Its well worth watching for any developer – ‘genius’ or not:

Apart from having a marathon horror film binge this holiday I’m also starting conquering that procrastination and doing a few computing courses. I’ve already got a degree in software engineering but it feels a long time ago now and it feels about time for a brush up.

Now OpenCourseware is great but most of the courses have huge gaps in the materials. For example many of those listed will have very abstract and cryptic lecture notes that don’t really make sense unless you were at the lecture or have the additional materials they provided. Case in point this image of lecture notes on “phonetics” in the “Introduction to Linguistics” course. This isn’t a quiz/test – these are notes.

So having been scared away from linguistics I chose some courses that had more comprehensive notes and found the following gems:

• Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs – This seems to be an all-rounder for new students to the computing courses at MIT but what I really liked about it was their teaching of Scheme!
• Introduction to Algorithms – I hated algorithms at uni but I wanted to give it another go and this one seems pretty comprehensive.
• Computer System Engineering – This is another course that seems to cover a hell of a lot of ground. From the description: engineering of computer software and hardware systems: techniques for controlling complexity; strong modularity using client-server design, virtual memory, and threads; networks; atomicity and coordination of parallel activities; recovery and reliability; privacy, security, and encryption…..etc.

Well that’s a bunch of fascinating numbers. I think we can take away from that a simple fact: Internet Explorer is shit.

Test your browser with HTML5Test

dZone Snippets

Part of the massive dZone network who also run jobs boards, social news, etc.

• URL: http://snippets.dzone.com
• Pros: huge membership, massive selection, solid brand.
• Cons: interface needs improvement.

Snipplr

• URL: http://www.snipplr.com
• Pros: Huge selection of snippets.
• Cons: suffers from spam and neglect.

ByteMyCode

Only a small selection compared to the others mentioned earlier. Nice looking site though.

• URL: http://www.bytemycode.com
• Pros: interface
• Cons: small numbers

Snipt

• Pros: clean interface and easy sharing features.
• Cons: not a huge database.
• URL: http://snipt.org

PasteBin

One of the oldest services on the net and you can tell with a mature set of features and large database.

• Pros: plugins for various browsers.
• Cons: Not much.
• URL: http://pastebin.com

Pastie

A Rails app and I suppose the opposite to dpaste below.

• Pros: Clean, basic.
• Cons: Basic.
• URL: http://pastie.org/

GitHub Gist

For a relative newcomer this service has grown massively. It helps to be a part of one of the largest developer communities on the web – Github. Not only do you get to put your code snippet up but its also version checked too – using Git obviously.

• Pros: Each snippet is also a Git repo.
• Cons: Not as feature-packed as other services like Pastebin. Ticks all the boxes.
• URL: http://gist.github.org

DPaste

Purely for sharing code and originally developed by and for Django developers.

• Pros: Simple.
• Cons: VERY simple. Snippets deleted after 7 days.
• URL: http://dpaste.com

Screw the Scientific Method!!

Notes:

• Tabs may be rendered differently on different editors and systems.  So they make for less friendly code sharing.
• Its interesting to note that the ones using tabs all have histories of mental instability, cannibalism, Morris Dancing, witchcraft and heresy.

Clear win for Spaces, which happens to be what I use.

switch (mIntegrationDirection)
{
   case InventoryIntegrationDirection.DoTheSameChangeInShop:
      DoTheSameChangeInShop(GetChangedDataFromInventory(mLastSynchDate));
      break;

   case InventoryIntegrationDirection.DoTheSameChangeInInventory:
      DoTheSameChangeInInventory(GetChangedDataFromShop(mLastSynchDate));
      break;

   case InventoryIntegrationDirection.DoTheSameChangeInShopThenDoTheSameChangeInInventoryForNotChangedDataInInventory:
      DoTheSameChangeInShopThenDoTheSameChangeInInventoryForNotChangedDataInInventory(
	   GetChangedDataFromInventory(mLastSynchDate),
	   GetChangedDataFromShop(mLastSynchDate));
      break;

   case InventoryIntegrationDirection.DoTheSameChangeInInventoryThenDoTheSameChangeInShopForNotChangedData:
      DoTheSameChangeInInventoryThenDoTheSameChangeInShopForNotChangedData(
	   GetChangedDataFromShop(mLastSynchDate),
	   GetChangedDataFromInventory(mLastSynchDate));
      break;

   default:
      break;
}

Read how this travesty occurred at DailyWTF

For example take the array of Mac blogging apps out there: Ecto, MarsEdit, Blogo, MacJournal, etc, etc…

Paid for applications and yet they all have a woeful array of features when compared to the free Scribefire Firefox addon.

Scribefire includes Youtube  and Flickr integration, article searching, WYSIWYG/HTML/Preview panes, integrated promotion tools, ad serving tools and much much more besides. And did I mention this is all FREE?!

While the Mac community are crying out for substandard apps they paid for to release feature X for their fave blogging app. Why? Why not just switch to Scribefire and save yourself the heart ache?

Or am I missing something?

If you’ve not seen before then I strongly recommend a visit.

Django is HUGE in Russia

I have no idea why this is.  Maybe because Django sounds slightly Russian?  No thats ridiculous.  But just look at those numbers – compared to the US and the UK (doesn’t appear) its huge!

Why do the Russians Love Django?

Rails is in Decline

The Google searches tell no lies.  It seems that Rails is in decline while Django is on a steady and solid incline.  Vive le Django.

My Heart Bleeds

Everyone Forgot How to Use PHP’s substr Function

A collective dose of amnesia seems to have struck the world as the search term “substr” seems to have had an 80% increase in recent years.

Surely its Not Hard?

Scala? Don’t bother.

Scala was big a few months back with a sudden influx of tutorials and discourse posted to dZone.  Unfortunately looking at the graph its pointless bothering with it.  On top of that Guido doesn’t think much of it either – and he knows his languages.

See that Bottom Feeder? Scala.

Canadians Love Merb

I like Canadians.  They were never quite so anti-British as the Americans.  They still have our Queen as their head of State and have none of the beligerant crankiness of republicans in America and Australia.  Its no suprise then that they like Merb – a lot.  Merb is of course ‘Rails-that-works’.

God Save the Queen

Well I’m sure you’ve all enjoyed these stunning eye-openers.  If I find anymore then I’ll be sure to let you all know.  In the mean time – have a good day.

• Debian – A proper man’s OS and although the installer doesn’t look friendly its got everything you’ll ever need.
• Ubuntu – Fisher Price OS for children and senile grandparents.
• Mint Linux – Ubuntu with some wicked guns and lasers and whirring wizzy bits that go some way to redeeming Ubuntu.
• Mepis - Gone a bit dull and boring.
• NetBSD - Rock solid slut that’ll work everywhere.
• Windows XP – Does its job and its a hell of a lot better than Vista.
• Windows Vista – Lets not go there.
• RedHat – Overly expensive cumbersome bull.
• Mac OSX – Made for homosexual web designers and hairstylists.
• Slackware – For people who grew up programming with punch cards.
• Gentoo - Tries to be clever and fast but fails miserably and slowly.
• FreeBSD – Just because part of MacOSX is based on it doens’t make it MacOSX!
• Haiku OS – The answer to: “What is the sound of one hand clapping”.