Industrial Intellect

An introduction to Objective-C

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 03:47:55 -0700

An introduction to Objective-C:

a fundamentals course

What if the Secret to Success Is Failure? - NYTimes.com

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 15:25:34 -0700

What if the Secret to Success Is Failure? - NYTimes.com

TimeBoxed - A Mac timer to get things done and be more productive

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 04:00:27 -0700

TimeBoxed - A Mac timer to get things done and be more productive:

pomodoro

Breaking things down to Atoms - Nick's Blog

Thu, 04 Nov 2010 03:18:34 -0700

Breaking things down to Atoms - Nick's Blog:

atom feeds.

[Audio] – Laurie Anderson – “It’s Not the Bullet That Kills You…” (1976) « Musicophilia Daily

Tue, 19 Oct 2010 11:39:24 -0700

[Audio] – Laurie Anderson – “It’s Not the Bullet That Kills You…” (1976) « Musicophilia Daily

HTML5 Canvas Element Guide

Wed, 13 Oct 2010 13:26:29 -0700

HTML5 Canvas Element Guide:

basic canvas tutorial

Smoothie Chart tutorial

Wed, 13 Oct 2010 13:26:29 -0700

Smoothie Chart tutorial:

streaming graphs library for javascript

jQuery Fundamentals

Wed, 06 Oct 2010 20:28:50 -0700

jQuery Fundamentals:

book, looks pretty capable.

Go the language, not the game.

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:31:00 -0800

Go is a C-derived language which implements a lot of modern programming language features in a clean and straightforward way.

Developed at Google by a team that includes Rob Pike and Ken Thompson.

Notable features

strongly typed

Go allows for the creation of composite types and supports the notion of interfaces. It implements the typical array of low-level types including byte, int, int64 and a native string type that is immutable as well as array and map types. This allows compile time type checking and makes defining complex types straightforward.

package namespaces

Packages declare their name and functions, variables and types can all be either private or exported so as to be available to other packages, this is declared by the capitalization of the objects name.

multiple return values from a function

Functions can return more than one value. This is declared as part of the function definition and is checked by the compiler. This allows for very clean treatment of errors and flags, and potentially a much more clean and readable way to write complex code.

type interfaces

Interfaces can be declared and functions can be defined which operate on arguments of any type that implements a given interface. This allows for relatively straightforward polymorphism of functions. In some respects similar to C++ templates, only much simpler.

standard C printf semantics

The format string syntax was mostly ported directly from C with the addition of the %T operator which prints the type of the object handed to it, and the %v operator which prints the contents of a variable regardles of it’s type (recursively for composite types).

native support for concurrency

There is a type channel which provides a message box style interface to concurrent routines, known as goroutines. Any function call can be called in a concurrent fashion. This means that expensive computations can be run in parallel or in the background. The unified thread model looks like it could be a real winner in making powerful concurrency primitives available in a clean straightforward syntax, so that they can be reasoned about with the minimal effort required. This will probably be the hardest part of the language for most programmers to understand, but most of the difficulty lies in understanding concurrency, not in the syntax of the language.

First Impressions

This is a very clean and powerful language. It’s a direct descendant of C with elements of Haskell, OCaml, python and erlang visible as influences. It seems like yet another attempt to make a “better C than C”, and from a first shallow glance it seems like a clear winner. Objective-C fans (mac programmers) will probably sniff that it’s nothing new, and that clean message passing semantics have been available to programmers for decades. In many respeccts Go is not a new language, it will seem very familiar to anyone who has used C or C descended languages; and most of the advanced features that it adds to C are implemented in other languages. Go strikes a good balance between legibility, low-level functionality and high-level programming features. It will have a strong appeal to programmmers who are interested in the type safety and concurrency friendly features of Haskell, but want to access them in a more familiar C-like syntax.

10 Tips on Writing Hero-worthy Error Messages

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 07:29:04 -0700

10 Tips on Writing Hero-worthy Error Messages

RkTaggy - example Google Wave robot

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 00:07:22 -0700

RkTaggy - example Google Wave robot:

basic example of wave robot

mapping the interfaces between realtime and permanent storage

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 20:38:17 -0700

mapping the interfaces between realtime and permanent storage:

Events happen in the world. Results of events are sensed by sensor and communicated to processors, processors create records of sensor readings in memory. And those records are what is fixed in permanent storage media.

TheFunded.com: Complete Set of Founder Friendly Legal Docs

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 01:21:51 -0700

TheFunded.com: Complete Set of Founder Friendly Legal Docs:

Is there such a thing as too founder friendly?

Cheat Sheets - PacketLife.net

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 01:22:39 -0700

Cheat Sheets - PacketLife.net:

bunch of really well done networking cheat sheets.

NaCl - Networking and cryptography library.

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 10:39:28 -0700

NaCl - Networking and cryptography library.:

This is very interesting to me. One of the things I have thought a lot about recently is the disconnect between the effectiveness of cryptography and the ease with which it can be misused and misunderstood. It seems to me that productive work on the user interface to cryptographic operations could produce widespread benefits.

I’m glad to see that low level steps in this direction are happening.

Circos - visualize genomes and genomic data

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 15:38:11 -0700

Circos - visualize genomes and genomic data:

Must look for creating cool visualizations of lots of data.

Effects of Flash/SSD on PostgreSQL - PostgreSQL East 2009 - Jignesh Shah's Weblog

Fri, 10 Apr 2009 21:38:50 -0700

Effects of Flash/SSD on PostgreSQL - PostgreSQL East 2009 - Jignesh Shah's Weblog:

(via kanbe)

I saw Jigdesh give his presentation at East and was very impressed by his thoroughness and scientific approach to measuring performance for Postgresql. He describes the different conditions under which SSDs can improve performance, and covers the areas where they are irrelevant to performance.

This is another instance of a QR code; encoding the URL of this...

Fri, 10 Apr 2009 16:11:30 -0700

This is another instance of a QR code; encoding the URL of this blog. QR Codes are but one instance of embedding computation in the physical world.

Is Facebook a Cult? - ReadWriteWeb

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 19:25:26 -0700

Is Facebook a Cult? - ReadWriteWeb:

Marshall Kirkpatrick offers a very interesting question; is Facebook a cult?

He points out some of the relevant similarities, the groupthink, the social isolation from non-facebookers, the use of subtle social pressures to enforce norms.

Definitely meshes with the creepy feeling that facebook gives me; which is why I am a facebook refusenik.

via chart suggestions

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 10:50:27 -0700

via chart suggestions