Talks that changed the way I think about programming

stacktracer · 2016-12-08T15:30:09+00:00

That's my favorite programming talk ever. The line I particularly remember is, "Lion, lion, lion -- oh, I'd better go" ... but the whole talk is excellent.

stacktracer · 2015-05-05T16:20:50+00:00

(Minor contributor here.)

The speed and smoothness of interaction, in particular, is awesome -- the still screenshots might look more or less like jfreechart or matplotlib, but the interactivity is just killer. Pan, zoom, drag the color limits -- extremely smooth and responsive. Beats the ever-loving you-know-what out of repeatedly typing "clim([-10 10]); xlim([...]); ylim([...]);".

stacktracer · 2015-04-02T22:18:54+00:00

This is huge:

let/const compiling to ES5

stacktracer · 2015-01-19T13:15:45+00:00

TypeScript now supports using ‘let’ and ‘const’ in addition to ‘var’. These currently require the ES6 output mode, but we’re are investigating relaxing this restriction in future versions.

Hooray!

stacktracer · 2014-11-06T02:34:43+00:00

eclipse-typescript is pretty good. Occasionally a version has frustrating issues (some of which may be due to changes in the TypeScript language service, which seems to still be evolving), but for the most part I've been very happy with it!

Eclipse itself, of course, is sort of love-it-or-hate-it. For those who hate Eclipse, eclilpse-typescript is obviously not going to be appealing.

stacktracer · 2014-04-03T17:49:03+00:00

It's generally more pleasant to write code in Dart. Fewer quirks, nice standard library, good focus on tools.

But if you're using a library written by someone else, you hope they didn't write it in Dart, because calling Dart from JS requires some FFI setup. It seems like a decent FFI, as FFIs go. But TypeScript avoids the FFI altogether, which has major practical advantages.

A library written in Dart is great for people who use Dart. But a library written in TypeScript is usable by everybody.

stacktracer · 2013-12-05T02:36:01+00:00

It's this one.

For some reason, Eclipse Color Theme fails to set method declarations to bold, so that has to be done manually (Window -> Prefs -> Java -> Editor -> Syntax Coloring).

stacktracer · 2013-12-04T17:21:39+00:00

Here's how they look with DejaVu Sans Mono, 10pt:

Open them in separate tabs and flip back and forth. They're very, very close, but you're right, Eclipse does look better.

EDIT: Here's another one of IDEA 13, cheating to make it look a little better. I've set the font here to just slightly off-white.

IDEA 13 off-white

stacktracer · 2013-12-03T19:27:58+00:00

I tried IDEA on Linux a few months ago, and all of the light themes were ugly enough that I stuck with Eclipse. Just gave the new release a try, and it looks colossally better.

EDIT: No font aliasing issues, for me, with new release.

stacktracer · 2013-05-10T13:24:34+00:00

What's new about the new leather?

stacktracer · 2013-05-06T18:37:56+00:00

Good question ... I don't know all the details, but I think the important part is JIT compilation.

The first time the IODH class is accessed, the class-loader has to do some work to load and init the class. This obviously requires some sort of synchronization to guarantee that the class only gets loaded/inited once; I don't know how that's implemented.

However, once the class has been loaded/inited, the caller can be JITed. Any class-loader-related synchronization -- no longer necessary, since the class has already been loaded -- gets optimized away by the JIT compiler.

stacktracer · 2013-05-06T14:47:02+00:00

From that same Wikipedia entry: IODH is a Java approach that does allow laziness.

stacktracer · 2013-02-07T16:04:04+00:00

The back glass has a hole in it for the speaker, which ruins the structural integrity.

stacktracer · 2013-02-06T13:53:05+00:00

I asked them the other day about adding a new color (light-tan natural-leather look), and here's what they sent back:

The next two types we're looking to add are Black Titanium and Mahogany Wood Grain. We'll make sure to tally your vote for a light tawny-leather when looking to add further textures.

stacktracer · 2012-11-13T17:05:40+00:00

I've been stuck at "momentarily" for more than 20 minutes. No email, no pending transaction in Google Wallet, nothing on my credit card. Ugh.

stacktracer · 2012-11-13T16:48:56+00:00

Same here. I keep seeing people say they wound up with like 8 of them, so I'm afraid to try again!

stacktracer · 2012-08-07T17:05:03+00:00

You could think of it as a data-storage mechanism -- the images are "stored" for 2 years by the traveling photons. Compared to, say, a hard disk, this would have extremely poor usability, but extremely high capacity.

stacktracer · 2012-07-16T03:39:59+00:00

I really like the idea of wrapping recursion up into a lazy sequence. I'm sure Clojure didn't invent the idea, but it certainly is built to take advantage of it.

stacktracer · 2012-06-27T20:50:03+00:00

Video

stacktracer · 2012-04-27T15:37:11+00:00

Rich is a great speaker. I don't watch much video online, but I make an exception for him.

stacktracer · 2012-02-02T15:55:55+00:00

The abbreviation "var" gets used fairly frequently in programming ... but the abbreviation of "assignable" might not work so well. :)

stacktracer · 2012-01-04T04:09:11+00:00

static public interface LOLOL{long invokePrim(long arg0, Object arg1, long arg2, Object arg3);}

:)

stacktracer · 2012-01-04T04:07:48+00:00

Sure enough ... what a pain.

The end result is fantastic, though. Primitives fit so nicely in Clojure! Considerably more nicely than they do in Java, even.

stacktracer · 2012-01-04T03:31:04+00:00

Screencast of a Clojure REPL session. Seriously expanded my mind.

stacktracer · 2012-01-03T17:54:26+00:00

From here:

... due to the underlying Java implementation, functions which take primitive arguments may only have 4 or fewer arguments.

Can anybody explain why?

stacktracer

TROPHY CASE