User:MikeMol

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

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.

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".

Other services

Email/Google talk: mikemol@gmail.com Yahoo: mikemol6453 AIM: mikemol6453 IRC: shortcircuit, shortc|work, shortc|laptop or shortc|desk on Freenode, Typically in #rosettacode. Twitter: http://twitter.com/mikemol (These won't necessarily RC-related. But I do tweet to #rosettacode on occasion.)

Voice

I've got a few blogs and website in various places. I currently have blogs on Multiply and Livejournal and Slashdot. I'm currently using ping.fm to simulpost to LJ and Multiply, and I'm pushing them to add /..

Thoughts on Rosetta Code

Language scope

It's a given that not all of the languages will be able to accomplish all of the tasks; Just because two languages are turing-complete does not mean that all things possible in one language are possible in another; One language may have access to system and environment resources that another language doesn't. While it's certainly possible to transcode BrainFuck source to C source, you can't go in the other direction without providing language extensions. But before you dismiss that as a strawman, consider the same thing is true between C and Perl; Anything written in Perl can be transcoded to C, but the reverse isn't possible without providing native-code Perl modules for runtime. To borrow a term from the graphic design world, different programming languages have different gamuts; If you want two different languages to support all of the same features, it's highly likely you'll either have to prune one language's feature set or extend the other's.

Aims

Here's how I currently see the aim of Rosetta Code:

Rosetta Code is a website dedicated to demonstrating and teaching programming languages, resources(i.e. libraries and platforms) and concepts by providing the user with a comparison of a solution in a familiar environment with a solution in an unfamiliar one.

My role

And, all of that said, I try to leave the decisions on these things to the CS professionals, academics and hackers* that frequent the site. They'll get on a talk page here or there and argue about whether a task is poorly written, whether an implementation follows the goal of the task, or both. Actually, one argument usually leads to the other, and the two sides hash out their points until they come to a consensus. When a question of "whether this suits the purpose of Rosetta Code" comes up, I'll drop in, write a few words about my opinion, and let them continue towards a consensus. After a while, things settle down, and someone with the appropriate privileges applies the consensus.

In short, I just run the servers, try to keep things running smoothly, add whatever features I think of or that people ask for, if possible. I enable the process; I try not to control it. Heck, when I created the site, I wasn't even sure what the process was, or what it was going to be; It more or less developed out of the interactions of people interested in learning languages, people interested in advocating languages and people for whom language chrestomathy tickles their brain.

(*) In the Jargon file sense

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.

Reading list

I read programming books, blogs, and man pages. Lots and lots of man pages.

Books

These books have contributed to my perceptions of programming and design: (Not exhaustive. Listed in the order they come to mind.)

• Snow Crash (Not strictly programming, but ought to spark lots of thoughts in a programmer's head)
• C: The Complete Reference
• C++: the Complete Reference
• http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Perl-3rd-Larry-Wall/dp/0596000278/ Programming Perl] ("Learning Perl" was too walk-through-ish for my tastes.)
• The Old New Thing
• Ender's Game (Also not strictly programming, but should spark some programming-related thoughts in a programmer's head)

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 TODO list regarding activities on Rosetta Code.

• Get the per-language RSS feeds up
• Provide public anon SVN access to the cached category listings ImplSearchBot saves its category retrievals to.
• See what I can do to get RC's host configuration to gracefully deal with Slashdot-level traffic. (It'd be nice to get 'dotted again, if it weren't so painful...)
• Get my butt out to New England to visit the Rosetta Code Power Apartment and buy those guys a pizza and a beer or two. And find out exactly what this "plate" experience tastes like.

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.