Blogs
Tags > programming
Four short links: 11 November 2009
By Nat TorkingtonNovember 11, 2009
ParticipateDB -- database of online tools for public participation. Closed alpha now, with 32 tools and 15 projects in the database. (via Sara Winge) DataTO -- like data.gov, but it's where users request data sets. (In this case, from the Toronto municipal government) Go -- new language from Bell Labs and Unix central figures Rob Pike and Ken Thompson,...
Four short links: 29 October 2009
By Nat TorkingtonOctober 29, 2009
Julie Learns to Program -- blog from our own Julie Steele as she learns her first programming language. The point is: it’s in me. I wasn’t sure that is was, and now I know—it is. And what, exactly, is “it”? It is the bug. It is the combination of native curiosity and stubbornness that made me play around with...
Understanding C#: Using virtual and override
By Andrew StellmanOctober 27, 2009
One of our Head First C# readers posted a question on the book's forum: I don't understanding why I need to add 'virtual' keyword and 'override' keyword to make Penguin Fly() override Bird Fly(). [page 226] I think public class...
Four short links: 27 October 2009
By Nat TorkingtonOctober 27, 2009
Field -- a development environment for "experimental code" and digital art. We think that, for many uses, Field is a better Processing than Processing. Includes Python and Java bridges, goal is to connect to as many different programming systems as possible. OS X only at the moment. Contraptor -- a DIY open source construction set for experimental personal fabrication,...
Four short links: 26 October 2009
By Nat TorkingtonOctober 26, 2009
Toiling in the Data Mines -- Tom Armitage describes the process that Berg calls "material exploration". Programmers very rarely talk about what their work feels like to do, and that's a shame. Material explorations are something I've really only done since I've joined BERG, and both times have felt very similar - in that they were very, very different...
Four short links: 21 October 2009
By Nat TorkingtonOctober 21, 2009
Raytheon Sends Android to Battlefield -- Google's OS sees deployment. Using Android software tools, Raytheon ( RTN - news - people ) engineers built a basic application for military personnel that combines maps with a buddy list. [...] Every part of RATS is tailored for use on a battlefield. A soldier could make an unmanned plane a "buddy," for...
Four short links: 20 October 2009
By Nat TorkingtonOctober 20, 2009
Poles, Politeness, and Politics in the Age of Twitter (Stephen Fry) -- begins with a discussion of a UK storm but rapidly turns into a discussion of fame in the age of Twitter, modern political discourse, the "deadwood press", and The Commons in Twitter Assembled. There is an energy abroad in the kingdom, one that yearns for a new...
Your Cloud Needs a Sys Admin
By George ReeseOctober 15, 2009
I've attended a number of CloudCamps around the world, and the question as to whether systems administrators are relevant in the post-cloud world always seems to come up. Let's put this silly question to bed: your cloud needs a sys admin.
Four short links: 12 October 2009
By Nat TorkingtonOctober 12, 2009
Snowball -- a small string processing language designed for creating stemming algorithms for use in Information Retrieval. (via straup on delicious) Insider Trades -- a Yahoo! Hack Day app that turned out to be worth continuing. Scans SEC systems every 30 seconds and alerts you if the stock you track has been traded by an insider. (via straup on...
Four short links: 9 October 2009
By Nat TorkingtonOctober 9, 2009
Don't Display Negative Karma -- A fascinating insight for those building social software, whether for collective intelligence or otherwise: There can be no negative public karma-at least for establishing the trustworthiness of active users. A bad enough public score will simply lead to that user's abandoning the account and starting a new one, a process we call karma bankruptcy....
Four short links: 8 October 2009
By Nat TorkingtonOctober 8, 2009
Linux Baby Rocker -- inventive use of a CD drive and the eject command ... (via Hacker News) I Like Unicorn Because It's Unix -- forceful rant about the need to rediscover Unix systems programming. Reminds me of the Varnish notes where the author explains that it works better because it uses the operating system instead of recreating it...
Four short links: 6 October 2009
By Nat TorkingtonOctober 6, 2009
Bird-watching Turns To Technology (BBC) -- CCTV-esque automated bird watching. Sensor networks + computer vision for an ecological purpose. In a bid to track the guillemots behaviour, Dr Dickinson is refining established work that involves modelling the visual structure of an area around a nest. The computer system will be able to use this model to identify changing elements...
David Hoover's Top 5 Tips for Apprentices
By James TurnerSeptember 29, 2009
If you're a senior developer with years of experience under your belt, it may be hard to remember what it was like coming out of college with a newly minted CS degree, and entering the workplace. But as David Hoover argues, helping these newcomers to the workforce to succeed can be the difference between effective, motivated developers and confused, discouraged ones. Hoover is the author of the new O'Reilly book Apprenticeship Patterns, and he says that people coming right out of college may, in fact, be less motivated than someone who has been working for a while.
AS3 Object Oriented Concepts: Polymorphism
By Joel HooksSeptember 27, 2009
This article is not about werewolves or other shape-shifting creatures. Polymorphism is an object-oriented concept. Perhaps THE object-oriented concept. For a language to truly support object-oriented paradigms, it must provide developers with the ability to implement polymorphic objects. Luckily for us, Actionscript 3 meets this criteria. This article is an introduction to polymorphism and how you can utilize the concept to build stronger applications, promote code reuse, and more easily unit test your code.
Four short links: 25 September 2009
By Nat TorkingtonSeptember 25, 2009
Diesel: A Case Study In That Thing I Just Said -- a new asynchronous I/O library in Python, which earned this fabulous review from Glyph Lefkowitz who wrote the granddaddy of all asynch libraries in Python, Twisted. Again, I don't want to dump on Diesel here; for what it is, i.e. an experiment in how to idiomatically structure asynchronous...
Chapter-by-chapter coverage of Masterminds of Programming
By Andy OramSeptember 24, 2009
Programmer Taran Rampersad planned all along to write a review of Masterminds of Programming: Conversations with the Creators of Major Programming Languages--but his reading impressed him so much he ended up writing a review for each chapter.
Four short links: 24 September 2009
By Nat TorkingtonSeptember 24, 2009
Milestones in the History of Thematic Cartography -- This resource provides a comprehensive view of the history of cartography, with examples of maps created throughout the ages and background information about the contexts within which those maps, visualizations and map making technologies were created. Explore each time period, click on the images and stories found throughout each time line,...
Agile's Next Challenge: Selling it to the Business
By Timothy M. O'BrienSeptember 23, 2009
Agile's next challenge is selling executives on the idea of rapid iterative development without rigorous up-front planning. As Agile becomes a default mode of the development for most technology departments, it will need to be properly positioned in the Board room. How will Agile's evolution affect the way that the business views technology as a "profession".
Four short links: 22 September 2009
By Nat TorkingtonSeptember 22, 2009
The City is a Battlesuit for Surviving the Future (IO9) -- a great essay by Matt Jones, based on his talk at Webstock this year. Urban design is how we created alternate realities before we had iPhones, and the new technology lets us choose which science fiction future we want to inhabit. We are now a predominantly urban species,...
Four short links: 15 September 2009
By Nat TorkingtonSeptember 15, 2009
Why You Shouldn't Do It All Yourself -- this resonated with where I am in a few projects. One of the hardest things to learn in management is how not to do it all yourself. People often call this a problem with "delegation". But the problem isn't with telling others what to do. The problem is learning how not...
Four short links: 2 September 2009
By Nat TorkingtonSeptember 1, 2009
The Programming Language With The Happiest Users (Dolores Labs) -- you'll be surprised. Age before beauty! Judge It Now -- fast market opinions on design decisions. Compare to Optimal Sort. Usability tools hitting the mainstream web, so the time to learn what works shrinks and progress is faster. BlockChalk API -- These new interfaces enable developers to do nearly...
Four short links: 28 August 2009
By Nat TorkingtonAugust 28, 2009
What The Future's All About (Webstock Words) -- Bruce Sterling on the future. We’re not going to get a future Cloud World as somehow opposed to a future Augmented Reality World. It can’t happen. The ideas can be clearly distinguished, but ideas about technology, labels for technology, predictions and suppositions about technology, they don’t map onto actual real-world technology....
Four short links: 24 August 2009
By Nat TorkingtonAugust 24, 2009
Making Sense of Revision Control Systems (ACM Queue) -- good introduction to the subject from Bryan O'Sullivan, author of Mercurial: The Definitive Guide (aka Distributed Revision Control with Mercurial) that covers Subversion, Mercurial, and git. Under the distributed view of revision control, every commit is potentially a branch of its own. If Bob and Alice start from the exact...
Review: "Scaling Lean & Agile Development", by Craig Larman and Bas Vodde
By Ed WillisAugust 18, 2009
I've managed a group that ran software projects using Scrum but also provided Scrum support to the wider R&D organization by developing Scrum templates and procedures, developing and delivering Scrum training and providing coaching and mentoring for groups taking their first steps down the Scrum path. So, to be honest, I pretty much figured I had Scrum licked. Then I read "Scaling Agile & Lean Development" by Craig Larman and Bas Vodde. I'd yet to scratch the surface of lean and so the excellent treatment lean gets in this book was expected to be new to me, but it was pretty embarrassing how much I learned about Scrum and agile development along the way. If anything it left me feeling a bit of an agile fraud. In the introduction to "Modern C++ Design" by Andrei Alexandrescu, Herb Sutter talks about how reading Alexandrescu's work made him realize that his understanding of C++ templates was still at the "container of T" level while Alexandrescu's work opened his mind to the vast possibilities offered by C++'s generics. This book leaves me feeling similarly abut agile methods. The book presents a great treatment of agile and lean development methods, places them in the context of queuing theory and lean thinking and provides a road map for configuring the organization in what will be a novel manner for most of us but a manner which has led Toyota and others to remarkable improvements in efficiency, employee satisfaction and responsiveness to market needs. If you're an agile practitioner and proponent, go get this book - you'll be glad you did. Note that a companion volume, "Practices for Scaling Lean & Agile Development" is due out soon also.
Four short links: 13 August 2009
By Nat TorkingtonAugust 12, 2009
Under the Hood of App Inventor for Android -- regular readers know I'm a big fan of visual programming language Scratch, and apparently Google are too. They've got twelve university classes testing App Inventor for Android, a visual connect-the-bits programming environment for Android. University classes probably because one of the co-creators is Hal Abelson, coauthor of the definitive programming...
Using Ajax and Search Referrer Info to Help Users Navigate Your Site
By Kyle DentJuly 22, 2009
Using the referrer URL to detect what brought users to your site can let you help them find what they're looking for. The almost magical asynchronicity of Ajax lets you provide additional content for users from search engines. It requires only minor changes to your site and doesn't affect the experience for others.
Four short links: 6 July 2009
By Nat TorkingtonJuly 3, 2009
Offline Mapping App for iPhone -- carry Open Street Maps maps with you even when you're not in 3G/wifi range. (via Elisabeth) My dentist used an in-office CAD & CNC mill to produce a new tooth for me today (Nat Friedman) -- hello, future! New version of Scratch released -- Scratch is an excellent way to teach kids how...
Four short links: 26 June 2009
By Nat TorkingtonJune 25, 2009
Size vs Growth vs Acceleration (Rowan Simpson) -- you can tell how well a company is doing by the basis on which they report their progress. Engineers Are The Best Deal, So Stock Up On Them (TechCrunch) -- Software engineers today are about 200-400% more productive than software engineers were 10 years ago because of open source software, better...
Four short links: 19 June 2009
By Nat TorkingtonJune 19, 2009
Inside-Out Multiplication Table -- very cool way to view the patterns of factors. Math is beauty with subscripts. High-Speed Camera -- capture 100 frames at up to 1M frames/second. The sample videos, of a bullet liquefying on impact and a shotgun string boiling past, are stunning. The Makezine high-speed photography kit is the cheap amateur version. Open Source Energy...
Four short links: 11 June 2009
By Nat TorkingtonJune 11, 2009
Trending Topics -- full source code for trendingtopics.org, Wikipedia trend analysis. Rails app running on the Cloudera Hadoop Distribution on EC2. (via mattb on Delicious) Graffiti from Pompeii -- I can't help but read these as Tweets. Herculaneum (on the exterior wall of a house); 10619: Apollinaris, the doctor of the emperor Titus, defecated well here (see also olde...
Programming Contests, Community, and Business
By Simon St. LaurentJune 10, 2009
Attending the TopCoder Open, the final in-person rounds of an intense programming competition, in support of the TopCoder Cookbook, showed me possibilities that go way beyond programming or books into business models and community I came expecting to see a competition, but found a much more inclusive (and compelling) business model which builds and applies an international community of dedicated developers.
Four short links: 9 June 2009
By Nat TorkingtonJune 9, 2009
Drawing Inspiration From Nature To Build A Better Radio -- based on the design of the cochlear, this MIT-built RF chip is faster than others out there, and consumes 1/100th the power. Biomimicry and UWB radio are on our radar. Why the Smart Grid Won’t Have the Innovations of the Internet Any Time Soon -- While it’s significant that...
Four short links: 8 June 2009
By Nat TorkingtonJune 8, 2009
How to Project on 3D Geometry -- the fine art (and math) of distorting an image so that it looks undistorted when projected onto a non-flat 3D surface. Confused? See the images below. (via straup on Delicious) ZinePal -- Create your own printable magazine from any online content. (via warrenellis on Delicious) What The Government Doesn't Understand About The...
Four short links: 5 June 2009
By Nat TorkingtonJune 6, 2009
Visual Programming Environments for Kids -- detailed writeup of the research and coding done by Shone Sadler to build a visual programming environment for robots, so simple that kids can use it. (via steveweiss on Twitter) The Nation's CTO Lays Out His Priorities -- it's still not entirely clear how the CTO and CIO's roles differ, as both are...
Four short links: 22 May 2009
By Nat TorkingtonMay 22, 2009
Hiding Dirty Deeds: "Encrypted" Client-Side Code -- obfuscated Javascript from a Facebook phishing site, deconstructed and reconstructed, parsed and glossed for understanding. It reminds me of the best obfuscated Perl: Latin, string substitution, runtime and compile-time semantics ... a work of evil art. (via waxy) Kickstarter -- artistic commercial version of PledgeBank. You say "I want to do [X]...
Four short links: 20 May 2009
By Nat TorkingtonMay 20, 2009
Distributed Proofreaders Celebrates 15000th Title Posted To Project Gutenberg -- a great use of our collective intelligence and cognitive surplus. If I say one more Clay Shirkyism, someone's gonna call BINGO. (via timoreilly on Twitter) Datacenter is the New Mainframe (Greg Linden) -- wrapup of a Google paper that looks at datacenters in the terms of mainframes: time-sharing, scheduling,...
Four short links: 15 May 2009
By Nat TorkingtonMay 15, 2009
Whither Sockets? -- ACM Queue article on how sockets as a model for network programming have become an obstacle to where networking is going. All of these calls have one thing in common: the calling program must repeatedly ask for data to be delivered. In the world of client/server computing these constant requests make perfect sense, because the server...
Hackers wanted! Scholarships available to coders who'll come to journalism and help save democracy
By Brian BoyerMay 8, 2009
Guest blogger Brian Boyer is a hacker journalist who writes about the intersection of technology and journalism. He's worked at public-interest journalism site ProPublica and is now at the Chicago Tribune, building their new News Applications team. It's not news that journalism is in crisis. CNN turned newspapers into first-day fishwrap and Craigslist killed the business model. Solutions are...
Four short links: 29 Apr 2009
By Nat TorkingtonApril 29, 2009
Moot Wins, Time Inc. Loses -- summary of how the 4chan group Anonymous rigged the voting in Time's 100 Most Influential poll to not just put their man at the top, but also spell an in-joke with the initial letters of the first 21 people. Time tried weakly to prevent the vote-rigging, and ReCAPTCHA gave the Internet scalliwags their...
iPhone Web Audio Playlist Hack
By David BattinoApril 23, 2009
Mobile Safari, the iPhone's web browser, has surprisingly weak audio support. But here's a hack I discovered to embed audio playlists.
What the Sun/Oracle Combination Means for Java and Open Source
By Timothy M. O'BrienApril 22, 2009
What does the Oracle/Sun merger mean for Java? There's been a lot of speculation and a fair amount of apocalyptic, "sky is falling" Twitter activity, but does anyone really know what Ellison has in store for Java?
Four short links: 22 Apr 2009
By Nat TorkingtonApril 21, 2009
Government, Bayes, SMS, and distributed keystores: Government Projects the Agile Way -- Can It Be Done? (NZ Government) -- notes and audio from a workshop at the New Zealand State Services Commission looking to merge agile and government. The pullquotes are mostly generic about agile, but the important thing is that there are agile projects within government and their numbers...
Four short links: 16 Apr 2009
By Nat TorkingtonApril 16, 2009
China, databases, storage, and git: China's Complicated Internet Culture (Ethan Zuckerman) -- summary of Rebecca McKinnon's talk at the Berkman Internet Center. Democracy is complex and hard to transition to, online democracy doubly so. Rebecca questions the widespread but unjustified belief that the Great Firewall of China is all that separates Chinese citizens from the empowered liberty of the West,...
An Interview with Brian Kernighan: Breeding Little Languages
By Allen NorenApril 10, 2009
Following is an excerpt from Masterminds of Programming, by Federico Biancuzzi and Shane Warden. (Adapted for the web). The Unix philosophy of many small tools, powerful in their combination, is evident in the AWK programming language. Its inventors (Al Aho, Peter Weinberger, and Brian Kernighan) describe it as a language for syntax-driven pattern matching. Its straightforward syntax and clever selection of useful features make it easy to slice and dice text through one-liners without having to understand parsers and grammars and finite automata. Though its inspiration has spread to general-purpose languages such as Perl, any modern Unix box still has AWK installed and quietly, effectively, working away.
An Up and Down Week for JAVA
By Timothy M. O'BrienApril 6, 2009
...and, I'm not talking about the language. I'm talking about the stock, Sun Microsystems is down 20% in the futures market @ 8:10 AM ET. -20% On the news of the $7 billion game of brinksmanship, it is important to...
An Interview with Anders Hejlsberg: The Future of Computer Science
By Allen NorenApril 2, 2009
Following is an excerpt from Masterminds of Programming, by Federico Biancuzzi and Shane Warden. (adapted for the web). When Microsoft settled a lawsuit from Sun Microsystems over changes to the Java programming language, they turned to veteran language designer...
Four short links: 2 Apr 2009
By Nat TorkingtonApril 2, 2009
Predictions, PDF, source code control, and recommendation engines: Wrong Tomorrow -- track pundits predictions and see how accurate they really are. From the ever-awesome Maciej Ceglowski. PDFMiner -- Unlike other PDF-related tools, it allows to obtain the exact location of texts in a page, as well as other layout information such as font size or font name, which could be...
An Interview with Anders Hejlsberg: C# Language and Design
By Allen NorenApril 1, 2009
Following is an excerpt from Masterminds of Programming, by Federico Biancuzzi and Shane Warden. (adapted for the web). When Microsoft settled a lawsuit from Sun Microsystems over changes to the Java programming language, they turned to veteran language designer Anders...
Four short links: 31 Mar 2009
By Nat TorkingtonMarch 31, 2009
Web traffic, web design, hacker spaces, and feature spaces: iPhone and Android Make Up 50% of Google's SmartPhone Traffic Worldwide -- Matt Gross found this interesting tidbit in a TechCrunchIT story. Refining Data Tables -- Luke Wroblewski gives some seriously good tips for designing usable tables in web pages. After forms, data tables are likely the next most ubiquitous interface...
Software Engineering Folklore Survey
By Nat TorkingtonMarch 16, 2009
I love this. Two university researchers are asking real world coders how they code. They want to learn whether the theory taught in software design courses is actually used in the real world. They've built a short (20-question) survey that takes less than ten minutes to complete, and will open source the data once it's all in. I've sent in...
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