About

First and foremost my email address, for anyone wanting to contact me, is a gmail account using ‘richard.lyman’ as the account name.

So. At the request of a reader, I’m going to tell you a bit about myself:

  1. I absolutely love to ask questions. I think they’re essential to the process of making myself into who I want to be.
  2. I’m in my second year of undergrad Computer Science, and only recently have I started learning things I hadn’t already taught myself.
  3. The languages (being very broad in my definition of what a ‘language’ is) that I’ve looked into on my own are:
    • HTML (I know - it’s not a language), JavaScript, CSS, XML, XPath, Lua - I lumped these together since I’m not that impressed with them. I know HTML, CSS, and XML very well, I know JavaScript passingly well, and I know Lua and XPath marginally well. I use XML (MXML), and CSS (Flex’s CSS) everyday but for the most part I don’t turn to these languages to do any ‘fun’ programming.
    • XSLT - it’s so fascinating how it’s a functional language. You have got to try this if you haven’t worked with a language that has no side effects.
    • XSL-FO - loved it, wished it had wider adoption, eventually switched to a combination of LaTeX and OOo Draw to do the documents, diagrams, and PDF’s I used to do in XSL-FO.
    • OCaml - can’t speak highly enough about this language. The only thing I think it’s lacking is a ’scripting style syntax option’… if it could be called that. I know, I know - it already has a toplevel interpreter. What I’m thinking about is something along the lines of the ease of use of Ruby or Python, coupled with the power and expressiveness of OCaml - all able to be run as byte-code (like Java), or compiled (like C), or interpreted.
    • Ruby - I do most of my work in this language. I really enjoy it - which probably means I think like Matz, since it was designed on the ‘POLStic’ (Principle Of Least Surprise to it’s creator) concept.
    • Flex, ActionScript 2 and 3 - I love the Flex sdk. I love it because it’s free. I love it because it makes my programs look good without much effort. I love it because I enjoy designing applications, and I can’t wait for Apollo to be released… well… I also can’t wait for the v9 Flash Player to be released for Linux either…
  4. The languages that I’ve been introduced to so far in my education are:
    • C - yeah… I wouldn’t mind programming in this language… but I don’t think I’d ever love it…
    • Assembly - ditto from C.
    • Java - don’t get me started. For very entertaining reading please refer to one of the best blog posts I’ve seen about Java.
    • Verilog - pretty sweet HDL. It’s fun to be able to say I’ve created my own computer… even if I can’t say I designed it.
    • C++ - I’m actually liking this language. I’m looking forward to applying it on wxWidgets and OGRE3d for some projects that have been on the back burner.
  5. The languages that I’m eagerly waiting for my brain to wrap around are:
    • Lisp - I’ve tried… and I think I just lack a good book… which is funny because I have some. Maybe I lack the time to sit and read them through 3 or 4 times.
    • Haskell - It should be easy since it’s a functional language like OCaml… right? lol
  6. I really love running Ubuntu on any computer I can get my hands on, and I’d probably replace my WinXP box at work as soon as Adobe releases the v9 Flash Player for Linux… now if I can just convince my extended family members to switch to Ubuntu…
  7. I like the number 7. :-)