I’ve just been re-reading Nevil Shute’s On The Beach. Written in 1957, it records what you might call a calm, scientific eschatalogy. The whole human race is erased following some vaguely hinted-at global cobalt-bomb war, yet compared with the familiar sci-fi apocalypticals, Shute’s quiet narrative is more convincing and devasting. His world ends not with a bang, nor with a whimper, but with Australians (the last to succumb to the south-creeping radiation-cholera) buying and racing Ferrari bargains left behind by dead Europeans. The world’s final Grand Prix sets crazy fatal lap records. As Thomas Hood might have said, “No holds were barred on either side — there were no bars to hold.”
To the very closing seconds of extinction, people are brewing nice cups of tea (the Imperial panacea) or rushing to buy lawnmowers and garden benches. One purchaser asks “Will you take a cheque?” The jaded salesperson answers, “We’re about to close, I’ll take orange peel.”
Poignant Shute end-lights: being a heavy-drinker or a sober rabbit could extend your life-span by a fortnight. And certain Antarctic troglobites might even survive to re-spawn terra firma sapienta after who-knows how many half-shelf lives [1].
Ah well, as with Orwell’s 1984, we, the now living, can justifiably condemn the false prophets (Revelation 16:13). The Bomb Threat, has, so far, since 1945, limited our calamities to a sequence of minor non-atomic, local, low-tech genocides.
The moral, patient reader, confirms Oscar Wilde’s reluctance to predict, especially about the future. However, using the proven Nostrildamus methodology (my patented snotomancy involves plucking and measuring your nose hair), I can warn you that some magazine re-names are afoot. JJOOP (Journal of Java Object- Oriented Programming) will become JMOOP (Journal of Microsoft Object-Oriented Programming), and our esteemed organ’s title will be extended to C/C++/C# Users Journal [2] [Only in your dreams, Stan — mb].
Meanwhile, back in real time, I’ve received in the paper-flesh, Accelerated C++ — Practical Programming by Example (Andrew Koenig and Barbara E. Moo, Addison-Wesley, ISBN 0-201-70353-X). Visit www.awl.com/cseng/ for blurbs, pricing, and order info. Together with Bjarne Stroustrup’s C++ “bibles” (also from Addison-Wesley) and the ISO standard, you now have a simple route to C++ mastery! Hey, it’s Chrizzy — if you have any struggling C++ pals on your under $40 Prezzie List, seek no more. No typos yet detected in Koenig/Moo, but I prefer to repeat the optional virtual in derived function definitions (page 237).
References
[1] Nevil Shute (1899-1960) has been enjoying a much-deserved “revival” lately including birth-centennial celebrations in, of all places, Sante Fe, New Mexico. The movies “A Town Called Alice” and “On The Beach,” though box-office hits, never quite captured his genius. Of the rare crop of contemporary novelists who share his combination of scientific and literary talents, note Clive Barker. In his weird Galilee (1998), one character threatened with oblivion replies “Well, it’s not the end of the world.”
[2] Intriguing article (Octothorp Standard) by Wendy M. Grossman in Scientific American, October, 2000, page 37. She sums up the bizarre quirks of fate: Sun’s withdrawal from an “open” Java standard, and Microsoft’s rush to an ISO C#. Apart from how to say C# (C sharp is the preferred modest musical “post semitone increment” interpretation), Grossman ponders the cruel fact that many search engines fail to recognize or misinterpret the character “#”.
Stan Kelly-Bootle has been computing on and off since 1953 when he graduated from Cambridge University in Pure Mathematics and hacked on EDSAC I (the first true stored-program computer). He is a contributing editor for Linux Journal and a Jolt Judge for Software Development Magazine. With the demise of UNIX Review/Performance Computing, his 16-year-old Devil’s Advocate column has moved online to www.sarcheck.com. His many books include 680x0 Programming by Example, Mastering Turbo C, Lern Yerself Scouse, The Devil’s DP Dictionary, The Computer Contradictory, and Unix Complete. Under his nom-de-folk, Stan Kelly, his songs have been recorded by Cilla Black, Judy Collins, the Dubliners, and himself. Stan welcomes email via [email protected] and his website http://www.feniks.com/skb/. Stan’s ramblings can also be found at www.unixreview.com.
