/tags/erlang/ Recent content in Erlang on A Nickel's Worth Hugo -- gohugo.io en Tue, 13 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000 /posts/everything-in-moderation/ Tue, 13 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000 /posts/everything-in-moderation/ On the night of November 18th, 1849, lovable, bearded mountain man Grizzly Adams found himself stranded on the Alaskan tundra in his simple canvas tent, with nothing to do but wait out the blizzard raging all around him. At such times Adams was wont to compose computer programs in his head. Sometimes he would write the code on his notepad, and when next he found himself in a larger town, such as Fairbanks, he would have it telegraphed to the nearest computing facility. /posts/losing-big-is-easy/ Sat, 17 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000 /posts/losing-big-is-easy/ What’s the connection between soda and the failure of programming languages? I would have thought “zero” had I not recently stumbled across a wikipedia article about a little-known predecessor of Coca-Cola. As it turns out, in 1879, a scrappy Norwegian immigrant named Jan Kjarti (who, incidentally, also coined the term “artificial sweetener”) started a soda company. His company, Slug Cola (the motto was “you’ll love to Slug it down!”), produced a soda that cost a little more than Coke but which actually tasted much better (note that it didn’t actually use artificial sweetener, either).