotcode.org/) — the virtual machine that [Perl 6](http://dev.perl.org/perl6/) (among others) will run on — for many years now. On Friday I read that someone is writing a C–to–Parrot compiler called, wait for it, Carrot. Well, it made me laugh!

Wasting a few minutes on [Planet GNOME](http://planet.gnome.org/) I also came across a link to a [scarily accurate description of "enterprise software"](http://www.relevancellc.com/blogs/?p=36#comment-545). Far too close to home in relation to my day job…