After following my links to the rash of seizures in Japan, a couple readers asked me what that had to do with the words "Snow Crash."

For those who don't know, Snow Crash is a novel by Neal Stephenson. It takes place in the not-so-distant future where a drug, Snow Crash, is devised which can crash computers and drive hackers and programmers insane by merely viewing it. It delves into ancient Sumeria, the origin of language and ur-language.

Frankly, it's one of the best books I've read. If you have any interest in near-future satiric (its main character is named Hiro Protagonist) fiction, give it a try. It is science fiction in its setting and some of it underpinnings, but the discussion of language and its effect on our minds is worth a read.

I just read the Kirkus Review of Snow Crash, where they say "the cultural-linguistic material has intrinsic interest, but its connections with cyberpunk and computer-reality seem more than a little forced." It's obvious to me that the reviewer isn't a programmer. One of the major points of the book is that hackers and programmers are dangerously susceptible to this "virus" because their brains are wired for programming. This rang true to me.

C and C++ are languages as much as French, German, English are. They are languages of computing. French, German, and English are languages of human experience.

I know that I think differently when I am programming. I don't think in English most of the time. I'm steeped in esoteric symbols, logical constructs, data structures, and relationships. I'm thinking in those terms, at the level of those terms. I'm thinking in the language that C and C++ are based on: the Meta-Language or Ur-Language of software.

I can sometimes feel myself snap into that mode, moving from the level of human experience to the level of invisible abstract relationships. Like changing viewpoints when seeing an Escher print, it's very difficult to be in both places at once.

When I'm there, in the flow, if someone asks me what I was thinking, I feel myself shift out and back into... real life, I guess. I express my thoughts in English because the language I was actually thinking isn't spoken well.

There are a lot of Aha! Insight moments for software developers. The aha moment occurs when another software person has finally beaten some idea which is terribly obvious to them into your head. You are desperately trying to understand, but the idiot is talking nonsense. Until one moment... when, SNAP! The whole thing shows up at once. The proverbial lights goes on, the angels sing Glorias in excelsis Deo and the exhausted teacher-genius slumps in the chair wonder what took you so long.

Your brain was reconfiguring. Neurons firing wildly until a new network which makes sense was created. You learned a new word or two for your language.

The big thing in software development now is Patterns. Patterns are really definitions for abstract programming concepts. Together, they form a dictionary of ideas which can be used to describe software systems. This is a new language; it may look like English most of the time, but the words have heavier semantics and internal meanings that aren't in their English equivalent.

The pattern movement in the software industry was inspired by an architect, Christopher Alexander, who noted that architecture also needed its own language. His fantastic book, The Timeless Way of Building, lays out the human need for architecture which is "alive" and how we need a common language of architecture to do it. He then goes ahead and creates an entire language which can be used as a tool for structuring and designing architecture, from the level of the world down to the personal items in a home. It's an inspiring work.

Well, this quick description of Snow Crash quickly spun out of control. Maybe that's why I liked the book so much. It connected a lot of things that I think are interesting in a new and really cool way.

I linked all of the books I mentioned to Amazon. You can't lose buying and reading any of them.

Peace,

poz