I came across a version of Dijkstra’s “Goto Considered Harmful” annotated by David Tribble. A lot has changed since then; the annotated version is perfect for acquiring the right context to read the paper. There was a particular line by the annotator that continues to amuse me: Dijkstra seems to imply that iterative looping (inductive) …
Category Archives: tech talk
Native Client at UWCS lecture
Available for streaming and download, Google Native Client presented at UW’s computer science lecture series. Covers the restrictions on x86 code, new alignment rules, and performance on various benchmarks. 5% overhead, that’s nothing compared to many other sandboxing techniques. Native client is 50KB download? Wild. It really is just a gatekeeper, runtime library separate. Of …
Meijer throws down!
Okay, not really. Saw this latest on LtU, regarding the recent JVM conference. Erik Meijer was talking his recent work on the .Net Reactive Framework, and had this to say in passing: And of course you say, “Erik, [why] are you making a big deal? Category s–t like that. The design pattern book fifty years …
ICFP Competition
International Conference for Functional Programming. Each year, they hold a conference on topics in programming language and functional programming techniques.
50 in 50 at JAOO
[repost, from fall 2008] I caught this talk on earlier blogs – well, not so much a technical talk as a performance. Richard P. Gabriel and Guy L. Steele wax poetic on 50 programming languages in 50 statements each of 50 words. “50-in-50” http://blip.tv/file/1472720 That is all.
CLOS circa 1987, Dynamic Dispatch in C++/C#
As reported by programming musings, http://www.archive.org/details/DanielGB1987 Common Lisp Object Standard presentation, by Daniel G Bobrow. Some reflections: Fast Multiple Dispatch "[for dynamic method resolution] A cache of 1000 entries is hit 98% of the time". Assuming this is accurate, it explains how you could get by with the cached virtual dispatch lookup that the desktop …
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Static typing where possible, dynamic typing when needed
From the discussion paper by authors Erik Meijer and Peter Drayton, as reported on Lambda the Ultimate: Unfortunately there is a discontinuity between contemporary statically typed and dynamically typed languages as well as a huge technical and cultural gap between the respective language communities. The paper goes on to list 8 different static or …
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PDC 2008 picks
Some of my favorite picks from PDC 2008: IronRuby: the Right Language for the Right job – I didn’t realize how well developed the DLR and dynamic languages on the CLR really were. And on that… Deep Dive: Dynamic Languages in Microsoft .Net – it’s a dynamic language infrastructure that, out of the box, looks …