John Labovitz

John Labovitz is a technologist, photographer, and typographer. He cut his teeth on the old ARPAnet and dial-up BBSes, command-line Unix, the first phase of desktop & e-zine publishing, and the early web (including O'Reilly's Global Network Navigator). He currently spends most of his hacking time in the Ruby universe, with varied interests from distributed web services to embedded systems and environmental sensoring. When not in front of the laptop, he's an enthusiast of tiny houses, unique vehicles, surreal circuses, jug bands, and the open road. He makes his home where his hat is, although you might often find him in the lush Willamette Valley of western Oregon. When he grows up, John wants to be a vagabond.

Poetry of code

New expressive languages pursue simplicity, consistency and play.

In the final post in his Emerging Languages Camp series, John Labovitz examines the new wave of expressive languages. These are the programming forms that encourage openness, a sense of play and a pleasure of work.

New languages get pragmatic

Safety and reliability are hallmarks of many upstart programming languages.

Safety, security and reliability were common themes at the recent Emerging Languages Camp. In this piece, John Labovitz examines the thread of pragmatism that runs through many of the new programming languages discussed at the camp.

Parsing signals from the Emerging Languages Camp

From concurrency to communications: A look at the concepts shaping new programming languages.

Map/reduce, concurrency and communications were among key concepts that consistently popped up during OSCON's Emerging Languages Camp. In this post, John Labovitz digs into these concepts and he considers the unique legacy of languages: influence, not application, is often the footprint.