Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Peter Van Roy: Programming Paradigms for Dummies

To quote Lambda the Ultimate:
This chapter gives an introduction to all the main programming paradigms, their underlying concepts, and the relationships between them. We give a broad view to help programmers choose the right concepts they need to solve the problems at hand. We give a taxonomy of almost 30 useful programming paradigms and how they are related. Most of them differ only in one or a few concepts, but this can make a world of difference in programming. We explain briefly how programming paradigms influence language design, and we show two sweet spots: dual-paradigm languages and a definitive language. We introduce the main concepts of programming languages: records, closures, independence (concurrency), and named state. We explain the main principles of data abstraction and how it lets us organize large programs. Finally, we conclude by focusing on concurrency, which is widely considered the hardest concept to program with. We present four little-known but important paradigms that greatly simplify concurrent programming with respect to mainstream languages: declarative concurrency (both eager and lazy), functional reactive programming, discrete synchronous programming, and constraint programming. These paradigms have no race conditions and can be used in cases where no other paradigm works. We explain why for multi-core processors and we give several examples from computer music, which often uses these paradigms.
The concurrency stuff looks interesting.

40+ Essential Front End Web Developer Cheat Sheets | tripwire magazine

There's a ton!

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Steve Smith and SOLID

Since I missed Steve Smith's presentation at the last .NET SIG, and there is nothing posted (yet), here's a link to the SOLID principles that he was talking about।
[6/22/09 update: here's the link to his presentation.
And a link to Uncle Bob.]

Saturday, June 06, 2009

Rio by Vice Magazine




Ask any self-respecting carnivore what to eat in Rio, and they’ll tell you about the rodizios. A rodizio is more than just a meal, it’s an elaborate battle of wits between you and the doe-eyed service staff, as they waft meat under your nose. You indicate your desire to stick or twist with a doublesided card; green meaning “feed me” and red meaning “get away from me, peasant.” Also, when in Rio, don’t forget to find a juice bar, and ask for an açai smoothie. It might look like something Barney the Dinosaur would leave in the toilet, but the Amazonian berries served with ice eradicate all traces of a hangover you got from drinking too much Brahma beer in approximately 30 seconds.



For a true carioca sleeping experience, head in search of the notorious love motels. Paid by the hour, motels are as ubiquitous and well-frequented as churches, with each one even given an individual star rating for their level of service. For a dollar or two per hour, you get your bog-standard plastic sheets and herpes on tap, but if you want to quite literally splash out, the five-star deluxe motels have heart-shaped water beds, sex harnesses, a hot-tub fit for a futebol team and gimp-suits on room service.



Forget hanging out, spend as much time and money as you can buying as much cheap tat as you can get. It’s best to avoid the enormous identikit shopping malls, and take to the streets if you want some weird stuff. Also, look out for the dudes selling racks of bootleg funk carioca CDs. The thrift shops of Lapa are the place to go for the Bonde Do Role look. You can also put together a nice collection of vintage Playboys, which, if you’re lucky, will have had just one careful owner.



In the south zone, there’s a small handful of underground clubs, such as Moo, Dama De Ferro and Fosfobox where you can join an invariably tattooed and bisexual crowd in watching big name DJs or, if you’re really lucky, Madoninha. She’s a blonde dwarf who sings literally translated renditions of Madge classics, such as “Como uma virgem. Oh!” If you want to learn more about “ginga”, the fluidity and movement of Brazil, watch the short film Movimento at brahma.com

Thursday, June 04, 2009

Quality Circles and Communication -- brief synopses

Useful information for my job.

Very important point regarding the essence of Kaizen (emphasis added):
Much of the success of Kaizen came about because the system encouraged many small-scale suggestions that were cheap and quick to implement. They also came from shop-floor employees - who had a detailed appreciation of the benefit each change might make to the process concerned. By implementing many small improvements, the overall effect was substantial.

Their communication link has the following important point on communication, which point may have been missing from the communication team project charter:
Co-ordination of departments, teams and groups - e.g. making sure that marketing, production and administration know what each other is doing, when and why