Units of Work
2008-03-30 | Filed Under Programming
When I was a physics student one of the things that I learned to do was “unit analysis”. That’s where you simply consider what units an answer has: is it in meters, or meters squared? Surprisingly, there is an enormous amount that can be learned just by doing unit analysis. Recently, I applied unit analysis our scrum backlog (the process by which my company chooses what tasks to work on) and I learned something surprising. [More...]
Post Links
Permalink | Trackback | 6 Comments
How to talk about Data Structures
2008-02-17 | Filed Under Programming
I’ve been interviewing lately for “senior programmer” positions. I find it outright astonishing how many applicants for these positions lack what I would consider the most fundamental of programming skills. Some people have suggested using FizzBuzz (a trivial programming exercise) as a filter; what I use is a discussion of data structures. [More...]
Post Links
Permalink | Trackback | Leave a Comment
A Creaky Old Man’s Defense of Creaky old Code
2008-02-02 | Filed Under Programming
I’m beginning to wonder whether I’m turning into an “old fogey” of a computer programmer. You know, the elderly fellow who has an office near the server room; the one who always objects to the use of any new technology and goes on at length about “the good old days” — you know, back when Real Programmers punched their cards out by hand. [More...]
Post Links
Permalink | Trackback | 3 Comments
Immutable Trees and Threading Evil - Part 2
2007-12-19 | Filed Under Programming
In part 1 I introduced immutable trees, this time I will talk about threading evil. If you haven’t yet read part 1, go back and do so now. [More...]
Post Links
Permalink | Trackback | 4 Comments
Immutable Trees and Threading Evil - Part 1
2007-12-19 | Filed Under Programming
I was reading a post in Eric Lippert’s Blog and started to post a reply, but when I realized just how much I needed to say, I decided it should be it’s own post, nay: series of posts on my blog. Let me take you on an interesting tour of immutable data structures (good!) and threading behavior (scary!). [More...]
Post Links
Permalink | Trackback | Leave a Comment
Treat Your Customers Well
2007-12-16 | Filed Under Uncategorized
Google, MySpace, Wikipedia, YouTube, facebook, craigslist, digg—what (besides runaway success) do these have in common? [More...]
It’s Not Exactly Artificial Intelligence
2007-12-09 | Filed Under Programming
Edsger W. Dijkstra possessed an extraordinary ability to communicate elegantly and precisely. I admire, but could never emulate his ability to put an entire essay into a single statement. Yesterday I came across the following gem:
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
– E. W. Dijkstra [cite]
Post Links
Permalink | Trackback | 3 Comments
Feast or Famine
2007-12-03 | Filed Under Programming
About four weeks ago, the project that I was working on was abruptly canceled. It wasn’t that there was anything wrong with the way the project was going — there were lots of things wrong with the way the project was going, but the cancellation was due to a change in business direction. So for the past four weeks I’ve been trying to find something useful to do with myself. [More...]
Post Links
Permalink | Trackback | Leave a Comment
Searching, Thread-count and a Thanksgiving Miracle
2007-11-22 | Filed Under Programming
Suppose that you have a collection of numbers or perhaps of WidgetManagerHandles — could be most anything that can be sorted. We’ll suppose that these are stored in an array and that you can take as much time as you need beforehand to organize the array, after which we will try to locate objects in it many times. The question is: What is the minimum number of item-to-item comparisons (on average) that is needed to locate a given item? [More...]
Post Links
Permalink | Trackback | 6 Comments
When Spheres Collide
2007-11-15 | Filed Under Math
If I can’t use my own blog to post nicely worked out math problems, then what good is it?
Post Links
Permalink | Trackback | Leave a Comment