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How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Erlang’s Process Dictionary

Programming in the 21st Century - James Hague - December 09, 2009

The rise of languages based upon hash tables is one of the great surprises in programming over the last twenty years. Whatever you call them—hash tables, dictionaries, associative arrays, hash maps—they sure are useful. A majority of my college data structures courses are immediately negated.…

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Slow Languages Battle Across Time

Programming in the 21st Century - James Hague - November 14, 2009

In my previous optimistic outburst I asserted that “Even a language like Ruby, which tends to hang near the bottom of any performance-oriented benchmark, is thousands of times faster than BASICs that people were learning to program 8-bit home computers with in the 1980s.” That…

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How Did Things Ever Get This Good?

Programming in the 21st Century - James Hague - November 10, 2009

It’s an oft-repeated saying in photography that the camera doesn’t matter. All that fancy equipment is a waste of money, and good shots are from inspired photographers with well-trained eyes. Of course no one actually believes that. Clearly some photos are just too good to…

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Tales of a Former Disassembly Addict

Programming in the 21st Century - James Hague - October 18, 2009

Like many people who learned to program on home computers in the 1980s, I started with interpreted BASIC and moved on to assembly language. I’ve seen several comments over the years—including one from Alan Kay—less than thrilled with the 8-bit department store computer era, viewing…

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Micro-Build Systems and the Death of a Prominent DSL

Programming in the 21st Century - James Hague - September 27, 2009

Normally I don’t think about how to rebuild an Erlang project. I just compile a file after editing it—via the c(Filename) shell command—and that’s that. With hot code loading there no need for a linking step. Occasionally, such as after upgrading to a new Erlang…

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The World’s Most Mind-Bending Language Has the Best Development Environment

Programming in the 21st Century - James Hague - August 24, 2009

I highly recommend that all programmers learn J. I doubt most will end up using it for daily work, but the process of learning it will stick with you. J is so completely different from everything else out there, and all your knowledge of C++…

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A Personal History of Compilation Speed, Part 2

Programming in the 21st Century - James Hague - August 22, 2009

(Read Part 1 if you missed it.) My experience with IBM Pascal, on an original model dual-floppy IBM PC, went like this: I wrote a small “Hello World!” type of program, saved it, and fired up the compiler. It churned away for a bit, writing…

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The Pure Tech Side is the Dark Side

Programming in the 21st Century - James Hague - August 08, 2009

When I was writing 8-games, I was thrilled to receive each issue of the home computer magazines I subscribed to (especially this one).  I spent my time designing games in my head and learning how to make the hardware turn them into reality.  Then each…

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A Personal History of Compilation Speed, Part 1

Programming in the 21st Century - James Hague - August 02, 2009

The first compiled language I used was the Assembler Editor cartridge for the Atari 8-bit computers.  Really, it had the awful name “Assembler Editor.” I expect some pedantic folks want to interject that at an assembler is not a compiler.  At one time I would…

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Want People to Use Your Language Under Windows?  Do This.

Programming in the 21st Century - James Hague - July 28, 2009

Whenever I hear about a new programming language or new implementation of an existing language, I usually find myself trying it out.  There’s a steep cost—in terms of time and effort—in deciding to use a new language for more than just tinkering, so I’m not…

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