programming languages
In a recent Joel on Software forum post Thinking of Leaving the Industry, one programmer wonders if software development is the right career choice in the face of broad economic uncertainty: After reading the disgruntled posts here from long time programmers and hearing so much about ageism and outsourcing, I&
software development concepts
Remember last week when I said coding was just writing? I was wrong. As one commenter noted, it's even simpler than that. [This] reminds me of a true "Dilbert moment" a few years ago, when my (obviously non-technical) boss commented that he never understood why it
programming languages
Have you ever noticed that blogs are full of misinformation and lies? In particular, I'm referring to this blog. The one you're reading right now. For example, yesterday's post was so bad that it is conclusive proof that I've jumped the shark.
programming languages
I'm not a huge fan of The Daily WTF for reasons I've previously outlined. There is, however, the occasional gem – such as this one posted by ezrec: Browsing through a web archive of some old computer club conversations, I ran across this sentence: "Apple made
programming languages
A few months ago, Dare Obasanjo noticed a brief exchange my friend Jon Galloway [http://twitter.com/jongalloway] and I had on Twitter. Unfortunately, Twitter makes it unusually difficult to follow conversations, but Dare outlines the gist of it in Developers, Using Libraries is not a Sign of Weakness [http:
programming languages
I don't usually talk about my personal life here, but I have to make an exception in this case. I debated for days which geeky reference I would use as a synonym for "we're having a baby". The title is the best I could
software development concepts
As we begin the private beta for Stack Overflow later this week, I wondered: where do the software terms alpha and beta come from? And why don't we ever use gamma? Alpha and Beta are the first two characters of the Greek alphabet. Presumably these characters were chosen
hardware
I got a call from Rob Conery today asking for advice on building his own computer. Rob works for Microsoft, but lives in Hawaii. I'm not sure how he managed that, but being so far from the mothership apparently means he has the flexibility to spec his own
c#
Although I love strings, sometimes the String class can break your heart. For example, in C#, there is no String.Left() function. Fair enough; we can roll up our sleeves and write our own function lickety-split: public static string Left(string s, int len) { if (len == 0 || s.Length == 0)
software development concepts
Ever find yourself clicking on links to music or videos and getting blasted in the face with this delightful little number? That's right -- links to any sort of music, TV shows, movies, podcasts, audiobooks or anything else available through Apple's iTunes store requires custom software
programming languages
As I grow older and wisereven older as a programmer, I've found that my personal coding style has trended heavily toward minimalism. I was pleased, then, to find many of the coding conventions I've settled on over the last 20 years codified in Spartan programming. No,
regular expressions
I love regular expressions. No, I'm not sure you understand: I really love regular expressions. You may find it a little odd that a hack who grew up using a language with the ain't keyword would fall so head over heels in love with something as