Aza Raskin ported Chris Coyne's Context Free to Javascript / Canvas.
The result, Algorithm Ink is dangerously fun. It uses a simple scripting language or design grammar called CFDG. It can use recursion and (pseudo-) random numbers to implement IFS fractal or fractal-like images.
Caveat: Canvas is (currently) only supported in Firefox 3 (Mozilla), Safari, and Opera. Sorry for anyone using Google Chrome or MS Internet Explorer.
Two suggested resources for getting started in parallel programming, which a suitable degree of abstraction to allow you to focus on algorithms and programming rather than implementation details are open source projects, Intel's Threading Building Blocks and OpenMP.
Something to investigate at some time in the future.
One of the biggest differences, after raw talent, to a programmer's abilities is writing appropriate code with suitable data structures and algorithms, which in the real world means having a practical understanding of the computer system's underlying hardware, which are often "silent" or heavily muted details in the specification and requirements documentation in software development.
Here's a talk by Herb Sutter, noted C++ book author and ISO C++ committee member, entitled, "Machine Architecture: Things Your Programming Language Never Told You."
A useful resource is Randy Hydes' Write Great Code series of books. As well as classic computer organization and architecture textbooks like Structured Computer Organization by Tanenbaum, and Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach by Hennessy and Patterson.
Continue reading "Programmers need to know about hardware" »
I have wanted to spend to some time looking at some of the increasingly popular programming languages, particularly Python and Ruby, although languages like Scheme (in case lambda is more than a logo in a video game) and Haskell are also on my radar.
I thought this tour de babel by Steve Yegge was an interesting view. Steve's pontifications or verbiage is generally worth reading, both his old (while at amazon) and new (now at Google) blogs.
Another gem from Steve is Get That Job at Goggle on interview tips for software developers. Apparently some companies like programmers who remember some of their CS class content, rather than merely their Java prowess or line count.
If you work with PointPoint or similar slideware software (e.g. Impress from OpenOffice) please read these articles to help stop abusing your audience and enhance your communicability by expressing your information better.
First Five Ways to Reduce PowerPoint Overload by Cliff Atkinson and Richard E. Mayer.
Next, Edward Tufte's essay on PointPoint is available from him in a booklet format, or you can at least read an excerpt from it. There is an article from Wired Magazine (Sept 2003) that is also available, PowerPoint Is Evil.
Just think how much more effective and popular you can be if your presentations are shorter and clearer. And think of your audience's endless gratitude.
It took longer than it should have (roughly two weeks), but in the end the problem I was having accessing Akamai hosted websites such as eBay Canada, Chapters-Indigo was resolved.
I had to use the BroadBandReport web forums about Cogeco, to report the problem to some dedicated Cogeco employees who eventually took a closer look at my problem (the traceroute ICMP checksum errors appear to have been a red herring), and in the end they found both a broken Akamai box, and a bug-like issue (I think means a misconfiguration or an obscure error).
So the problem was fixed, and I can buy obscure computing and RF gadgets at surplus or near-surplus prices again, and appease my bibliophile tendencies.
Sigh, for the past two weeks I have been having intermittent problems with several major web sites, which all happen to be Akamai customers. Akamai offers "high performance content delivery" via their solution called EdgeSuite.
Unfortunately for companies like eBay Canada, Chapters-Indigo, CBC, Analog Devices, and Linear Technologies, it has not been working very well for me, a Cogeco cable modem based High-Speed Internet (Standard, Residential) customer.
So far it has cost Chapters-Indigo a few hundred dollars, and a undetermined amount for eBay Canada in lost sales.
Continue reading "Problem with problems (or dealing with my ISP)" »
Here's a short list of books that piped my interest about IT / practical computing that would most likely be educational to read, or at least skim.
Continue reading "Books about computing / IT / Work-stuff I'd like to read" »