Coding and Chain Saws

Busy day. Writing material for the new .NET degree. Nothing improves your understanding of something more than writing a course about it. And you think of such weird things. I was trying to thing of a nice way of introducing managed code (sorry if this is a bit techie but hey, it's my job).

Managed code is where your program is not allowed to actually touch the hardware. It is a bit like me getting someone else to cut down the tree with the chain saw. Rather than Robert firing up the huge power tool and removing his arm along with the tree I would say "Cut that tree down please". This is safer for me, and also good news in that if I say "Cut down that tree over there" the guy with the saw can tell me that I don't own that tree, and anyway it is actually a telegraph pole. Anyhoo, you should now have the idea that a managed program just sits on top of something and tells it what it would like to do. The thing underneath (aka the environment) then does the operation if it is sensible.

Managed code is a big chunk of how Microsoft .NET makes sure that programs behave themselves. In this sense I guess you could call it somewhat "cutting edge", even though the idea has been around for a while. The funny thing is (to me anyway - but I'm a bit sad in this respect) when I started looking back to the first widespread managed code environment I hit upon good old BASIC, beloved of home computer users many years ago. A BASIC interpreter takes each instruction from your program, decides what to do and then does it. In this respect I reckon it is pretty managed in its approach. And the writer of one of the most popular versions of BASIC was a certain Mr. Gates, whose company you may have heard of.....

Also found time to go down to the pub with the usual suspects and discuss important issues such as.... oh, I can't remember. But I do remember laughing a lot.