Parallel Hard Drives: Maybe I Was Wrong

A while ago, I posted my uninformed thoughts on parallel hard drives. \<a href="http://engagebrain.com/%3fp%3d41"" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Charles Lecklider says I'm wrong: that doubling the number of moving parts within a single drive is unlikely to be popular, that a good RAID controller …

more ...

"The Definitive ANTLR Reference" by Terence Parr

I second Andrew Binstock's recommendation of "The Definitive ANTLR Reference" by Terence Parr (author of ANTLR), even to Binstock's sly observation that the book "sort of lulls you into the false belief that you could write a new scripting language fairly easily."

I really like ANTLR. Not long ago, I …

more ...

"xUnit Test Patterns: Refactoring Test Code" by Gerard Meszaros

My first reaction to the book xUnit Test Patterns: Refactoring Test Code by Gerard Meszaros (Addison-Wesley) was shock: 800 pages on writing unit tests? Isn't that taking things a little too far?

I have a problem calling such an omnibus a "patterns" book. At 800 pages, xUnit Test Patterns is …

more ...

I know it was you, Paulie. You broke my heart. You broke my heart!

Mark my words.

Update: A "friend" reminds me that I predicted that the end would be Christopher killing Tony. Yeah, so obviously David Chase reads my blog and does things just to make me look stupid. But the ending's in the can, so I'm sticking with my prediction.

P.S …

more ...

Mathematica: The Greatest Programming Tool You've Never Used

If there were 3 tools that I could wish every programmer would develop one complete project in, they would be:

  • jUnit
  • Smalltalk
  • Mathematica

Each will forever change your opinion of what a software development environment ought to be like but each, at the level of an article or a blogpost …

more ...

Does LiveWriter schedule posts?

I am going to be the happiest freaking kid on the block if this post appears on my blog at 6PM tonight and not before...

The ability to schedule posts for future publishing is my single greatest wish for Windows LiveWriter. It looks like the new beta has that capability …

more ...

Parallel Hard Drives

In comments, David Glassborow makes the excellent point that the hard drive, far more than the CPU, seems to be the limiting factor for the concurrent revolution. When your computer is frustratingly slow, the odds of your disk-access light being on are approximately perfect.

I know very, very little about …

more ...

Skype Stinks, At Least To and From Hawai'i

I know people love Skype, but my experience using it from Hawai'i has always been terrible -- horrid echo, constant break up -- and on my recent trip to Panama, it was equally useless for calling to Hawai'i. That's all I have to say about that.

more ...

Death and Taxes: Compilation, Type, and Test

Jeff Atwood has complained about the "compilation tax" that he must pay with C#, contrasting it with Visual Basic's background compilation. It's utterly absurd that when we program, the most sophisticated, well-studied, computational task that is common, we are essentially typing into a text buffer. (At least IntelliSense / method completion …

more ...

Print newspaper SD Times has biggest issue ever

Alan Zeichick is understandably proud that the June 1, 2007 issue of SD Times is the largest in the paper's 7-year history. Launched as the dot-com bubble was deflating, SD Times has managed to thrive and now has more articles, more readers, and more advertisers than ever. That's quite an …

more ...