Archive for March, 2008

The Lightbulb Moment

Weiqi Gao has a post up today discussing the trials of grokking Scala. Scala is a language I want to take a much closer look at later this year, since I want to become current on the JVM again (having not been on talking terms with it since using J2SE 1.4 around the summer of [ READ MORE ]

Project Euler Problems 1 and 2

Browsing through Nate Hoellein’s blog recently led me to Project Euler. This is a problem – I have a horrendous feeling I’m about to get addicted to it, to the cost of just about everything else that normally occupies my free time. Ack. Still, at least it provides some blogging material. I’m going to start working [ READ MORE ]

The P.G. Wodehouse Method Of Refactoring

I am much given to ruminating on refactoring at the moment, as one of my current projects is a major overhaul of a fairly large (>31,000 lines) application which has exactly the kind of dotted history any experienced developer has learned to fear – written by many different people, including short-term contractors, at a time [ READ MORE ]

Arthur C. Clarke, 16/12/1917 – 18/03/2008: Indistinguishable From Magic

Sad news – the legendary Arthur C. Clarke has died. He’ll be greatly missed; Clarke novels occupy a full shelf of my floor-to-ceiling bookcase, and Rendezvous With Rama stands proud as the finest sci-fi it has ever been my pleasure to read. Aside from his very visible mastery of sci-fi, however, there is much to remember [ READ MORE ]