User:MikeMol

My Favorite Languages
Language	Proficiency
Visual Basic	Very Rusty
BASIC	Very Very Rusty
Brainf***	Rusty
C++	Active
Perl	Semi-active
PHP	Active
UNIX Shell	Active
C	Semi-Active
Java	Rusty
Javascript	Rusty
SQL	Rusty
Visual Basic .NET	Rusty
Python	Interested

Who am I

My name is Mike Mol. I founded Rosetta Code, contributed the first tasks and examples, went on a promotion drive, and now primarily provide guidance, administrative and hosting services and maybe a line of code here and there. Rosetta Code was an idea I'd had during a Christmas vacation, before I'd heard of other programming chrestomathy sites.

I try to act as a facilitator, to let the site and its community grow, and give a push (or pull) when things slow down. I've got a full time job, family I'm responsible for and other things competing for my time, so the most I'm usually good for is catching up on the Recent Changes RSS feed once or twice a week, and respond to administrative needs that can't be handled by the bureaucrats and Mediawiki co-admins. (Though I've recently been given permission to work on RC while at work, while I'm waiting on work-related overhead like builds and such. So I'll be a bit more in touch than I have been for the past two years.)

Contact

Talk page

This page's "talk page" is a great way to have a public conversation with me. Click on the "discussion" tab above, and then click on "edit".

Email

My email address is mikemol@gmail.com. Feel free to drop me an email if you so desire.

IM

Google talk: mikemol@gmail.com Yahoo: mikemol6453 AIM: mikemol6453 IRC: shortcircuit, shortc|work, shortc|laptop or shortc|desk on Freenode, Typically in #rosettacode.

Twitter

Twitter: http://twitter.com/mikemol These won't necessarily RC-related. But feel free to follow or @ me. I've got Twitterfox installed just about everywhere... <xfeeds contentcolour="#eeeeee" feedlimit="5" totallimit="5"> http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/17652913.rss </xfeeds>

Voice

I've got a few blogs and website in various places. I currently have blogs on Multiply and Livejournal and Slashdot.

Languages

I've been a Linux geek since 1999-2000, so I've got a healthy respect for Perl, the Bourne Again SHell and C, but my day job involves coding in Windows, which means I've lately been spending most of my time in C++. I'm competent with PHP as well.

RSS

I currently keep an eye on Rosetta Code by adding Special:Recentchanges to my Google Reader. I find it's a great way to stay apprised. Google Groups has an RSS feed for each group, with is another way to stay caught up on language discussions, even if groups like comp.lang.c++ move pretty quickly.

Rosetta Code

Rosetta Code came from an idea I had during Christmas of 2006. I'd recently revisited Wikibooks' List of Hello World Programs, and didn't care for its limited scope. As I was President of the GRCC Computer Club at the time, I convinced the club to host a project called Goodbye World (shortly renamed to Rosetta Code). I chose MediaWiki because I felt it would let me get started more quickly than any other system. Once I had a few categories and tasks set up, I submitted the page to Slashdot.

Well, if you take Slashdot, a shared hosting account, and an uncached MediaWiki setup, and throw them in a blender, you get a big mess. The kind folks at Geekalize noticed, and offered RC free hosting on their dedicated server. That carried RC through until the end of the arrangement in the fall of 2007. From Fall of 2007 until June of 2008, RC ran on my shared hosting account. From June-August of 2008, Rosetta Code sat on a Slicehost VPS account paid for by Qrush. In August 2008, Rosetta Code moved to a Slicehost VPS account paid for by me.

TODO List

This is my prioritized TODO list regarding activities on Rosetta Code.

1. Rosetta theme. Get it working well under Firefox, then IE 7, IE 6 and IE 5.5. -- I'm stalled on this; The page tabs don't render properly in IE. If someone can send me a fix for the CSS, I'll set the theme as default and call it done.

Policy

(I'll have to find a better place for this eventually.)

I'm something of a benevolent dictator here on Rosetta Code. One thing I've discovered, though, is that other people are usually right. Hence, if you have a suggestion, let me know. However...

Language Promotion

I explicitly allow and endorse language promotion on RC, so long as it takes the form of code. I occasionally seek out language developers and enthusiasts to get regular contributors for new languages. Language comparison is the primary goal of Rosetta Code, and enthusiastic contributors help towards that. --Short Circuit 21:22, 11 December 2007 (MST)

Questions

If you have any questions, you can try leaving me a note (I can't guarantee I'll get back to you quickly.), asking on the Village Pump, or dropping by on IRC. If it's about RC organization, leave a note in the Village Pump or the relevant page's talk page; Interested parties will usually leave comments within a few hours.