Google Gears -- Offline web apps
Bulletproof Ajax (Book review)
Pre- and post- advice in Ruby -- more metaprogramming
Let's build a grid -- Thinking about your layout. Some of this is applicable to general UI
Widown't for Rails -- preventing that one dangling word after a line-break
I've been using IronPython recently as a scripting language because its string handling and ability to provide structured programming support is so much richer — and accessibly documented — than old .BAT & .CMD file programming supports. The downside is that the old style files make launching sub-processes trivial. So, in the spirit of DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself), here's the file to import.
And yes, this is really another example of how to use .Net rather than how to use Python.
Icebreakers -- interview questions designed to put you both at ease and break out of the scripted, stilted talk that results in bad hires and missing good hires (from the same source as the "Design a Monopoly Server" question)
Hygienic Macros -- practice safe meta-programming
Top 300 XSS sites -- Hall of Shame
Compiler Lab : Second Day -- more silverlight material from Microsoft
DLR in .Net 3.5 -- and related topics
Virtual Desktop inside the browser -- more silverlight goodies. This looks seriously interesting, and would make things like browser appliances worthwhile.
This season: well MGLN StrikerS should be obvious, even though I don't think spreading the story so thinly is doing what should be a "Gosh, wow!" roller-coaster action series any favours.
From good to so-so of the rest of the current season, Seirei no Moribito, Bokurano, Marimite 3rd season OAVs (see previous review), Claymore (so-so Nihon-meets-D&D), Rocket Girls (harmless fluff), El Cazador de la Bruja (Noir in Mootxico), Moonlight Mile (lumbering cash-in of Planetes).
Catching up on older stuff: Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou OAVs (cute, chill-out), Mahou-shoujotai (teeny witches!), Aria the Animation (more chill-out, with Natural queued), Busou Renkin (OTT Japan-style superheroes), GitS:SAC 2nd Gig (well stalled).
And I really need to get around to Paranoia Agent, Texhnolyze and Narutaru.
Looking to the top spots of the season to date:
The "art" favourite of the season, based on a manga with the motif of a mecha powered by the suffering of damaged children, I'm not sure how well the anime is going to keep up with some of the more raw parts. And as it hasn't ended the story yet, the anime is going to have to pull something out of thin air or just end unresolved.
A fantasy set in some mythic Asia, apparently based off a novel. Not hyperkinetic, just quietly understated, and shaping up well.
France, second half of the 18th century. The murder of his sister, Lia, brings d'Eon de Beaumont into a web of intrigue, quicksilver-powered zombies and Illuminated history.
As one of "four musketeers" serving in the King's Secret (the King being Louis XV), he follows revolutionaries to the Russia of Elizabeth and Catherine; and then to England to confront Father Sir Francis Dashwood at Medmenham Abbey, before returning again to France to find the one who killed his sister; and all the time avoiding the plots of the Comte Saint-Germain, the Count of Cagliostro, and the nefarious Maximilien Robespierre, who seemed to be too close to his sister.
Oh, and he keeps being possessed by his sister's spirit, and invoking the magick of the Psalmists, as well as kicking righteous ass in the pursuit of justice and in the name of France.
The history is a bit “:lol: Japan” and uses Psalms as western writers might use Buddhist sutras — but enough buckles get swashed in the expected style for this to be a fun romp. Recommended.
24 episodes, and apparently becoming available in R1 DVD.
Following up this trail again --
IPCE-r6 doesn't run PyFit out of the box, but it gets a lot closer than the mainline does:
Traceback (most recent call last): File C:\PyFIT-0.8a1\fit\FitServer.py, line 7, in Initialize File , line 0, in __import__##4
File C:\PyFIT-0.8a1\fit\fitnesse\FitServerImplementation.py, line 49, in Initialize File , line 0, in __import__##4 File C:\PyFIT-0.8a1\fit\fit\Fixture.py, line 21, in Initialize File , line 0, in __import__##4 File C:\PyFIT-0.8a1\fit\fit\TypeAdapter.py, line 34, in Initialize File , line 0, in __import__##4
File C:\PyFIT-0.8a1\fit\fit\taBase.py, line 36, in Initialize File C:\PyFIT-0.8a1\fit\fit\taBase.py, line 82, in TypeAdapter AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'ast'
This line is the first to look for compiler.ast members to initialise data members. Looking at the IPCE bundle, C:\IPCE-r6\Lib\compiler\ast.py exists and has the values required. It's just that its __init__.py is empty. , so we can patch C:\IPCE-r6\Lib\compiler\__init__.py to be
import ast
and it all works, without having to touch PyFit code at all.
This is the "no change to client code" equivalent to decorating PyFit with a suitably guarded explicit load
import fepy
fepy.install_option('ast')
The behaviour is not a bug, but a feature as FePy by default does not load code that is rarely used, so as to speed start-up.
We still don't have parsing of lists, tuples, dictionaries or complex numbers as arguments, since we still don't have the transformer.parse method to expose as compiler.parse; the unit tests in TypeAdapterTest.py report
Ran 117 tests in 2.468s FAILED (failures=3, errors=5)
However real tests that don't have these non-scalar types do run happily on FePy-r6.
Notes on mixed types -- the invaluable gcroot<T> template.
Mixing Native and Managed Types in C++ -- plus AutoPtr generic
A lot -- almost all -- the talk about the new Silverlight technology from Microsoft has been about the "shiny", the ability to place hevyweight UI in the browser, and whether or not it will succeed in displacing Flash in a way that Java applets never managed to (But see also here).
Somewhat lost in all this has been what the technology is, especially in the 1.1 release, currently in alpha. Of course this isn't new -- remember all the "What is .Net?" thrashing about that took place when that technology was first announced -- all talk of web services and "Hailstorm" (MSFT Passport-on-steroids) -- and what we understand by the term now over 5 years down the line
The basis of the sliverlight technology is a portable version of the CLR (.Net) framework, referred to as the Core CLR. This is the bytecode engine and a slightly cut down set of APIs, though cut down in different ways to the .Net Compact framework -- it relies on APIs not present in that version.
And then comes the good bit.
Layered on top of the CLR is the new DLR (Dynamic Language Runtime), which abstracts the flexible duck-typing behaviour seen in JavaScript, Ruby and Python -- and these (along with the inevitable VB) are the target languages for the DLR support in coming releases. Python and JavaScript (EcmaScript 3.0) are in the 1.1 alpha, with the others to follow. More... Yet more...
The DLR has also appeared in the refactoring of IronPython -- and the recent 2.0 alpha release includes the Microsoft.Scripting.dll that is at the heart of the DLR (though the current transition state is made apparent by there being a Microsoft.Scripting.Vestigial.dll representing the remains of a first cut at refactoring to separate out what is now the DLR).
Two blog posts from one of the DLR developers (who's also been involved in Jython as well as IronPython) on how dynamic objects are being modelled in the CLR
and the start of a series on how compilation is handled (DLR Trees, part 1), which shows how it is complementing the LINQ features of C# 3
With IronPython and, soon, IronRuby as first class languages for the .Net framework there seems to be some hope that the .Net == C# (or, for those who want to join a sort of Coke vs Pepsi style debate, .Net == C# or VB) status quo may actually be coming to an end.
This is a tool that had passed me by until I spotted a passing reference to it just the other day. Buried in your C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727 folder is an executable called MSBuild, which will take .*proj and .sln files and build them.
It consumes XML files in a format of which the .*proj files are a special case; and handles solutions (.sln files) as a special case. While I've not had chance to explore the ramifications of the XML build format, this appears to be Microsoft's own preferred build system and one that will bear investigation and adoption, especially for those projects (like Callisto) which use DevStudio for developer builds and thus have had it installed on their build machines, when they could have gotten by with just the .Net 2.0 Framework.
MSBuild with solutions -- how to capture the temporary script file generated from a solution; and how to actually build just one project from a solution
MSBuild with ASP.Net -- Visual Studio 2005 no longer uses project files for ASP.NET; this is how to roll your own from the solution.
Solution files and MSBuild -- Automated hoisting of project build from the solution file.
These latter look like something that could be ported into an IronPython script with ease.
…and caught up. Phew!
Now I've just finished a round of interviewing, time to let out some of the secrets. It's really about whether the candidate can think on their feet (and can work elegantly around places where they aren't familiar with detail) and knows general software engineering techniques in some depth (according to their length of experience).
Five essential phone-screen questions -- not bad at all
Job Interview 2.0, now with extra riddles -- Is moving Mt Fuji really the way you want to go? Or does it just select for those with an eye to making the solutions more complicated? Me? I'd not work for a company that uses this interview style. The 10/5/2/1 minute problem I know the answer is 1 minute faster than the obvious one using the 1-minute runner, and if I wanted to do it again, I'd write a program to solve it.
"My favorite interview question" -- it's "How might you design a program that lets people play Monopoly with each other over the internet?" Not a question that I personally have tried, but the post analyses what makes this question a good one.
HacketyHack -- whytheluckystiff has now launched a "Ruby for kids" site to complement
why's [poignant] Guide to Ruby -- the original mind-expanding course; or for more staid heads
The Pickaxe Book -- 1st edition, on line
OK, so only the first one is news -- and something we've needed for years, since the old days of hands-on Basic on a PC are long past.
Hard-core concurrency considerations
JavaScript -- Lisp in 'C's clothing -- used to demonstrate the Y combinator
You think you know JavaScript but you have no idea -- excellent presentations
An Introduction to Ranges (JavaScript/DOM)
Managed Code Custom Actions : no support on the way and here's why --why we still need to do installer custom actions the hard way
Apple's new Invisble UI
Another look at HTML5
Modularity, Ruby and doing the right thing -- cross language behaviour in Silverlight/DLR
C# and the compilation tax -- " Over the last four years, I've basically given up on the idea that .NET is a multiple language runtime." I know how he feels.
Web 2.0 is neglecting good design -- BBC News picks up on Jakob Nielsen's comments
Design by Grid -- grid layout in the post <table> age
A nostalgic look at using XMLHttpRequest with SOAP -- how to call a web service from your browser the "old-fashioned" way (i.e. how to write the code that ASP.NET AJAX does for you).
Silverlight at the command line -- Test your Silverlight applications in the real thing in scripts (the Silverlight engine is highly sandboxed, so it's going to be limited as an application context)
Silverlight : dynamic languages in the browser -- roundup article
Ruby on Rails on TDD -- a 15-step guide to test-driven web apps
JavaScript Libraries : the big picture -- high level, high speed. Also, good stuff in the comments.
Breaking out of the box -- Learn the rules and then break them for grid-based page designs.
LessMSI -- MSI unarchiver
Hackers and Fighters -- or, Theory vs. Practice
IronPython URLs -- aggregator blog
Hello, Dynamic Language Runtime-enabled World! -- IronPython 2.0 now runs on Mono. Shame that 1.2.4 came out about 24 hours before this was checked in.
Identity Providers, Authentication, Self-Issued cards
AD FS/SiteMinder integration via federation
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 up for public review
IronPython Console Syntax colouring and tab completion —
tl;dr: ipy -D -X:TabCompletion -X:ColorfulConsole
IronPython Community Edition (FePy) -- at v1.1 with added tighter integration with CPython libraries.
Reducing User Interface Friction
Color Oracle -- colour-blindness simulator
JavaScript -- the Lingua Franca of the web
1023 bit number factorized. Time to move to 2kbits, and retire those decade-old PGP keys, I think.
Form validation with Prototype+Scriptaculous -- an example
Productivity tip -- not all Pentium-4 class processors are born equal.
Phew. Caught up
Getting there…
Evolving the Web : HTML5 -- best viewed in Opera (latest public build) which supports some of the proposed new standard
JeffCroft.com: Elegant Web Typography (link to PDF)
Why "Why Functional Programming Matters" Matters -- A good thinking piece.
Consuming OpenID in Python (Django) web apps
amb special form -- non-deterministic (ambiguous) computation
"inherit" behaviour via expression in IE -- still working around the omissions
Designing Interfaces: Patterns for Effective Interaction Design
Patterns in interaction design
7 JavaScript techniques you should be using today
New Recommendations for Using Strings in Microsoft .NET 2.0
How to prevent HTML tables from becoming too wide
Conway's Game of Life in JavaScript -- utilizing the Canvas HTML extension for procedural graphics supported at least by Firefox 1.5, Safari 1.3, Opera 9.0 and later versions of these browsers. (It will not work on Internet Explorer.)
Barrier-Free Web Design -- The essence of Accessibility
The problem with Configurability -- Usability is sensible defaults, not a dial for everything.
An Initiate of the Bayesian Conspiracy
Economizing can be penny wise and pound foolish -- Is your code red, yellow or green?
Browsers will treat all HTML as HTML 5 -- Interesting conformance constraint for the new version
Programming Tip: Learn a graphics editor -- Always good to broaden your skill-set; especially when you have to fake-up UIs
The 128-bit programming challenge -- a piece of the zeitgeist.
Securing Orcas Workflow Services with& CardSpace
Programming Languages: Application and Interpretation -- e-book
Can software be just like Lego?
That catches me up to 9-May-07
So, what happens when we compile this code "-Wall"?
Not the answer you'd expect --
$ gcc -Wall test.c $ ./a.exe Whoops! $
However, there are quite a few warnings in the gcc documentation that are marked as not being controlled by -Wall -- so let's turn on a bunch of them:
$ gcc -Wall -W -Wshadow -Wpointer-arith -Wcast-qual -Wcast-align -Wwrite-strings -Wconversion -Waggregate-return -Wstrict-prototypes -Wmissing-prototypes -Wmissing-declarations -Wredundant-decls -Wnested-externs -Werror -ansi test.c test.c: In function `main': test.c:8: warning: comparison between signed and unsigned test.c: At top level: test.c:3: warning: unused parameter 'argc' test.c:3: warning: unused parameter 'argv'
Ah! That's better.
By contrast
C:\temp\unsign>cl test.c /W2 Microsoft (R) 32-bit C/C++ Optimizing Compiler Version 14.00.50727.42 for 80x86 Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. test.c Microsoft (R) Incremental Linker Version 8.00.50727.42 Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. /out:test.exe test.obj C:\temp\unsign>cl test.c /W3 Microsoft (R) 32-bit C/C++ Optimizing Compiler Version 14.00.50727.42 for 80x86 Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. test.c test.c(8) : warning C4018: '<' : signed/unsigned mismatch Microsoft (R) Incremental Linker Version 8.00.50727.42 Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. /out:test.exe test.obj C:\temp\unsign>cl test.c /W4 Microsoft (R) 32-bit C/C++ Optimizing Compiler Version 14.00.50727.42 for 80x86 Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. test.c test.c(8) : warning C4018: '<' : signed/unsigned mismatch test.c(3) : warning C4100: 'argv' : unreferenced formal parameter test.c(3) : warning C4100: 'argc' : unreferenced formal parameter Microsoft (R) Incremental Linker Version 8.00.50727.42 Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. /out:test.exe test.obj
The Microsoft compiler takes the unsigned comparison as a level 3 warning, and that's what you get by default from DevStudio, with the unused argument warning at level 4.
So what's going on here?
Well in the comparison, the unsigned int is a "larger" type so a is promoted; but unsigned int is not actually any larger in terms of bits, so the bit value is preserved, and so a is interpreted as 2^32-1. Which is slightly larger than 1.
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