To paraphrase Kent Beck...

Rick DeNatale — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 17:35:00 -0400

I’m catching up on my RSS feeds this afternoon, and I just ran across the latest from John Lam. Which exposed an interesting coincidence.

Oh yes, Merlin is the original code-name for our team, which was originally IronPython but has now expanded to include the Dynamic Language Runtime and IronRuby.
- John Lam

The codename for IBM’s original VisualAge project was “Camelot.” Various subcomponents and follow-ons were dubbed with various names from Arthurian legend. For example, there were components with names like “Lancelot” and “Guinivere.”

Sometime after the initial success of VisualAge, it was decided that IBM would actually produce a separate Smalltalk language and IDE packaging, a product which was originally named “IBM Smalltalk” at launch.

But during development IBM Smalltalk had Arthur’s wizard as its namesake. As usual there were tee shirts, and this article starts with a picture I just took of my copy of the IBM Merlin Tee, which my wife still uses as an exercise tee. And in case you can’t read them, the words in the crystal ball read “think BIG/TALK small” a combined reference to IBM, Smalltalk, and I suppose, Teddy Roosevelt. Now old Merlin might look more like a Swami than the wizard of Camelot, but here’s the proof from the front of the shirt:

So to paraphrase my old buddy Kent Beck, I knew that Microsoft was trying to implement Ruby, but I didn’t know it would be called Merlin!

Talk Like A Duck: To paraphrase Kent Beck...

To paraphrase Kent Beck...