~ Aquilegia Sweet Rainbows ~

Flowers: Summer Height: 30 inches

Position: Full Sun Hardiness Rating: 3 4 5 6 7 8

Germination: Experience Useful Aftercare: Easy

Description: A breeding breakthrough! The result of merging a full range of top quality Aquileglas, all selected for form, colour and the best fragrance. Ideal for adding sweet scentsation to any border.

Book Review (Preliminary) -- Object Oriented Design Heuristics by Arthur Riel

Riel addresses, in the preface, an issue I have had with Object Oriented Programming from the start.

Back when I programmed in Forth, we organized our swap-dups as elegantly as possible, and prayed the algorithm would fit on a 256 k EPROM. Then functional programming in C came along, and Walls and Mirrors (how often was reflection in C used anyway?) had to be mastered. Error returns were compromised all over the place, and we programmers tried not to complain about pointer hell because, after Forth, how could we ever give up access to actual memory addresses?

OOP is the design paradigm of the day, replacing Structured Programming, and claiming to solve all its irritants, which were previously unmentioned, or waved away with 'but you can do that in C'.

Now I struggle to embrace a paradigm whose own irritants will be brought to light when they are removed by another fashion.

That is the gyst of my grumbling to myself when I am stymied by OOP jargon, and struggling to come up with a workable design. Riel's analysis is more charitable, and, what's better, highly sensible:

"My perspective on object-oriented programming is that it is a natural progression or evolution from action-oriented development. As software has become more complex, we are required to remove ourselves one more level away from the machine in order to maintiain the same grasp we have on the software deveelopment process. Just as structured methodologies removed one level from bottom-up programming, object-oriented technology removes one level from structured methodologies."

He goes on to pinpoint the ultimate source of the complexity to memory size, at the same time explaining and justifying the necessity of evolving design paradigms.

I look forward to seeing what Riel has to say about heuristics in OOP. If the rest of the book is as well-thought out I will learn a lot. Maybe I will even learn how to design.

Fancy Iron

I bought a high class Rowenta Iron today, made in Germany by a company founded in 1884. That's after my German forebears set sail for the US so I can't fantasize some direct ancestor ever had a hand manufacturing one of these fine objects.

A long green piece of paper in the packaging informs me, in English and fifteen other Euorpean languages that my "new Rowenta iron ... has been water tested by our factory. It is, therefore, normal for condensation to appear on the inside of the water tank." Guess they got tired of fielding that question.

What is interesting about the fifteen translations is that three -- Danish, Polish, and Russian -- do not have the word "Rowenta" in them, while all the rest do. Why?

Why also does Rowenta feel it necessary to offer the follwing helpful tip

"Warning:
Never iron clothes while they are being worn."

Good to know.

~ Aquilegia caerulea Dwarf Fantasy Mixed ~

Height: 4 inches, Position: Partial Shade, Hardiness Rating: 4 5 6 7 8 9
Germination: Experience Useful, Aftercare: Easy

Extremely dwarf! Petite leaves and flowers in five colours. Great pot plants, or grown on the rockery or front of border.

There is no snow

Here it is, December 16th, and the grass is frozen spikes of green. It is easy for tardy yardworkers like me to catch up on leaf disposal, peony trimming and wintercreeper pruning.

Ukraine colors

Were the protests in Ukraine made to order for color photography or
what? The photos in the square were spectacular.

Yule Log

Two weeks from Christmas and there is no snow on the ground. I have only a smattering of lights up, and my windows haven't been covered with film so it's well I am not busy shovelling yet.