Recent news

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…

More (2 comments)

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++…

More (5 comments)

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…

More (5 comments)

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…

More (0 comments)

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…

More (2 comments)

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…

More (4 comments)

How to Crash Erlang

Programming in the 21st Century - James Hague - June 15, 2009

Now that’s a loaded title, and I know some people will immediately see it as a personal slam on Erlang or ammunition for berating the language in various forums.  I mean neither of these.  Crashing a particular language, even so-called safe interpreted implementations, is not…

More (0 comments)

Digging Deeper into Sufficiently Smartness

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

(If you haven’t read On Being Sufficiently Smart, go ahead and do so, otherwise this short note won’t have any context.) I frequently write Erlang code that builds a list which ends up backward, so I call lists:reverse at the very end to flip it…

More (0 comments)

Let’s Take a Trivial Problem and Make it Hard

Programming in the 21st Century - James Hague - May 04, 2009

Here’s a simple problem:  Given a block of binary data, count the frequency of the bytes within it.  In C, this could be a homework assignment for an introductory class.  Just zero out an array of 256 elements, then for each byte increment the appropriate…

More (4 comments)

On Being Sufficiently Smart

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

I’m proud to have created the wiki page for the phrase sufficiently smart compiler back in 2003 or 2004.  Not because it’s a particularly good page, mind you; it has been endlessly rewritten in standard wiki fashion.  It’s one of the few cases where I…

More (0 comments)

« First  <  8 9 10 11 >