What these [reconstructive] presidents did, and what their predecessors could not do, was to reformulate the nation's political agenda altogether, ... and to move the nation past the old problems, eyeing a different set of possibilities... (Skowronek, pg. 38)

Neal Gafter: "If you don't want to change the meaning of anything ever, you have no choice but to not do anything. The trick is to minimize the effect of the changes while enabling as much as possible. I think there's still a lot of room for adding functionality without breaking existing stuff..."

Josh Bloch: "My view of what really happens is a little bit morbid. I think that languages and platforms age by getting larger and clunkier until they fall over of their own weight and die very very slowly, like over ... well, they're all still alive (though not many are programming Cobol anymore). I think it's a great thing, I really love it. I think it's marvelous. It's the cycle of birth, and growth, and death. I remember James saying to me [...] eight years ago 'It's really great when you get to hit the reset button every once and a while.'"

Franklin Roosevelt was the candidate with "clean hands" at a moment when failed policies, broken promises, and embarrassed clients were indicting a long-established political order. Agitating for a rout in 1932, he inveighed against the entire "Republican leadership." He denounced them as false prophets of prosperity, charged them with incompetence in dealing with economic calamity, and convicted them of intransigence in the face of social desperation. Declaring their regime morally bankrupt, he campaigned to cut the knot, to raise a new standard, to restore to American government the ancient truths that had first inspired it.

Hoover's inability to take the final step in innovation and repudiate the system he was transforming served his critic's well... Hoover would later lament the people's failure to appreciate the significance of his policies, and yet he was the first to deny it. The crosscurrents of change in the politics of leadership left him with an impressive string of policy successes, all of which added up to one colossal political failure... Hoover sought to defend a system that he had already dispensed with...

1. Input
2. Output
3. Conditional statements
4. Control structures

• Even though we value people over tools, don't underestimate the value of a good tool. In fact, when attempting anything new to you, see if there's a tool that can help you. Back then, I was on local BBSs, and not the 1337 ones when I first started out. Now, the Internet is ubiquitous. We don't have an excuse anymore.
  
  
• I can now navigate through really bad code (and code that is limited by the language) a bit easier than I might otherwise have been able to do. I might have to do some experimenting to see what the symbols mean, but I imagine everyone would. And to be fair, I'm sure years of personally producing such crapcode also has something to do with my navigation abilities.
  
  
• Perhaps most importantly, it taught me the value of working in small chunks and taking baby steps. When you can't see the result of what you're doing, you've got to constantly check the results of the latest change, and most software systems are like that. Moreover, when you encounter something unexpected, an effective approach is to isolate the problem by isolating the code. In doing so, you can reproduce the problem and problem area, making the fix much easier.

1. Learn to compile your own $&*@%# programs (or, learn to fish instead of asking for them).
2. Stop being an arrogant know-it-all prick and admit you know nothing.

• The importance of code as data, or higher-order functions, or first-order functions, or blocks or closures: After learning how to appropriately use yield, I really miss it when I'm using a language where it's lacking.
  
  
• There is value in viewing programming as the construction of lanugages, and DSLs are useful tools to have in your toolbox.
  
  
• Metaprogramming is OK. Before Ruby, I used metaprogramming very sparingly. Part of that is because I didn't understand it, and the other part is I didn't take the time to understand it because I had heard how slow it can make your programs.
  
  Needless to say, after seeing it in action in Ruby, I started using those features more extensively everywhere else. After seeing Rails, I very rarely write queries in ColdFusion - instead, I've got a component that takes care of it for me.
  
  
• Because of my interests in Java and Ruby, I've recently started browsing JRuby's source code and issue tracker. I'm not yet able to put into words what I'm learning, but that time will come with some more experience. In any case, I can't imagine that I'll learn nothing from the likes of Charlie Nutter, Ola Bini, Thomas Enebo, and others. Can you?

a
abra
abracadabra
acadabra
adabra
bra
bracadabra
cadabra
dabra
ra
racadabra

1. JetBrains' IntelliJ IDEA: An awesome IDE for Java. So great, I don't mind spending the $249 (US) and using it over the free Eclipse. The Ruby plugin is not too shabby either, the license for your copy is good for your OSX and Windows installations, and you can try it free for 30 days. Martin Fowler thinks IntelliJ changed the IDE landscape. If you work in .NET, they also have ReSharper, which I plan to purchase very soon. Now if only we could get a ColdFusion plugin for IntelliJ, I'd love it even more.
   
   
2. Programming Ruby, Second Edition: What many in the Ruby community consider to be Ruby's Bible. You can lower the barrier of entry for your favorite programmer to using Ruby, certainly one of the funner languages a lot of people are loving to program in lately. Sometimes, I sit and think about things to program just so I can do it in Ruby.
   
   If they've already got that, I always like books as gifts. Some of my favorites from this year have been: Code Complete 2, Agile Software Development: Principles, Patterns, and Practices which has a great section on object oriented design principles, and of course, My Job Went to India. I have a slew of books I've yet to read this year that I got from last Christmas (and birthday), so I'll have to list those next year.
   
   
3. Xbox 360 and a subscription to XNA Creator's Club (through Xbox Live Marketplace - $99 anually) so they can deploy their games to their new Xbox. This is without a doubt the thing I'd want most, since I got into this whole programming thing because I was interested in making games. You can point them to the getting started page, and they could make games for the PC for free, using XNA (they'll need that page to get started anyway, even if you get them the 360 and Creator's Club membership to deploy to the Xbox).
   
   
4. MacBook Pro and pay for the extra pixels. I love mine - so much so, that I intend to marry it. (Ok, not that much, but I have been enjoying it.) The extra pixels make the screen almost as wide as two, and if you can get them an extra monitor I'd do that too. I've moved over to using this as my sole computer for development, and don't bother with the desktops at work or home anymore, except on rare occasions. You can run Windows on it, and the virtual machines are getting really good so that you ought not have to even reboot to use either operating system.
   
   Even if you don't want to get them the MacBook, a second or third monitor should be met with enthusiasm.
   
   
5. A Vacation: Programmers are notoriously working long hours and suffering burnout, so we often need to take a little break from the computer screen. I like SkyAuction because all the vacations are package deals, there's often a good variety to choose from (many different countries), most of the time you can find a very good price, and usually the dates are flexible within a certain time frame, so you don't have to commit right away to a certain date.

For the monetary hurdles? A computer to prove anything on you.

If you are serving with talented coders so it doesn't change. Can you understand the case study present in different paradigm shifts in science. I was on vacation, "I can't see my old search terms every time you run into a code monkey? Are you a code monkey? Are you stick to standards so you could have implement our own develop good sound-editor to do it. Even more diplomatic terms, of course of action - if a proxy) the objectives and different approach much better, and how can you believe it?" I think it would solve those domain you're willing to him speak than after a little over a million users so it doesn't "mean that a competitors. Of course of action - if a proxy) the objectives and different paradigms to help out in the to-read list: The Power of integration in asking what other hand, JSF, Seam, and Tapestry are based on my to-read list.) Because I think you can keep the view updated - but there are made, and borders on absurd side of the elements in the code for you to record an improvement. That's not a far leap to see that you do?" Here he actually pointless. How do I know - I was doing before I started to deploy to XBOX 360 or PC (Developers created." Instead, you should use is a contest to avoid conversations. It can be threatened." What are the Maximizers are drive-in traffic and implementation of an old professor of mine, be honest about it. Thanks XNA!

As always came back in January. Perhaps you understand it. If you want to conversations. It can be threatened." What are the number of integration in asking people something to do it. Even more diplomatic terms, of course, you can do. In particular, by posting a good developers created." Instead, you should.

The point is that you're not passion.

class MarkovModel
    def create_model(file, order, unit)
    #unit = "word" or "character"
        @unit = unit
        entire_file = ""
        @order = order
        #read the entire file in
        File.open(file, "r") do |infile|
                cnt=0
                while (line = infile.gets)
                        entire_file += line
                        cnt+=1
                end
        end

        #split the file according to characters or words
        if unit == "word"
                split_on = /\s/
        else
                split_on = ""
        end
        @entire_file_split = entire_file.split(split_on)

        #construct a hash like:
        #first 'order' letters, letter following, increment count
        @model = Hash.new
        i = 0
        @entire_file_split.each do |c|
            this_group = @entire_file_split[i,order]
            next_letter = @entire_file_split[i+order,1]

            #if group doesn't exist, create it
		   if @model[this_group] == nil
		       @model[this_group] = { next_letter => 1 }
            #if group exists, but this "next_letter" hasn't been seen, insert it
            elsif @model[this_group][next_letter] == nil
                @model[this_group][next_letter] = 1
            #if group and next letter exist in model, increment the count
            else
                cur_count_of_next_letter = @model[this_group][next_letter] + 1
                @model[this_group][next_letter] = cur_count_of_next_letter
            end
            i+=1
        end
    end

    def generate_and_print_text(amount)
        start_group = @entire_file_split[0,@order]
        print start_group

        this_group = start_group
        (0..(amount-@order)).each do |i|
            next_letters_to_choose_from = @model[this_group]

            #construct probability hash
            num = 0
            probabilities = {}
            next_letters_to_choose_from.each do |key, value|
                    num += value
                    probabilities[key] = num
            end

            #select next letter
            index = rand(num)
            matches = probabilities.select {|key, value| index <= value }
            sorted_by_value = matches.sort{|a,b| a[1]<=>b[1]}
            next_letter = sorted_by_value[0][0]
            print " " if @unit == "word" #if we're splitting on words
            print next_letter

            #shift the group
            this_group = this_group[1,@order-1] + next_letter.to_ary
        end
    end

    def print_model
        require 'pp'
        PP.pp(@model)
    end
end

file = File.expand_path "source_text.txt"
mm = MarkovModel.new
mm.create_model(file, 7, "character")
mm.generate_and_print_text(2000)
mm.create_model(file, 1, "word")
mm.generate_and_print_text(250)
#mm.print_model