Once upon a time my parents promised that when I turned ten years old, we'd take a trip to England, to see the castles and the bush mazes. When year ten rolled around we were either too scared or too broke to do it. Nowadays it seems there's a corn maze in every town.

In the next few weeks, I'm flying off to Scotland, to study the noble discipline of computer science in a town with its very own castle, a castle whose oldest bits date from the 12th century. I think I've got my wish, and more.

Over the past few years, I've focused my energy on making good-quality applications that people can use—people who are trying to publish online. Henceforth, I'll be studying programming languages, studying the principles thereof and the pros and cons of their designs. If I've been like an architect so far, then to continue the metaphor, from now on I'll be studying what makes buildings stand or fall, or to torture it further, I'll be designing better drafting tools so that architects can say what they mean.

I'll be reading lots of abstract stuff, and thinking a fair amount about logics (logics have a lot to do with languages, as it turned out in 1980), as well as learning about methods of transforming programs and trying to understand how programmers (other programmers) do their work. I intend to do practical work that makes programmers' jobs easier and more efficient, but there will be times when I'm just trying to learn, not building anything at all. This is OK. I'll be writing about my work, not here but elsewhere, so interested parties can follow along. More on that later.

Wish me luck.