Blog Profile / Artima Developer
| URL : | http://www.artima.com/weblogs/index.jsp | |
|---|---|---|
| Filed Under: | Technology / Programming | |
| Posts on Regator: | 339 | |
| Posts / Week: | 1.3 | |
| Archived Since: | June 30, 2008 | |
Blog Post Archive
Use Uncertainty As a Driver
Uncertainty is normally seen as something you must either suppress or avoid. Of this many people appear, well, certain. That you should embrace it and use it to help determine schedule and design is not immediately obvious.
Simplicity Before Generality, Use Before Reuse
Generality and reusability sound like such good qualities to have in code that is easy to forget not only how hard they are to achieve, but also that without the more modest qualities of simplicity and utility how little value they may hold.
Windows 8 is ... Not So Bad
After a lot of trepidation because of bad press, I've rapidly come to prefer Windows 8 over Windows 7. Because an equivalent-horsepower Mac is 3 times the cost of a Windows 8 machine, I'm moving back to Windows.
"Atomic Scala" Print Book Now Available
After two years of cogitation on Scala, the print version of the book is ready! (The Kindle version might take another month or two...).
Gentle Introduction to Scala: The Seminar
For the last year and a half, Dianne Marsh and I have been working on an introductory Scala book.
Windows 7 Client for NFS Grief
Having problems with using NFS on Windows 7? Here's a very simple solution.
Summer Workshops: Gentle Intro to Scala & Get Your Groove Back
The earlier workshop came about because of a last-minute opportunity, thus the short notice. Both follow the open style that I've been developing in recent years.
I'm in Berlin on May 15
I'll have the entire day and I'm hoping to visit a company or two and see some of the city.
G4G10: Gathering for Gardner 10
An account of my first Gathering for Gardner, a conference for recreational mathematicians, magicians, puzzlers, philosophers, and other curious types.
Revisiting: Why salary bonus and other incentives fail to meet their object
In 2004, I posted "Why salary bonus and other incentives fail to meet their objectives". Here's a great RSA presentation by Dan Pink about WHY that's true.
Down on the Upside
Abstraction is a question of less over more. But is it also a question of high over low? It turns out that the common way of describing abstractions in terms of high-level and low-level hides a number of assumptions, some of which suggest that we often look at abstraction the wrong way up (or down).
A Test of Knowledge
What can you learn from testing? When you look beyond the red and the green, the fail and the pass, you can learn a lot more about the nature of the code and the nature of the problem domain. And there is a lot to learn — software development is called knowledge work for a reason.
Beautiful Soup 4 Now in Beta
If you do any HTML/XML processing, you've probably heard of this powerful and useful package. Download the latest beta and run it on your code to help debug it and make sure it does what you need!
Review of My New System: System 76 Gazelle Pro Laptop & Ubuntu 11.10
My old computer died and I have replaced it with a System 76 Gazelle Pro laptop running Ubuntu 11.10 “Oneiric Ocelot”. In this article I review the hardware & the OS. This is an unsolicited and unpaid review.
Pushing the Limits in Java's Random
What is the largest double that could in theory be produced by Math.random()? In this newsletter, we look at ways to calculate this based on the 48-bit random generator available in standard Java. We also prove why in a single-threaded program, (int)(Random.nextDouble() + 1) can never be rounded up to 2.
First Impression: Scala Goodies
I'm test-infected and that's why one of my first exciting Scala discoveries was ScalaTest
Wow, it's been 6 years...
Life and complacency took me away from my first 'love'.
Is Scala Only for Computer Scientists?
I'm not talking about the early adopters writing obscure code here -- that can probably be solved with a suitable style guide. I just debugged my way through an example that should have been trivial but I only figured out because:
WebSockets: A Glimpse of the Future
In order for HTML5 to become the true user interface technology of the future, servers must be able to transparently push data to clients. People have been trying to do this for a long time, and WebSockets look like they will solve the problem once and for all.
What is the meaning of life?
A couple of weeks ago, I sent out a little quiz to my readers of The Java Specialists' Newsletter. No one managed to figure out what the code does without running it. Some managed to explain the result once they had run it. Perfect quiz for weeding out those job applicants you don't like. Especially in the banking industry. Enough hints :-)