Completely revised Building Skills in Object-Oriented Design. Cleaned up many of the exercises to make them simpler and more sensible to the n00b designer.
Also, to make it easier to follow, I made use of the Sphinx "ifconfig" feature to separate the text into two parallel editions: a Python edition …
more ...I haven't written new C code since the turn of the millennium. Since then it's been almost all Java and Python. Along with Java and Python come JUnit and Python's unittest module.
I've grown completely dependent on unit testing.
I'm looking at some C code, and I want a unit …
more ...I used to rely on the TIOBE Software Programming Community Index.
Today, I learned about the langpop site. The context was following an SD Times blog posting on Haskell. But I got distracted looking at language rankings and what it means to consulting companies.
[Until corrected, I was] particularly drawn …
more ...Quite a while ago, I compared Java and PL/SQL to gauge their relative performance.
Recently (okay, back in mid-June) I got this request.
more ...One thing I would like to compare is Java vs PL/SQL using native compilation (search Oracle for NCOMP). Would you be willing to repeat your …
The old code was 5700 lines of bad VB. The new code is Velocity, Flying Saucer, iText and 120 lines of glue. The old code will be replaced with perhaps 500 lines of XHTML-producing Velocity templates.
[The Flying Saucer site -- with the main menu on the right -- was confusing at …
more ...Here's an amazing Stack Overflow question.
The follow-up conversation is great stuff.
The question shows two versions of approximately the same processing. Python is faster than Java. That's unexpected.
Java has static compilation and the hot-spot translation to machine code. Apparently, Python has some optimizations that are just as valuable …
more ...I haven't done Applet stuff in years.
I do -- intensely -- like embedding functionality in web pages. RIA/Ajax and what-not are something I have trouble with because I'm not a graphic designer. Javascript and Applets fall into three clear categories:
The Alex Handy story Study Predicts Upswing in Dynamic Language Use is old news, but when it's in a print publication like SD Times, then it starts to gain some traction. And it's one of those journalistic things: you can't repeat the obvious without some kind of "angle". And the …
more ...I think that learning Java is challenging. You've got to learn the language, object-oriented programming, the libraries and the endless Java Technologies. The Java landscape is crowded with J*tx* and tx J add-ons, where tx is some technology abbreviation; for example, JAXWS, JAXB, SAAJ, JMS, JFC, JCE, JAAS, etc …
more ...First, the confusion. A couple of comments asked for code, offering to "fix" the problems. Specifically, offering to optimize or improve the PL/SQL. The code was already posted, but I failed to make that clear. Here's a recap of the various blog entries on this subject.
more ...