:: grepninjalog ::GrepNinja's weblog is a somewhat ordered collection of thoughts and resources mostly related to software engineering. It simply tracks what GrepNinja finds technologically useful, interesting, or amusing at some given point in time. Warning: high techno-geek factor! | ||||||||||||||||||||
:: welcome to grepninjalog :: bloghome | Grepninja :: | ||||||||||||||||||||
|
:: Thursday, March 30, 2000 :: XML Protocol Comparisons Java developers: Fill your XML toolbox Essential tools and libraries for using XML with Java - IBM developerWorks article. Perl developers: Fill your XML toolbox Essential tools and libraries for using XML with Perl - IBM developerWorks article. Server-side patterns for flexible initialization, Part 1 - JavaWorld March 2000 omniORB for Python - omniORBpy is a robust and efficient implementation of the CORBA Python mapping. The most significant update from pre-release 1 is that omniORBpy now has full POA support, when used in conjunction with omniORB 3 (which is also in pre-release). omniORBpy can also be used with omniORB 2.8, in which case most POA functions are disabled. Info on POVTalk - a natural language-based 3D scene generator written in Python. Requires PyOpenGL. Software Development Online - One of my favorite free mags. The Jargon Dictionary [netmeg.net] - a searchable version of the Jargon File. Jargon File Resources - at ESR's site.:: Wednesday, March 29, 2000 :: The LART Pages - new small embedded computer capable of running Linux. Site Lens - Library of Congress - Application of Site Lens hyperbolic tree non-linear magnification system. Pad : Zooming User Interfaces (ZUIs) - This is the old, and now deprecated, Pad++ site. Jazz Home Page -- The successor to Pad++. Nonlinear Magnification Home Page -- This looks pretty neat! Fisheye views, distortion-oriented presentation, etc. Whisker Browser -- Ah! Here's the page for the Whisker Browser, a pretty nifty Squeak tool. UNIXUX: Click on the cursor. -- This is hilarious! MorphicWrappers - An add-on to Squeak. Some people really like this work but others do not want it as part of the base Squeak package.:: Tuesday, March 28, 2000 :: CGI Programming OpenFAQ - another good resource I forgot about! Freeware Home - Collection of Free Software and Internet Services S4SE = Site 4 Sore Eyes - graphics, wallpapers, backgrounds, peace sign graphics, etc., mostly for non-commercial use. NeoText Software - Another JavaScript menu tree site.:: Friday, March 24, 2000 :: Verse - A link to this showed up on the Metaverse list. Looks like they've gotten a long way, here and, as the poster mentioned, the problem is *huge*! Looks like some good information here. Squeak Fixes Archive - Finally, I know where this is! Morphic - Great! A FAQ on Morphic! MethodForMakingMorphs -- A little Morphic advice. Sigh! More things to do. I joined the CVSTProj project on SourceForge. They're working on a Smalltalk interface to the Linux CVS version management system and I'll mostly try to help out with the Squeak ports. I need another project like I need the proverbial hole in the head. I also wrote email to Bob Hartwig asking about his plans for the Squeak port of the Refactoring Browser. I'd like to get involved with that, also. I think I'd better stop with those two for now. I'm already over-extended! FAQTS - Knowledge Base - FAQTS : Computers : Programming : Languages - I just added folders for Squeak, Smalltalk, Lisp, and Scheme and supplied starter info for Squeak & Smalltalk. I also added a Q/A with a Dmoz link on the main Languages page. I think I like this service; we'll see if it hangs around. That's my major issue with these Internet ventures -- if we invest lots of time and energy in developing things on them will it all be wasted when they go offline? Which ones do you bet on? FAQTS - Knowledge Base - FAQTS - This looks like a great new Internet service. In particular, look at how the MySQL people are using it.:: Thursday, March 23, 2000 :: SqueakEnd '00 - Main page for the recent SqueakEnd'00 event. Lots of Squeak action happened at Craig Latta's place. I would have liked to have gone but couldn't spare the time from work. Password Generator - a downloadable password generator. Site has some other useful information. The JavaScript Source: Password Protection: Password Generator - Free Javascript for a password generator! Secure Random Passwords - The Amazing Password Generator refreshes automatically every 15 seconds.:: Wednesday, March 22, 2000 :: JCraft - a WeirdX -- Pure Java X Window System Server under GPL XP Testing Framework Software SUnit Testing Framework - a Squeak Port! Check this out for XProgramming. Marco Buzzo -- My, oh, my! An Italian Python programming site! wxWindows Front Page -- wcWindows is a frree C++ framework to make cross-platform programming ... uh ... easier. binarybliss.com - This is "Coming April 1, 2000" from Radiate. BinaryBliss will host a repository for "free" but advertising-supported software. It's a new business model, of sorts. Refactoring In Java - The beginnings of a specialized Java Refactoring Wiki. According to Don Roberts, Bob Hartwig has nearly completed a port of the entire Refactoring Browser to Squeak. It should show up on the Refactoring Browser Wiki in the next few weeks.
The Pragmatic Programmers, LLC - The author's site for The Pragmatic Programmer book. AVAIL Home Page - a new experimental programming language by Mark van Gulik in cooperation with Ghoulsoft Inc. Not intended for mission-critical use at this time. RoleModel Software Patterns - An interesting software design patterns page (Ken Auer's company). Ken was instrumental in bringing about the first PLoP conference. He and his group have authored quite a few patterns. Lazy Optimization: Patterns for Efficient Smalltalk Programming - an article by Ken Auer and Kent Beck that expands on Beck's "Make it run, make it right, make it fast" mantra. Object Mentor, Inc. Home Page - XP Consulting group with Beck, Fowler, Jeffries, & Martin. Unpublished Pair-Programming Papers - Papers on one of the main XP techniques. Extreme Programming Roadmap - another XP Wiki page that intelligently inedexes the XP Wiki's information. Extreme Programming - XP Wiki page including the "Twelve Principles of Extreme Programming." Heavens! Another "Twelve Step" programming program? Extreme Programming Wiki page Extreme Programming: A Gentle Introduction. -- Don Wells' XP site. Let's get started on links to Extreme Programming (XP, XProgramming) with a link to the main XProgramming.com page. XP, proposed by Kent Beck, et al., is an unusual (read "extreme") approach to software development. Lots of good ideas here, although I'm not sure everyone can do everything recommended. These dudes should be able to generate a nice consulting business from this, though!:: Tuesday, March 21, 2000 :: Refactoring Browser Wiki - John Brant and Don Roberts have set up this Wiki discussion area about the Refactoring Browser. RefactoringBrowser: History of the Refactoring Browser Refactoring Browser News Refactoring Browser - The Refactoring Browser is an advanced browser for VisualWorks, VisualWorks/ENVY, and IBM Smalltalk. SQCVS - A Swiki for a project to enable use of CVS together with Smalltalk (particularly Squeak). CampSmalltalk Wiki - a Wiki discussion area for the Camp Smalltalk event. Camp.Smalltalk.org Main Page -- Results from the Camp Smalltalk event held in San Diego on March 14-18, 2000.:: Monday, March 20, 2000 :: Programming XML in Java, Part 1 - JavaWorld March 2000 Portable Data/Portable Code: XML - a java.sun.com XML information site. SAX for Python - Lars Marius Garshol's Python-based implementation of SAX, the "Simple API for XML." SAX 1.0: The Simple API for XML - The definitive SAX site. XML for the absolute beginner - JavaWorld April 1999 - self explanatory. XML for the absolute beginner - JavaWorld April 1999 - self-explanatory. The site of Allen I. Holub, a guru and teacher of Java and OO-Design, contains links to several of his articles and some useful source code (mostly in Java).:: Friday, March 17, 2000 :: Copyleft:Geek Chic themes.org Open Projects Network - Welcome. Signature confirmation:: Thursday, March 16, 2000 :: Linux Zone: Resources for Linux Development:: Wednesday, March 15, 2000 :: Python 101 cheat sheet - A quick reference document for newcomers to the language Welcome to Collab.Net - another site attempting to gather together resouces into a marketplace for open source software development. According to the site, "Collab.Net was founded by Brian Behlendorf, co-founder of the Apache Software Foundation, and O'Reilly & Associates in July 1999." Forte for Java - Sun will be releasing this product in May as OpenSource software.:: Tuesday, March 14, 2000 :: Vim documentation: help:: Monday, March 13, 2000 :: Computer Graphics World - This is their new website. [ Emacs.org - Welcome to the Emacs community ] - a major Emacs site.:: Friday, March 10, 2000 :: High-quality font support for Squeak. Inprise (Borland) on Linux article. The FreeBSD Diary Fabrik in Squeak. "Fabrik is a visual programming environment - a kit of computational and user-interface components that can be 'wired' together to build new components and useful applications." IBM/Ease of Use/Home - Interesting IBM User Interface article. Linux Central the /root for Linux resources XHTML: HTML Merges With XML -- Web Builder article on the new XML-based replacement for HTML. Squeak FTP Download Site - repository for many old versions of Squeak. The Win32 directory seems to have Win32 VM code but I'm not sure it is the latest version.:: Thursday, March 09, 2000 :: Interview with Bjarne Stroustroup "I Did It For You All..." ______________________________________________________________ On the 1st of January, 1998, Bjarne Stroustrup gave an interview to the IEEE's 'Computer' magazine.. Naturally, the editors thought he would be giving a retrospective view of seven years of object-oriented design, using the language he created. By the end of the interview, the interviewer got more than he had bargained for and, subsequently, the editor decided to suppress its contents, 'for the good of the industry' but, as with many of these things, there was a leak.. Here is a complete transcript of what was was said, unedited, and unrehearsed, so it isn't as neat as planned interviews.. You will find it interesting.... __________________________________________________________________ Interviewer: Well, it's been a few years since you changed the world of software design, how does it feel, looking back? Stroustrup: Actually, I was thinking about those days, just before you arrived. Do you remember? Everyone was writing 'C' and, the trouble was, they were pretty damn good at it.. Universities got pretty good at teaching it, too. They were turning out competent - I stress the word 'competent' - graduates at a phenomenal rate. That's what caused the problem.. Interviewer: Problem? Stroustrup: Yes, problem. Remember when everyone wrote Cobol? Interviewer: Of course, I did too Stroustrup: Well, in the beginning, these guys were like demi-gods. Their salaries were high, and they were treated like royalty.. Interviewer: Those were the days, eh? Stroustrup: Right. So what happened? IBM got sick of it, and invested millions in training programmers, till they were a dime a dozen.. Interviewer: That's why I got out. Salaries dropped within a year, to the point where being a journalist actually paid better.. Stroustrup: Exactly. Well, the same happened with 'C' programmers.. Interviewer: I see, but what's the point? Stroustrup: Well, one day, when I was sitting in my office, I thought of this little scheme, which would redress the balance a little. I thought 'I wonder what would happen, if there were a language so complicated, so difficult to learn, that nobody would ever be able to swamp the market with programmers? Actually, I got some of the ideas from X10, you know, X windows. That was such a bitch of a graphics system, that it only just ran on those Sun 3/60 things.. They had all the ingredients for what I wanted. A really ridiculously complex syntax, obscure functions, and pseudo-OO structure. Even now, nobody writes raw X-windows code. Motif is the only way to go if you want to retain your sanity.. Interviewer: You're kidding...? Stroustrup: Not a bit of it. In fact, there was another problem.. Unix was written in 'C', which meant that any 'C' programmer could very easily become a systems programmer. Remember what a mainframe systems programmer used to earn? Interviewer: You bet I do, that's what I used to do.. Stroustrup: OK, so this new language had to divorce itself from Unix, by hiding all the system calls that bound the two together so nicely. This would enable guys who only knew about DOS to earn a decent living too.. Interviewer: I don't believe you said that.... Stroustrup: Well, it's been long enough, now, and I believe most people have figured out for themselves that C++ is a waste of time but, I must say, it's taken them a lot longer than I thought it would.. Interviewer: So how exactly did you do it? Stroustrup: It was only supposed to be a joke, I never thought people would take the book seriously. Anyone with half a brain can see that object-oriented programming is counter-intuitive, illogical and inefficient.. Interviewer: What? Stroustrup: And as for 're-useable code' - when did you ever hear of a company re-using its code? Interviewer: Well, never, actually, but.... Stroustrup: There you are then. Mind you, a few tried, in the early days. There was this Oregon company - Mentor Graphics, I think they were called - really caught a cold trying to rewrite everything in C++ in about '90 or '91. I felt sorry for them really, but I thought people would learn from their mistakes.. Interviewer: Obviously, they didn't? Stroustrup: Not in the slightest. Trouble is, most companies hush-up all their major blunders, and explaining a $30 million loss to the shareholders would have been difficult.. Give them their due, though, they made it work in the end.. Interviewer: They did? Well, there you are then, it proves O-O works.. Stroustrup: Well, almost. The executable was so huge, it took five minutes to load, on an HP workstation, with 128MB of RAM. Then it ran like treacle. Actually, I thought this would be a major stumbling-block, and I'd get found out within a week, but nobody cared. Sun and HP were only too glad to sell enormously powerful boxes, with huge resources just to run trivial programs. You know, when we had our first C++ compiler, at AT&T, I compiled 'Hello World', and couldn't believe the size of the executable. 2.1MB Interviewer: What? Well, compilers have come a long way, since then.. Stroustrup: They have? Try it on the latest version of g++ - you won't get much change out of half a megabyte. Also, there are several quite recent examples for you, from all over the world. British Telecom had a major disaster on their hands but, luckily, managed to scrap the whole thing and start again. They were luckier than Australian Telecom. Now I hear that Siemens is building a dinosaur, and getting more and more worried as the size of the hardware gets bigger,to accommodate the executables. Isn't multiple inheritance a joy? Interviewer: Yes, but C++ is basically a sound language.. Stroustrup: You really believe that, don't you? Have you ever sat down and worked on a C++ project? Here's what happens: First, I've put in enough pitfalls to make sure that only the most trivial projects will work first time. Take operator overloading. At the end of the project, almost every module ha [cropped. 7,600 character limit.] "I Did It For You All..." ______________________________________________________________ On the 1st of January, 1998, Bjarne Stroustrup gave an interview to the IEEE's 'Computer' magazine.. Naturally, the editors thought he would be giving a retrospective view of seven years of object-oriented design, using the language he created. By the end of the interview, the interviewer got more than he had bargained for and, subsequently, the editor decided to suppress its contents, 'for the good of the industry' but, as with many of these things, there was a leak.. Here is a complete transcript of what was was said, unedited, and unrehearsed, so it isn't as neat as planned interviews.. You will find it interesting.... __________________________________________________________________ Interviewer: Well, it's been a few years since you changed the world of software design, how does it feel, looking back? Stroustrup: Actually, I was thinking about those days, just before you arrived. Do you remember? Everyone was writing 'C' and, the trouble was, they were p LinuxLife.org -- another Linux site. Dev-X has an online XML Magazine -- Spring 2000. Sponsors include eXcelon, Rogue Wave, & Microsoft's MSDN XML Development Center.:: Wednesday, March 08, 2000 :: FreeMWare.org -- This is the LGPL'd system, similar to VMware, which allows multiple virtual computers on a single PC. Programming Language Exploration -- Looks like an interesting language site. Maybe I should spend some time here. Note the link on Self. FAQ: Scheme Implementations and Mailing Lists 2/2 [Monthly posting] FAQ: Scheme Frequently Asked Questions 1/2 [Monthly posting] Welcome to the SICP Web Site Leech FTP Homepage -- a great multi-threaded Ftp client.:: Tuesday, March 07, 2000 :: Squeak list message about new font support. A very interesting web-located Squeak Browser. Some Swikis at Gatech -- includes Squeak Info. Winscheme48 Richard A. Kelsey's Home Page -- good site for Scheme 48. The Scheme Underground The Schememonster's Friends Welcome To Schemers Inc. Welcome to schemers.org! CMU Scheme Repository. The Internet Scheme Repository Home Page Chez Scheme News The main page for the new communal Squeak Book. There is now an editable Squeak Book at Chapters For Review! ArgoUML: The Cognitive CASE Tool -- an interesting OpenSource UML tool project. I think I may join this one. SCM home page -- a good DOS/Windows Scheme implementation.:: Monday, March 06, 2000 :: Portable Smalltalk Applications and ANSI Smalltalk Standard Smalltalk Interchange Format Homepage -- an interesting and significant site for Smalltalk portability information. I might want to get involved with this work later. I'm a member of the Metaverse Project on SourceForge. Here is the link to the Metaverse Project Home Page. Hmmmm. It's about time for me to get a Scheme system up and running again. I'll put one on Windows and one on Linux. Which Scheme interpreter/system/IDE should I use? I probably still have my registered version of EduScheme around somewhere but I'm still annoyed at them for their excessively restrictive security mechanisms. scheme.org -- a starting page for Scheme. The Scheme Programming Language -- The main MIT Scheme site. PatternStories Wiki: Front Page -- Many stories about using software design patterns, particularly in Smalltalk. An information page on the somewhat famous RefactoringBrowser: Refactoring Browser.:: Friday, March 03, 2000 :: Here's info on a cool new Linux Handheld, Samsung's Yopy.:: Thursday, March 02, 2000 :: Here was an idea for connection vs. containment in Squeak morphic code. This message is part of an ongoing discussion. Why is Thread.stop deprecated (in Java)? See this page. For a nice Smalltalk trick, see this: Bob Arning post on the Squeak list. Some links to OOPSLA '99 papers, including Tim R's Squeak VM paper, can be found at OOPSLA '99 VM Workshop. The HTML version of The GNOME Development Site. This is basically the final draft. The paperware version was edited beyond this. More on New Riders - GTK /Gnome Application Development. Havoc Pennington's new bool: GTK /Gnome Application Development. GrepNinja started this log as a collection of eclectic thoughts and links. Most entries here will probably relate to software development. Languages may include Smalltalk, Python, Perl, Scheme, Java, C/C++, and others. GrepNinja is a professional software engineer who also aspires to do some OpenSource programming.
|
|||||||||||||||||||