Archive for July, 2007
Friday, July 27th, 2007
I point out this post not to comment on its subject but just as an example of Python code and to remark that the otherwise pretty and compact Python syntax is blighted by a few things:
The 'self' as the first parameter of every class method is cluttery and is ...
Posted in Programming | 3 Comments »
Tuesday, July 17th, 2007
Jeff Atwood discusses the way Mac OS X windows don't really have 'maximize' buttons, and he comes to the right conclusion: better to have overly large windows than to make users futz with the dimensions of their windows. He says:
...Apple's method of forcing users to deal with more windows by ...
Posted in Desktop UI, Interfaces, Tech | 1 Comment »
Monday, July 16th, 2007
In response to a challenge by Aza Raskin to come up with a better way of tabbing in Firefox---in particular a solution that scales better the more tabs you have---I produced this mockup in Javascript. Be clear that, because of the way the tab previews are done, the performance is ...
Posted in Interfaces, Tech | 5 Comments »
Sunday, July 15th, 2007
For the sake of cleaning random stuff off my hard drive, here’s something I saved which I posted to a forum a couple years back. It mainly concerns the Battlefield series of games, developed by DICE. In Battlefield, two teams fight each other for control of key points on the ...
Posted in Games | No Comments »
Saturday, July 14th, 2007
Raganwald argues that link-voting sites (Digg, reddit, et. al.) hurt the web by locking comment threads into proprietary databases, depriving the web of some of its vital webness. I would agree, except:
I've always found Digg and reddit comment threads function as contests to see who makes the best joke, and ...
Posted in Tech | 2 Comments »
Thursday, July 12th, 2007
A learner's guide to the terminology and concepts of software build processes.
What's the difference between an assembler, a compiler, and an interpreter, and what's a linker?
Assemblers
Let's start with the clearest case. An assembler is a program which translates 'assembly language' code into processor instructions (a.k.a. 'machine instructions'/'machine code', a.k.a. ...
Posted in Learn Programming, Programming | 9 Comments »
Wednesday, July 4th, 2007
Alex Miller, Steve Yegge, and this poster explain.
Among the reasons given:
Singletons are most commonly used as excuses to have global variables and functions.
As Steve puts it, "using the Singleton is usually just a sign of premature optimization..." .
Singletons make it difficult when later you decide you actually need more than ...
Posted in Learn Programming, Programming | No Comments »
