lua
Garry’s Mod is a fascinating study in guerilla programming. It’s an incredibly successful mod for the game Half-Life 2 that essentially converts it into a giant sandbox powered by Lua. There are a large number of Lua scripted 3rd party modifications for Garry’s mod. In a server
programming languages
Paul Heberli and Bruce Karsh proposed something they call futurist programming in 1994: We believe there is a great opportunity for Futurist principles to be applied to the science of computer programming. We react against the heavy religious atmosphere that surrounds every aspect of computer programming. We believe it is
wearable computing
I may have an unusual affinity for hardware, but Steve Mann is in a class of his own. He lives the hardware. Steve Mann may be the world’s original cyborg. Steve Mann, an engineering professor at the University of Toronto, has lived as a cyborg for more than 20
technology trends
Riding the waves of technology in the computer industry is exhilarating when you’re twenty, but there’s a certain emptiness that begins to creep in around the edges by the time you’re forty. When you’ve spent the last twenty years doing nothing but frantically hanging ten on
mobile devices
Let me start by saying up front that I am a fan of the iPhone. The mobile phone market is a sad, pathetic wasteland in desperate need of improvement. I’m hoping iPhone will the collective kick in the pants the smartphone market needs to finally stop making user hostile
technology trends
One of my most eye-opening early experiences was a tour of a local manufacturing plant during high school. One of our tour guides was a MIT trained engineer who accompanied us, explaining how everything worked. At the end of the tour, he gave each of us a picture of a
.net
As part of my new advertising initiative, Microsoft and I are teaming up to donate $10,000 in support of open source .NET projects. Why am I focusing on .NET open source projects? In short, because open source projects are treated as second-class citizens in the Microsoft ecosystem. Many highly
technology trends
In a recent post, Dave Shea documented his love/hate relationship with the pixel grid: Here’s the caveat though – high resolution displays. At 100dpi, ClearType wins out, but we’re not going to be stuck here much longer. Give it a few years, let’s do this comparison again
programming languages
Dennis Forbes took issue with my recent post on C# and the Compilation Tax, offering this criticism, pointedly titled “Beginners and Hacks:” Sometimes [background compilation and edit and continue] are there to coddle a beginner, carefully keeping them within the painted lines and away from the dangerous electrical sockets along
programming languages
If you didn’t get a chance to watch today’s historic interview between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, you should. Finally seeing these two computer industry giants on stage interacting with each other was fascinating and at times even a little touching. * Steve Jobs and Bill Gates Prologue * Steve
computer hardware
I’ve never understood programmers who loved the craft of programming, but were disinterested in the underlying hardware – the very tool that allows them to practice their craft. I have an unabashed love for computer hardware that borders on inappropriate. I’m not ashamed to admit it. Warning: this post
hardware
In When Hardware is Free, Power is Expensive, I referenced a Google whitepaper (pdf) that explained why typical PC power supplies are not particularly efficient: Most likely, the computer you’re using wastes 30-40% of the electrical power it consumes because it is using an inefficient power supply. It’s