Books and Screencasts
Objects on Rails
A developer notebook on applying classic Object-Oriented principles to Ruby on Rails projects.
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Elegant Code » Book Review – Extreme Programming Explained
While it seems that Scrum and Lean are getting all the buzz in agile software development these days, why on earth would I want to pick up a book on Extreme Programming that has been written back in 1999? Well, … Continue reading
They just don’t make bugs like they used to
By the third crash, he had noticed something. The crash occurred when the attendants were changing the tapes on an unrelated drive. And furthermore, he realized that the crash occurred as soon as one of the attendants walked across a … Continue reading
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Daniel Spiewak on Monads
Anyone trying to understand monads will inevitably run into Haskell’s IO monad, and the results are almost always the same: bewilderment, confusion, anger, and ultimately Perl. via Monads Are Not Metaphors – Code Commit. A thoroughly enjoyable read, recommended.
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Tagged haskell, languages, monads, Perl, programming, ruby, scala
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Why the GPL Matters
There’s an issue that’s been bothering me for quite a while. There’s a problem in the software development world, a practice that breaks down the free and open exchange of information. This practice is widespread throughout the software development world … Continue reading
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Full Exploitation
“Full exploitation” is essentially a pattern in itself, and one we will come back to repeatedly. Whether it is applied to software development, architecture, or music composition, exploiting a good idea repeatedly can enhance the integrity and cohesion of the … Continue reading
Social Profile Services – A Summary
It has come to my attention more than once that avdi.org is sorely in need of updates and more complete info. At some point I plan on having someone design a custom home page, but until I get around to … Continue reading
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Transcending Threads
Under the hood, our “go” function actually spawns a new thread to execute our code block (the loop statement) and returns immediately to call receive on the original channel. The channel, in turn, blocks on receive until the producer has … Continue reading
The Mechanics of Web Design
I am a stereotypical developer: I can’t design my way out of a wet paper bag, and I tend to regard every potential bout with CSS with trepidation. I’m trying to get better, though. Progress is slow. I started working … Continue reading
ANN FireTower 0.0.4
For those of you using Campfire to communicate with your team, FireTower 0.0.4 is now out. New in this version is full Mac OSX support, courtesy of David T. Rogers. Install: gem install firetower Enjoy!
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Using Hashes as Caches
One of the coolest features of Ruby’s Hash class is that you can customize how it behaves when it can’t find a key. Stupid example: # Everybody knows that you can communicate with foreigners by # speaking loudly and slowly … Continue reading
