::: {style="font-size: 10pt;"} Faithful readers know that I'm learning Scala, somewhat reluctantly. A few weeks ago, I was reading New Scientist magazine and saw this writeup of Peter Norvig, Director of Research at Google, which mentioned that he was on the review board that studied the crash of the Mars …

Prime numbers are not my thing, but generating them is a common task in the early Project Euler problems. The one algorithm I know for generating primes is the Sieve of Eratosthenes, which I defined in Scala as:

[sourcecode lang="scala"]
def successor(n : Double) : Stream[Double] = Stream.cons(n …

According to my stationary bike, I just burned 497 calories.

According to my heart rate monitor, I just burned 412 calories.

According to my BodyMedia Fit, I just burned 199 calories.

Hmm...

My latest column for SD Times argues that the faster you admit you're wrong, the better a programmer you'll be.

Flex/AIR for iOS Development Process Explained!

Although I personally use MonoTouch for iOS programming, if you happen to know Flash / Flex / AIR, it's finally possible. My advice, though, is that if you're going to be programming for iOS, you should learn Objective C and then use an alternative language …

I'm getting to the point in my Scala understanding where I'm making small commits to our Very Important Project at work. I ended up wasting four hours of work the other day because I put stuff in the wrong place and then spent a lot of time reorganizing things. In …

Advice From An Old Programmer — Learn Python The Hard Way, 2nd Edition.

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Programming as a profession....can be a good job, but you could make about the same money and be happier running a fast food …

According to this release, Computer Science majors had the highest percentage of job offers of any major.

I have to admit to being somewhat surprised at this, as I thought the trend toward offshore development was still driving down the market for young developers.

Answer: [[It's a "wireless remote streetlight switch" used by a local amateur astronomer as an amusement (but, of course, never, EVER to actually use!). Apparently, streetlights have a photosensor, and if one has a small laser, a nice spotting telescope, and sufficiently rigid mount, one could (but never, EVER actually …