Programmer's Almanac: Dec 20th, 2006

On this day in 1996, Apple acquired NeXT Software Inc for $400M. The acquisition brought Steve Jobs back to Apple, and NeXT Step operating system was used as the foundation of OS X.

The NeXT OS was written in Objective-C, an object oriented language with roots in C and smalltalk. Objective C features dynamic typing, binding, and loading. The hello world program in Objective C can be written like this:

 #include 
#include 
int main(int argc,char **argv)
{
   id set = [Set new];
   argv++;while (--argc) [set add:[String str:*argv++]];
   [set do:{ :each | printf("hello, %s!\n",[each str]); }];
   return 0;
}

And, today in 1917 was the birthday of David Bohm, American quantum physicist. After helping on the Manhattan Project, he was later branded a communist and moved to Brazil. Besides, physics, he had philosophical theories related to the human brain operating using wave interference, like a hologram.

Bohm Quote: “The ability to perceive or think differently is more important than the knowledge gained.”

(c) 2006, Jorge Monasterio