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SEARCH KEYWORD -- Functional

  Valid JavaScript variable names

Did you know var π = Math.PI; is syntactically valid JavaScript? I thought this was pretty cool, so I decided to look into which Unicode glyphs are allowed in JavaScript variable names, or identifiers as the ECMAScript specification calls them. Reserved words The ECMAScript 5.1 spec says: An Identifier is an IdentifierName that is not a ReservedWord. The spec describes four groups of reserved words: keywords, future reserved words, null literals and boolean lite...

   JavaScript,Name convention,Standard     2012-02-22 05:16:53

  Scala feels like EJB 2, and other thoughts

At Devoxx last week I used the phrase "Scala feels like EJB 2 to me". What was on my mind?ScalaFor a number of years on this blog I've been mentioning a desire to write a post about Scala. Writing such a post is not easy, because anyone who has been paying attention to anti-Scala blog posts will know that writing one is a sure fire way of getting flamed. The Scala community is not tolerant of dissent.But ultimately, I felt that it was important for me to speak out and express my opinions. As I s...

   Scala,Module,EJB,Concurrency,Feature     2011-11-22 08:29:44

  Avoiding and exploiting JavaScript's warts

One's sentiment toward JavaScript flips between elegance and disgust without transiting intermediate states. The key to seeing JavaScript as elegant is understanding its warts, and knowing how to avoid, work around or even exploit them. I adopted this avoid/fix/exploit approach after reading Doug Crockford's JavaScript: The Good Parts: Doug has a slightly different and more elaborate take on the bad parts and awful parts, so I'm sharing my perspective on the four issues that ha...

   JavaScript,warts,Exploit,with,variable,this     2012-02-15 05:51:21

  Signs that you're a bad programmer

1. Inability to reason about codeReasoning about code means being able to follow the execution path ("running the program in your head") while knowing what the goal of the code is.SymptomsThe presence of "voodoo code", or code that has no effect on the goal of the program but is diligently maintained anyway (such as initializing variables that are never used, calling functions that are irrelevant to the goal, producing output that is not used, etc.)Executing idempotent functions multiple times (...

   Sign,Programmer,Characteristics,Knowledge,Skill     2011-10-20 08:56:16

  7 Ways Tablets are Better than Laptops or Smartphones

Imagine a situation of preparing for a short weekend trip to a smaller village or a countryside with beautiful nature, fresh air and breathtaking scenery, where your cousins are eagerly expecting you for their twentieth marriage anniversary; you seem to be almost ready, but one thing is missing!  A considerable amount of work is still ahead of you, and you also want to stay in touch with your friends, which makes it a bit difficult to decide whether it would be more suitable to take your l...

   TABLETS,SMARTPHONE,LAPTOP     2018-07-25 05:32:44

  What else is new in C# 5?

The big new feature in C# 5 is asynchronous programming support, which I wrote about last week. However, the C# folks have also slipped in a couple of smaller features and I thought I’d round things out by mentioning those. Method caller information There’s a complete style guide to be written on Writing Enterprisey Code, but one of my favourite “enterprisey” tells, after the use of Visual Basic, is obsessively logging every function you pass through: Function Ad...

   C# 5,New feature,Analysis     2012-03-20 07:45:11

  Programming Language Readability

Lets compare some Python to Haskell for solving the same problem.  The problem we’ll pick is Trie data-structure for auto-completions.  We are interested not so much in the nitty gritty of the algorithm, but in the language style itself.  Auto-complete has been in the programming news a lot recently; both a Python and a Haskell solver have turned up. (I suspect this post got flagged on Hacker News :(  It never got on the front-page despite the rapid upvoting on a n...

   Programming,Readability,Python,Haskell     2012-02-27 04:52:02

  Pros and cons of 6 most popular test automation frameworks

Not everyone dappling into systems for test automation knows how to leverage the maximum benefit and keep them going in top shape for a long time. That's where test automation frameworks come in – they're basically sets of rules, standards, protocols and guidelines which can be incorporated into practice or simply followed to provide beneficial execution environments for automation test scripts.   Why are test automation frameworks important?   Test automation frameworks offer m...

       2015-11-30 08:14:23

  Python Performance Tips, Part 1

To read the Zen of Python, type import this in your Python interpreter. A sharp reader new to Python will notice the word “interpreter”, and realize that Python is another scripting language. “It must be slow!” No question about it: Python program does not run as fast or efficiently as compiled languages. Even Python advocates will tell you performance is the area that Python is not good for. However, YouTube has proven Python is capable of serving 40 million videos...

   Python,Performance,Efficiency,Tips     2012-02-14 10:50:22

  True Scala complexity

Update 2: Sorry for the downtime. Leave it to the distributed systems guy to make his blog unavailable. Nginx saves the day.It’s always frustrating reading rants about Scala because they never articulate the actual complexities in the core language.Understandable—this post is intended fill that gap, and it wasn’t exactly easy to put together. But there’s been so much resistance to the very thought that the complexity exists at all, even from on up high, that I thou...

   Scala,Complexity     2012-01-10 07:17:07

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