jaydubya’s blog

This article states, and I quote, “I really want to know what it is about programming, or computers in general, that makes people want to grow a beard, have long hair…”– it goes on. Hmmm… do we know any programmers that fit this description?

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We all can rest assured that when it comes to programmers, professor Dan Coulter is the real deal.

I recently found this article through Digg entitled Search Google Like an Expert.  It offers a number of tips and tricks to get the most out of Google’s search features.  Some of the most interesting: Google provides a phone book, calculator, and a dictionary.  Other search features include limiting your search to a certain historical time span, OR relationships, synonyms, and even stock updates.  It is hard to imagine trying to navigate the internet today without the use of a high-power search engine.

I got a kick out of reading this article. Granted, I probably don’t program half as well as even a “crappy” programmer; nevertheless, I found a few of the points entertaining, especially this guy’s take on UML:

• You model all your code in UML before you write it.

Enthusiastic UML modeling is typically done by those who aren’t strong coders, but consider themselves software architects anyway. Modeling tools appeal most to those who think coding can be done in conference room by manipulating little charts. The charts aren’t the design, and will never be the design, that’s what the code is for.

Basically, I just felt special because I knew what the acronym stood for.

20 years ago… 1987… the year I was born

Looking for ideas for my next blog entry, I googled “programming now versus 20 years ago”, and this came up #1. This link is to some guy named chefelf’s online journal and contains his thoughts on various topics and the ways they have changed within the last 20 years. Although not particularly well written, the article brings up some good points, and they remind me of instances in my childhood.

Regarding audio recording, tape cassettes were king. I still remember taping the radio onto cassettes through my boom box. I didn’t get my first CD until I was in 5th grade.

Videogames– My aunt had an NES and I thought she was the coolest. I remember going over to her house and playing Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt during the great flood of the Mississippi River in 1993, when my family had to drive to the next town over for clean drinking water.

Telephones– I got my first cellphone my junior year of high school; now I don’t know what I would do without one. I remember going to my Cub Scout leader’s house and seeing a caller ID for the first time. It was a standalone wall-mounted white box about the size of a brick of Ramen noodles.

Movie Rental Places– I used to love to rent VHS tapes from down the road, and I remember watching by first movie in widescreen at home and thinking it was the stupidest thing ever to have black bars on the top and bottom of the screen. Today, I can’t stand fullscreen and I don’t even own a VHS player.

The world has changed a lot in the last 20 years, especially when it comes to technology.

I found this very interesting diagram through Digg. It plots many of the high-level programming languages from the 50s to present day– all the way from Fortran to C#, Java, and PHP.

I found an interesting article through Digg regarding the programming language F#.  It is a functional programming language developed by Microsoft.  Apparently, the language is more academic and mathematically complex than C#, but is interchangeable through the .NET framework and Common Language Runtime.  The F# language was written based on the principles of lambda calculus, which was the brainchild of Alonzo Church.  The writer of this article argues that the rise of dynamic and functional programming languages and their interchangeability may very well mark the rise of a software development renaissance.

I found an interesting article at gamespy.com which describes the evolution of programming languages and the effects they have had on video game development.  It discussed the advantages of object-oriented programming over assembly languages, and it went on to discuss possibilities for further improvements in programming languages.  One example that I was able to clearly understand involved parametric polymorphism.  Although I have absolutely no idea what this concept is, I was able to understand one of their examples.

The writer of this article provided the following example:

In order to add two arrays of integers A[10] and B[10] together with today’s available programming languages, one would write the following code,

int A[10], B[10], C[10];

for (int i = 0, i < 10, i++)

C[i] = A[i] + B[i];

The writer suggests, however, that a more intuitive way to express this would simply be

C = A + B;

The writer argues that future programming languages should accommodate this level of  abstraction in order to decrease programming errors and development time.  The “+” operator should not only be able to add integers, decimals and the like, it should, by the programming language’s definition, be able to successfully operate on arrays as well.

The writer goes on to describe other ways in which future programming languages will evolve and describes why these changes are crucial to the continued improvement of video game design.

I found an interesting article through Digg that describes the history and projected future of software development.  The article explains that in the 1980s an civil/mechanical engineering model called Waterfall was applied to software development, but it failed because it was too rigid and assumed that a perfect program could be coded in the first attempt.  The article suggests a different model called Agile Methods, which stresses simplicity, feedback, and adaptation.

The article also points out an interesting evolution in the way successful programs are written.  With today’s high power programming languages and huge associated libraries, two or three highly talented programmers can out code a large group of mediocre programmers.  The article suggests that because of this, talented programmers can expect increasing salaries and job opportunities in the near future, whereas the average programmer may have to look for jobs elsewhere.  The article also suggests that software development off-shoring will not see any substantial increases in the near future.

I have been playing the videogame Halo for over 6 years now.  Whether it be Halo, Halo 2, or Halo 3, the game has always been a social tool for my friends and I.  Some of my most vivid high school memories were made playing Halo at my friend Jeff’s house at 3 in the morning.  Halo 3, released just a few weeks ago, has brought all the multiplayer fun and excitement of the previous games back, and then some.

A new addition to the multiplayer game found in Halo 3 is the Forge.  The Forge is a very powerful map editor.  It allows a person to place objects anywhere within the confines of a given map.  This leads to a nearly endless set of scenarios for multiplayer gaming.  The most impressive aspect of the Forge, however, is that it allows map and item manipulation while a game is already taking place.  This could be utilized in many different unique and entertaining ways.  For instance, for a two person team, one person could do the running and gunning while the other delivers him weapons and creates obstacles against the other team.  I have already heard many other funny stories regarding the Forge.  One person gathered all the explosives in a map together and created a chain reaction that just about incinerated everything on that map.

The Forge is a testament to the ability of today’s programmers.  Witnessing the power of programs and applications such as the Forge gets me excited about programming and the possibilities available to a person with a firm knowledge of it.  It’s nice to witness the effects of good programming in the things I experience.  It reminds me that someday I may very well be putting to use some of the disciplines I learn here at college.

I stumbled across this post through digg, and I thought everyone would get a kick out of it.  Some people can make some really wacky things in their spare time.  My personal favorite: the monitor arch.