software development concepts
Richard Mansfield has a bone to pick with object oriented programming: Certainly for the great majority of programmers – amateurs working alone to create programs such as a quick sales tax utility for a small business or a geography quiz for Junior – the machinery of OOP is almost always far more
arcade gaming
After two weeks of non-stop tweaking, I think my MAME Cocktail arcade is finally complete. I created a MAME cocktail project page documenting everything I’ve done so far with lots of pictures and links to the products I used, and the rationales behind the choices I made. Most
dll hell
This issue needs more attention. Via Steve Makofsky: Codecs are the next DLL hell. While I love Nero Digital’s simplicity and quality, the MP4s it produces aren’t compatible with most commercial DVD players (due to the AAC or AVC audio). I’ve tried Dr. Divx – I get audio
ide
In VB.NET vs C#, round two, I realized that choice of IDE has a far bigger impact on productivity than which language you choose. Lately I’ve started to think the relationship between language and IDE is even more profound: the future of programming languages isn’t a language
regex
Jan Goyvaerts released a new version of RegexBuddy today. I’ve talked about this tool before – it’s easily the best Regex tool available. Some feature highlights for this version are: * Built in GREP tool * Visual regular expression debugging support * Full unicode support The GREP tool is an unexpected bonus;
remote controls
Alex Gorbatchev posted his very favorable review of the Harmony H659 universal remote: This weekend I made one of the best purchases ever and I’m not exaggerating. Up until now I have been in the remote hell. Let me describe my living room setup: TV, DVD, Receiver, PVR and
storage
Hard disk space, like CPU speed, isn’t increasing as fast as it used to: Still, 400gb drives can be had, and it’s not difficult to build a terabyte array if you need to. Which begs the question – where does all that hard drive space go? Two tools I
programming languages
It’s easy to get caught up in the “newer is better” mindset of software development and forget that ideas are more important than code. Not everything we do is obsolete in four years. The Evolution of Forth, which outlines Charles Moore’s guiding principles in creating and implementing the
software development concepts
Do you have coworkers whose shelves groan under the weight of hundreds of pounds of technical books? I do. And I always try to gently convince them that maybe they should buy books by content instead of weight: It took me a while, but I finally came to realize that
namespaces
Jon Galloway recently pointed out something that’s been bothering me for a while: I’m happy to see the huge growth of community contributed code – things like RSS.NET, sharpziplib, ftp classes to tide us over ’til .NET 2.0, etc. But one thing that bothers me is the
software development concepts
Jack Black, in the DVD extras for School of Rock, had this to say in an interview: I had to learn how to play electric guitar a little bit because all I play is acoustic guitar. And I’m still not very good at electric guitar. And the truth is,
design
The appeal of the Mac Mini is totally lost on me. It’s an underpowered, expensive box – like every other computer Apple has ever introduced. And yet, a certain contingent of PC users are buying this thing on release day. I never understood that. Ed Stroglio may be the best