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  Command Line Arguments

Our Hello program still isn’t very general. We can’t change the name we say hello to without editing and recompiling the source code. This may be fine for the programmers, but what if the secretaries want their computers to say Hello to them? (I know. This is a little far-fetched but bear with me. I’m making a point.)What we need is a way to change the name at runtime rather than at compile time. (Runtime is when we type java HelloRusty. Compile time is when w...

   Java,Command line arguments,First elemen     2011-09-30 11:31:54

  Can Your Programming Language Do This?

One day, you're browsing through your code, and you notice two big blocks that look almost exactly the same. In fact, they're exactly the same, except that one block refers to "Spaghetti" and one block refers to "Chocolate Moose." // A trivial example: alert("I'd like some Spaghetti!"); alert("I'd like some Chocolate Moose!"); These examples happen to be in JavaScript, but even if you don't know JavaScript, you should be able to follow along. The repeated code looks wrong, ...

   Programming,Maintainability,Reusable     2011-05-31 07:42:41

  Before Python

This morning I had a chat with the students at Google's CAPE program. Since I wrote up what I wanted to say I figured I might as well blog it here. Warning: this is pretty unedited (or else it would never be published :-). I'm posting it in my "personal" blog instead of the "Python history" blog because it mostly touches on my career before Python. Here goes.Have you ever written a computer program? Using which language?HTMLJavascriptJavaPythonC++COther - which?[It turned out the students ha...

   Python,History,Programming language,B     2012-01-18 08:08:53

  TIOBE: PHP is coming back

TIOBE released the programming language index for July 2013. The highlight of this month is that PHP is coming back. It ranks the fifth and has an increase of 1.54% compared to January. There are no changes in the ranking for the top 4 languages. The reason why PHP is back may be attributed to the new PHP Zend Framework that was released in September 2012, but this reason is not very convincing. PositionJul 2013PositionJul 2012Delta in PositionProgramming LanguageRatingsJul 2013Delta Jul...

   TIOBE,PHP,Zend framework,July     2013-07-09 05:22:50

  What Can We Learn From Dennis Ritchie?

As we noted earlier this week, one of the founding fathers of UNIX and the creator of C, Dennis Ritchie, passed away last weekend. While I feel that many in computer science and related fields knew of Ritchie’s importance to the growth and development of, well, everything to do with computing, I think it’s valuable to look back at his accomplishments and place him high in the CS pantheon already populated by Lovelace, Turing, and (although this crowing will be controversial, at lea...

   C,Father,Dennis Ritchie,Death,Father of C,UNIX     2011-10-17 10:12:02

  Ruby is beautiful (but I’m moving to Python)

The Ruby language is beautiful. And I think it deserves to break free from the Web. I think the future of Ruby is firmly stuck in Web development, though, so I’m going to invest in a new language for data analysis, at least for now. This is a look at the fantastic language I came to from Java and a look at a possible candidate. (Update: I’ve since written a followup.)Java to RubySix years ago, I added Ruby to my technical arsenal. I learned C++ and Java in high school, and I p...

   Ruby,Java,Python,Comparison,Advantage,Ruby vs Python     2011-11-01 07:18:11

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