The Free Software movement was created with the assumption that software should be freely modified by its users. The main premise being that having the rights of using a program also means the right of modifying it when necessary.

Free software exists today in different forms, and it is widely used, however in many situations it hasn’t provide what it proposed.

Consider the case of the Linux Kernel used on Android Phones. You are free to download and study it if you have a suitable Internet connection. After all, the software is in many ways the same used in any other Linux machine.

However, if you really plan to use this software to do any useful improvement you are out of luck. First of all, changing the operating system in one of these devices will break all warranties. I wouldn’t even be surprised if it make the mobile phone stop working.

You only hope of getting your modifications into the OS is making changes in a simulated environment and then submit a patch to Android developers. Then, if they are interested in your patch you might have a chance of seeing it in the next version of the Android OS, when released by your vendor.

The same thing would happen if you used the iPhone, which has a BSD-based kernel.

Free For Whom?
As you see, the fact that the software is free didn’t take away the right of companies to dictate what they want you to use. And this is the key for this new generation of open source deployments.

What the technology companies learned is that it doesn’t matter that anyone has the right the change the software. What really matter is that the companies still have the right to say what you can run or not — and their problems are solved.

Using this tactic, technology companies have the best of both worlds: they are using free software, which makes it seem like they care about freedom. This also makes it possible for them to use billions of lines of free, tested code. On the other hand, they don’t need to give away control of the resulting system, and any changes need to be approved by them.

Free software is a fantastic bargain: all of the excellent free code can be combined into powerful frameworks for very little price. In fact, a big company just need to hire some of the same developers that created the free software project.

At the same time, companies such as Google and Apple can put themselves into direct competition with, for example, Microsoft, which by their own decisions decided to create software from scratch.

Ultimately, the power of open source is demonstrated by the fact that it can be used successfully in such a scenario.

If this is what their creators intended, it is another story. I am pretty sure, however, that this was not the future intended by the Free Software Foundation, for example.

But only time will tell if free software will really mean freedom for developers, or free profits for big companies.

Although lots of people design object oriented systems, few notice the
reason why them sometimes don’t work as planed. While such systems
were created to reduce complexity, several object oriented design become
extremely complicated. Especially when we start to add design patterns
to solve even simple problems.

Frequently, OO systems are the right solution for the wrong problem. The major problem we face when writing a system is not writing components
themselves. In fact, writing a single component can be done as easily in
an object oriented language as in a procedural language, for example.

The big problem we have is writing interfaces. Interfaces generate the large scale complexity in a system, which is what we want to avoid.

The problem though,is that most programmers think it is ok to use the interface building paradigm when writing code for a single component. And while this is possible, it is not the most efficient or maintainable solution.

What is an OO system?

OO incorporate the notions of interfaces but adds some syntax sugar
to implement dynamic dispatch. This simplifies the creation of interfaces,
the same way COM provides this feature for binary interfaces in C.

Notice that interfaces are a nice feature, but they are not all that we need to
write. So, while it is interesting to write systems with a good interface design, thinking that all you write is an interface is very simplistic.

In my experience, there is a lot of code that benefits from being written in different styles, such as functional or declarative. These components don’t needs to be written using classic object oriented components, and will never be part of the outside interface of a system.

In this type of code, it is just to have free functions that access data stored in data structures or lists, for example.

What About Polymorphism

The other feature, polymorphism, is not really new to OO, because it has been done for decades in other languages, such as C. Just define a pointer to a function and call it instead of of a statically defined function — This is how
DLLs or shared objects work, by the way. There is no real need for a new language just to define what will be called when a function pointer is invoked.

In my opinion, one of the main reasons why people like OO for commercial software is the way it constrains developers.

To create software with OO languages, one has to use classes for dynamic dispatch and interface hiding. But while it is ok to pretend for a while that these are the only important features you need, it quickly gets unconfortable.

Very soon OO people have to go through hoops just to simulate things they cannot do in their framework. Have you ever read about singleton — and why you need a special class to represent something that is not an object?

Have you studied flyweight objects to rediscover that sometimes you need values that are not objects? Have you struggled through the performance issues that exist only because of over reliance on OO?

Well, all of these things could be avoided by understanding that OO is nice as a way of representing interfaces to systems, but is a very poor metaphor to work on the internal implementation — unless you are prepared to go through hoops just to make something simple work.

There several reasons to learn a new language. Lisp is on the languages that I like a lot, although I haven’t been lucky to use it for work.

Here is what I believe are some good reasons to give Lisp a chance:

• It has a very regular syntax: everything is an s-expression (expression with parenthesis), so there is no surprises in terms of syntax. After you learn how to create functions and work with data types, there is not much to worry about.
• It has a huge library: if you decide to use Common-Lisp, the languages comes already with a ton of useful functions.
• It is multi-paradigm: unlike Java that forces you to write OO code, Lisp supports several paradigms: functional, OO, declarative (Prolog style), and even imperative.
• Third-party libraries exist: different from a few years ago, libraries for Lisp are available for most applications. There are a few web sites like clbuild that provide all libraries you need in a simple-to-install package.
• It is a compiled language: unlike languages such as Python and Ruby that are interpreted, Lisp is compiled (to machine language, not to an intermediate language such as Java). This makes it extremely fast compared to other dynamic languages. Its compiler also has options to generate typed expressions, so that you can get the ultimate speed when working with integers and floating point numbers.
• It is a modern language: implementations such as sbcl (available for Windows too), and clojure (for Java) make it possible to create modern applications that are just as fast as any other language (including C).

One of the things that can make the life of programmers harder is the use of a bad framework. The worst thing about frameworks is that they start as an easy way to do your job quickly.

However, after a few months of using that piece of software, we encounter more and more situations where it is making your life difficult, instead of being helpful.

Think, for example, on all the times you had to write a SQL query by hand just to avoid a performance problem on your preferred framework. These are things that add up and make development less pleasurable for experienced programmers.

The Good Side

I would be misleading, however, if I didn’t mention situations where having a framework is of great help. In a number of times, having a framework ready to use is just the thing you pray for. Here are three of these situations:

You are working in a domain you don’t know well: when that is the case your best bet is to rely on something that is already in use. Most industries these days have some kind of framework that handles the most common business logic. If you don’t want to become a specialist on this domain, just use the framework and be happy.

A second situation arises when you need to use an unfamiliar programming environment, such as a new language. Most development shops these days use Java for commercial programming, but from time to time you will need to create applications in something different. When that happens, it is nice to have a framework ready for use.

Still another case happens when you know what you’re doing, but you don’t have the time to do it: if you need to have an application ready for tomorrow, for example, there is no way to continue, other than using a framework — And you know, it is nice they exist for when a small application needs to be finished quickly!

So, for me there is no doubt. When you can’t escape such situations, it is better to smile and use your friendly framework.

As a software developer, I came to realize that one of the most important things (after being paid) is to create software that we really enjoy.
During those years, it has become really easy to see the kind of software valued by programmers: editors, compilers, interpreters, and all kinds of little tools that are useful only by other software professionals.
And the reason these programs are written, I came to understand, is not just that we need them. I believe that one of the main reasons this kind of software is so popular is exactly that, to write it, there is no need for external users!
When we create software for ourselves, the obvious advantage it that there is not formal need to elicit requirements.

The Easiest Software to Write?

Writing software for programmers is easy in an important sense: you just need listening to yourself. Writing software for the needs of real users is not so easy: first one needs to interview one, and understand the hidden requirements — what really needs to be done.
Next, you need to worry about user interface… Why bother with this when everything could be solved with a couple of command line arguments?
Just continue thinking like this, and UNIX is reborn. That is right, classical UNIX is the ultimate dream of most programmers: a system that needs no real interface other than the command line.

Who is to Blame?

Programmers are notable for writing this kind of software. And who is to complain? It is much easier to write programs when we don’t need to worry about real requirements. Integration with existing environments is another pain for business software writers: just say no.
Our culture has found the perfect solution for such problems in writing programming tools. No wonder why there are so many computer languages, compilers, editors, and web frameworks. They are fun to write, have challenges that are mostly intellectual, and can be shared among other programmers as a trophy.
Here are some example areas if you are looking for something exciting to write: