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  First steps with Scala, say goodbye to bash scripts…

Those who know me are aware that I’ve been following play framework, and actively taking part of it’s community, for a couple of years. Playframework 2.0 is right around the corner, and it’s core is programmed in Scala, so it’s a wonderful opportunity to give this object-oriented / functional hybrid beast a try… Like many others, I will pick a very simple script to give my first steps… Finding an excuse to give Scala a try With a couple of friends we are ...

   Scala,Functional programming,Bash script,Replacement     2012-01-12 06:45:16

  Introducing LocalDB, an improved SQL Express

Updated 2011-11-28: Added reference to the walkthrough of using LocalDB in Visual Studio 2010 and to the new LocalDB Installer. Updated 2011-11-02: Added reference to .NET Framework 4 support for LocalDB in the Q&A section. Introduction It gives me great pleasure to introduce a new version of SQL Express called SQL Express LocalDB. LocalDB is created specifically for developers. It is very easy to install and requires no management, yet it offers the same T-SQL language, programming surfac...

   LocalDB,Microsoft,SQL Express     2012-03-31 00:13:43

  Android hardware fails more than iPhone, BlackBerry; repairs cost carriers $2 billion

Repairs to Android smartphones cost wireless carriers $2 billion per year according to a new year-long WDS study that tracked 600,000 support calls around the globe. Android’s popularity and the introduction of a number of low-cost smartphones has put a strain on the wireless business model, WDS noted in its report. “Deployment by more than 25 OEMs and lower-cost product coming to market is leading to higher than average rates of hardware failures and, in turn, return and repair cos...

   Android,iPhone,Blackberry,Hardware,Cost     2011-11-03 13:26:42

  Processing Unicode Data in Python - A Primer to Understand Non-English Data Processing

Introduction: Currently we live in a world where people of diverse cultures/backgrounds use electronic devices to express their ideas, do their daily work that earns them their daily bread, and entertain themselves using content that is created using their own language and so on. Naturally, in order to make all these things happen, any computational instrument, be it a laptop or a desktop computer, or a smartphone, or something else, should be capable enough to serve all of these things in a man...

   PYTHON,UNICODE,UTF-8,NON-ENGLISH DATA,ASCII CODE     2019-04-10 00:55:19

  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

  Optimization Tricks used by the Lockless Memory Allocator

With the releasing of the Lockless Memory Allocator under the GPL version 3.0 license, we can now discuss more of the optimization tricks used inside it. Many of these are things you wouldn't want to use in normal code. However, when speed is the ultimate goal, sometimes we need to break a few rules and use code that is a little sneaky.The SlabA slab is a well-known technique for allocating fixed size objects. For a given object size, a chunk of memory is divided up into smaller regions of that ...

   Optimization,Memory allocation     2011-11-16 08:02:16

  The trap of the performance sweet spot

This post is about JavaScript performance but I would like to start it by telling a story that might seem unrelated to JS. Please bear with me if you don’t like C.A story of a C programmer writing JavaScriptMr. C. is a C programmer as you can probably guess from his name. Today he was asked by his boss to write a very simple function: given an array of numbered 2d points calculate vector sum of all even numbered points... He opens his favorite text editor and quickly types somet...

   C,JavaScript,Sweet spot,Memory,Low level,Trap     2011-11-06 14:45:01

  Thoughts on Python 3

I spent the last couple of days thinking about Python 3's current state a lot. While it might not appear to be the case, I do love Python as a language and especially the direction it's heading in. Python has been not only part of my life for the last couple of five years, it has been the largest part by far. Let there be a warning upfront: this is a very personal post. I counted a hundred instances of a certain capital letter in this text. That's because I am very grateful for all the opport...

   Python,Python 3,Feature,Drawback,Embrace     2011-12-07 08:46:47

  A Python Optimization Anecdote

Hi! I’m Pavel and I interned at Dropbox over the past summer. One of my biggest projects during this internship was optimizing Python for dynamic page generation on the website. By the end of the summer, I optimized many of dropbox.com’s pages to render 5 times faster. This came with a fair share of challenges though, which I’d like to write about today:The ProblemDropbox is a large website with lots of dynamically generated pages. The more pages that are dynamically generat...

   Python,Anecodate,Optimization,Efficiency     2011-10-25 10:33:20

  PHP: a fractal of bad design

Preface I’m cranky. I complain about a lot of things. There’s a lot in the world of technology I don’t like, and that’s really to be expected—programming is a hilariously young discipline, and none of us have the slightest clue what we’re doing. Combine with Sturgeon’s Law, and I have a lifetime’s worth of stuff to gripe about. This is not the same. PHP is not merely awkward to use, or ill-suited for what I want, or suboptimal, or...

   PHP,Design,Analysis     2012-04-11 13:46:57

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