Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Links for 28-Nov

The big ball of mud and other architectural disasters -- how many can you spot?

Clojure -- a Lisp dialect for the JVM.

Scripting on the Java Platform -- considers the obvious suspects, but misses other options such as Scala. With a bytecode cross-compiler and a common API abstraction, it would be possible to virtualize even your VM…

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Links for 27-Nov

Think Big -- Are we sweating the petty stuff too much?

Sequentially -- Temporal and frequency adverbs for JavaScript.

Samurai - Protecting Critical Data in Unsafe Languages

Monday, November 26, 2007

Anime — Ghost in the Shell : Stand Alone Complex – 2nd Gig

On the second time, I actually managed to get through to the end of the series. Some of that was the same media-related issues as with the previous series, but much was to do with it meandering around for a while before settling down to being a fairly standard action/thriller, the sort of thing you'd expect Bruce Willis to be appearing in.

It has a strange relationship with the manga, since episodes 20-21 re-use the setting of the chapter Phantom Fund, but cutting it jaggedly loose from context -- and yet it ends with the opening scene to the first chapter of the manga (as if to say, that's it, the manga and/or movies come next).

Mostly harmless.

Links for 26-Nov

Process : the true scope is unknowable -- considering the known unknowns

Can language choice assist the pursuit of happiness?

Can expressive languages make code more accessible?

(Yet another) tale of why good developers don't always make good managers.

Friday, November 23, 2007

Links for 23-Nov

The challenge of teaching yourself a new programming language -- of which there are plenty of candidates (Ruby, F#, Erlang...) for reboring your thought processes with

Leadership advice from WWII -- still as valid today

Developing an STS with AD FS 2 (part 1)

Ruby.Net 0.9 release -- compiles your Ruby code to an assembly, which the DLR doesn't as yet.

Friday, November 16, 2007

An anniversary of note

Twenty years ago this month -- I didn't record the actual day -- we disposed of our TV, because the programs were getting to be so dire, and we switched the thing on so little that it was costing us £5 or more per program (more because we forgot half the few things we even planned to watch).

What amazes me is from hearing all the media reviews -- and the occasional glimpse in solo hotel rooms, when I don't have any internet access -- is that things have become so much worse over those intervening years. Very definitely, “57 channels and nothing on…”

So -- Kill your TV!

[Now playing - Chill]

Links for 16-Nov

Parsing integers efficiently -- using no types wider than we are parsing for

Writing testable code is managing complexity 

Why programming is hopeless and futile -- stumbling around in failure space

ASP.Net Ajax, control hierarchy gotcha

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Nil illegitimis…

Just back from another session at the dentist of pre-work for getting last year's root-canal tooth crowned.

The gum is almost healed now that the temporary is holding the tooth together, but it's not yet ready for the rest of the work. So this was a session of tooth-filing. Not filling, filing. So I have been being ground down…

Over the last few years fillings that have meshed locally when I bite on the affected area, with my mouth full of cotton wool padding had managed to throw the global articulation off so that I could only bite on one side at a time. Since the root canal last year, I also had a tooth that was known to be cracked and I didn't want to put pressure on (even though it felt misshapen), which threw load onto the other side, and eventually caused cracking that led to Septembers' root canal.

Now, after an hour of biting onto articulating paper, and drilling to remove bits of fillings, I can now not only bite evenly on both sides, but, once more, bring my front teeth together (from the default slight underbite) to do things like tear sellotape!

W00t!!

Links for 13-Nov

Planning Fallacy -- Reality, it turns out, usually delivers results somewhat worse than the "worst case".

Seven Rules of Unobtrusive Javascript

Programming conventions as signals -- think Contract Bridge

Vector Buttons, Feed Icons, Fonts

Monday, November 12, 2007

A dedicated follower of fashion

For my 800th post, following the latest craze:

blog-as-graph

This blog's DOM (just before this post) as a graph
Isn't it complicated!

What do the colors mean?

blue: for links (the A tag)
red: for tables (TABLE, TR and TD tags)
green: for the DIV tag
violet: for images (the IMG tag)
yellow: for forms (FORM, INPUT, TEXTAREA, SELECT and OPTION tags)
orange: for linebreaks and blockquotes (BR, P, and BLOCKQUOTE tags)
black: the HTML tag, the root node
gray: all other tags

The applet is at http://www.aharef.info/2006/05/websites_as_graphs.htm for generating your own.

H/t Devil's Kitchen.

[Now playing - Chill]

Links for 12-Nov

Managed Code preloader for Silverlight

Pattern matching and useful anamorphisms in Ruby

Functional Javascript 1.0.2 release 

Can I has DLR LOLCODE naow? 

A problem with an excessively coupled design -- Server 2008 headless.

Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Links for 6-Nov

Visual Studio 2008 RTM and licensing announcement -- very interesting news about licensing changes

Memory leak debugging in JRuby -- you have to put out the garbage for it to be collected

Bram's Law -- oh so true.

More on the breakdown of the naive noun/verb OOP model 

AD FS documentation update on MSDN