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  Why Objective-C is Hard

As an active member of "The Internet" and vocal Objective-C coder, I get a lot of questions surrounding the language. They're often framed around thinking about learning the language or trying to write an app, but they also usually involve a phrase like "Objective-C looks really hard" or "what are all those minus signs about?" Both of these are pretty good questions, and I'd like to address why someone might be more hesitant to jump into iOS or OS X development compared to, say, Ruby or J...

   Objective-C,difficult,hard,reason,analysis     2012-03-07 05:11:28

  Obviously Correct

What do automatic memory management, static types and purity have in common? They are methods which take advantage of the fact that we can make programs obviously correct (for some partial definition of correctness) upon visual inspection. Code using automatic memory management is obviously correct for a class of memory bugs. Code using static types is obviously correct for a class of type bugs. Code using purity (no mutable references or side effects) isobviously c...

   Memory management,Code,Static,Purity     2011-11-07 08:13:05

  Peculiarities of cloud infrastructure

MarketsandMarkets claims that the cloud computing market is worth more than $545 bln nowadays. Moreover, by Thales, nearly 60% of worldwide commercial data is stored in the cloud today. Nay, under Exploding Topics, about 90% of large companies across the world use cloud infrastructure. So, the mentioned technology is incredibly popular among business owners worldwide presently. However, not so many company holders, as well as managers, know enough about the specified solutions. That's because mo...

   CLOUD INFRASTRUCTURE,DATA STORAGE     2022-12-30 12:00:44

  Python threads: communication and stopping

A very common doubt developers new to Python have is how to use its threads correctly. Specifically, a large amount of questions on StackOverflow show that people struggle most with two aspects: How to stop / kill a threadHow to safely pass data to a thread and back I already have a blog post touching on these issues right here, but I feel it’s too task-specific for sockets, and a more basic and general post would be appropriate. I assume the reader has a basic familiarity with Pytho...

   Python,Multithreading,Communication,Synchronize     2011-12-28 07:38:32

  HP's Apotheker recounts TouchPad disaster in post mortem

Summary: “The tablet effect is real and sales of the TouchPad are not meeting our expectations,” says HP’s CEO. The TouchPad was quickly becoming a money pit. HP CEO Leo Apotheker wasn’t shy about outlining the company’s challenges. He noted that the “tablet effect is real” and dinged HP’s PC business. In addition, the TouchPad failure was about to become a money pit. That reality led HP to move...

   HP,webOs,Death,Palm,Touchpad,Diaster     2011-08-19 07:35:17

  How I Quickly Test and Validate Startup Ideas

Since I’ve technically been unemployed now for a week, I’ve spent most of that time brainstorming some new ideas and putting them into a Google Spreadsheet.This week I began going through that list and pulling out the ones I think have a chance and I narrowed a pretty large list down to just a few.Let’s take one of the examples from my list. It doesn’t have a name, so let’s just call it Patient Connect.The idea behind Patient Connect is that it integrates with ...

   Startup,Idea,Choose,Validation,Verify,Invest     2011-10-28 10:14:41

  4 Technologies That Impact You (Without Your Knowledge)

Our world to day is so driven by technology that it’s easy to stay on top of the major changes and developments. We know when there’s a major new innovation in personal electronics; we know that the 5G network is rolling out this year; we track the progress of smart cars, learning thermostats, and interactive home speakers. We even tend to care about how major tech companies around the world are performing! However, as “plugged in” as we all seem to be to the world of tec...

   AI,DATA ANALYTICS,IOT     2020-04-16 06:35:54

  How Integers Should Work (In Systems Programming Languages)

My last post outlined some of the possibilities for integer semantics in programming languages, and asked which option was correct. This post contains my answers. Just to be clear: I want practical solutions, but I’m not very interested by historical issues or backwards compatibility with any existing language, and particularly not with C and C++. We’ll start with: Premise 1: Operations on default integer types return the mathematically correct result or else trap. This is th...

   Number,Algorithm,System,Embedded system     2011-12-05 12:48:41

  Code Refurbishment

Within our industry we use a huge range of terminology.  Unfortunately we don’t all agree on what individual terms actually mean.  I so often hear people misuse the term “Refactoring” which has come to make the business in many organisations recoil in fear.  The reason for this fear I’ve observed is because of what people often mean when misusing this term.I feel we are holding back our industry by not being disciplined in our use of terminology.  If...

   Code Refurbishment,Code design,terminolo     2011-09-05 08:17:14

  Unfortunate Python

Python is a wonderful language, but some parts should really have bright WARNING signs all over them. There are features that just can't be used safely and others are that are useful but people tend to use in the wrong ways. This is a rough transcript of the talk I gave at my local Python group on November 15, with some of the audience feed back mixed in. Most of this came from hanging around the Python IRC channel, something I highly recommend. [update 2011-12-19: improved "array" cr...

   Python,Defects,Deprecated methods,Warning     2011-12-20 08:27:36

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