Wow… a lot of traffic about macworld… Keynote , Safari , and a 17″ Powerbook. oh my!
The most interesting news (to me, at least) - Safari being an open source web browser based on KHTML… awesome to see Apple take on something like this.
Got asked about a roman numeral parser during an interview. I have to say that I don’t mind when the process of obtaining employment plays into my strengths. The process was quite similar to a previous process where I wrote a spoken numerics converter. Not only that, there were many similar qualities to my int parsing routines. With that in mind I think I did fairly well. The goal at the time was to produce a routine to validate numbers up to roman numeral 30 or XXX. Didn’t take long, but in the end, I had left out many different validation techniques. I really wanted to revisit the problem since I had the code correctly written in my mind. Check the algorithms out, they should handle just about anything you can throw at them at this point. If you find issues, please feel free to submit your problems, since I’d love to solidfy things a bit more. Apparently roman numeral parsing has great application in reading dates.
Roman Numeral Parsing: Code Only: Bidirectional roman numeral parsing. [EDIT: Added alternate parsing routines and performance fixes]
Integer to Spoken Numerics: Code-Only: int/long/double conversion to Spoken Numerics
Phone Number to Words: Trying my hand at the old Phone number to Words teaser project!
Integer Parsing: DWC.Algorithms.NumberUtilities
Ugh… i know we have all heard it before. I’m the IT administrator for my home network, I have to debug all my friends and family’s tech problems. The latest. My wireless network is flaky downstairs. On top of that, the cablemodem drops it’s IP address and refuses to renew unless I hard boot the bugger. I finally moved my wireless hub… just a little. My reception downstairs went from a “low” or “no signal” or a “good” (4 bars!) wahoo!
Next, of course, is my mother-in-law’s home computer. Here is a great example of why computers are horrible. She turned on her computer, got some wierd error about running “scandisk” (yes, I know what it is, but she doesn’t)
A file is an assembly if and only if it’s managed and it contains an Assembly entry in its CLR metadata.
Determining by hand
A fast way to determine whether a file is an assembly is to run ildasm.exe on it. If it immediately gives an error saying that it may not be a PE file, then it’s not a managed file. But, if it is an assembly, then ildasm will show an entry for the Assembly definition (“.assembly“ in the MANIFEST window or at the bottom of the original window).
Determining programmatically
From unmanaged code, you can call GetAssemblyFromScope() on the IMetaDataAssemblyImport interface for the file. If it returns S_OK, it’s an assembly. If it returns CLDB_E_RECORD_NOTFOUND, it’s not an assembly.
From managed code, if AssemblyName.GetAssemblyName(), Assembly.Load*(), etc. succeeds when given that file, then it’s an assembly. If the load failed with a BadImageFormatException, then it may not be an assembly. There are other reasons, however, why that exception may have been thrown (maybe it’s an assembly but could not be loaded because it has an incorrect format). Coming soon in v2, if the hresult for BadImageFormatException is COR_E_ASSEMBLYEXPECTED, then it’s because it’s not an assembly. Catch the exception and call System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal.GetHRForException() to get its hresult to find out.
Note that this assumes that you are not concerned about performance. If you are concerned about that, then the way to op (more…)
It’s old news that the Visual Studio Express Editions are out, and free for a year. You, with your fancy MSDN subscription, probably looked right over this good bit of news. I don’t know how many times I’ve needed VS while away from my computer, but didn’t have the time to download the 3+ gig image and install it.
Do yourself a favor and grab the CD images right now, burn them to disc and throw them in your bag. Each image includes:
I recently made the verbal error of saying that for the new BASE element changes in IE 7 you had to put your tag inside the HEAD element. Well, someone pointed out to me rather quickly that on Firefox you could just have a bare TITLE and BASE followed by some body content and away you go the page would validate and parse properly. Well, we do the same thing in IE, and it is called implied tags in HTML. There are some gotchas though.
First, I’ll start with the trick… What in the heck is IE doing?
<HTML id=”dumpInternals”><TITLE></TITLE><BASE href=”foo”><BUTTON onClick=”alert(dumpInternals.outerHTML)”>Click Me!</BUTTON></HTML>
That is your boilerplate. When you click on your button there you’ll find that IE is actually putting the TITLE/BASE in the implied HEAD of the document and then putting the BUTTON into the implied BODY. Good stuff, and the document is still perfectly valid. Issues can arise when you do this though because you aren’t necessarily realizing what elements belong in the HEAD and which belong in the BODY and so you might terminate your HEAD enclosure early and put a bunch of random elements that don’t belong in the BODY into the BODY.
This won’t look right without your IE 7 Beta 1, since the BASE element is going to wrap a bunch of stuff, but you can get the gist. The below will show you that the second BASE ended up inside of the BODY. That isn’t good, we don’t look for BASE elements there and it won’t get used. (Read my previous post on IE 6 behavior and you’ll see that it used to get used because of some container magic, but not anymore, we are compliant).
<HTML id=”dumpInternals”><TITLE></TITLE><BASE href=”foo”><BUTTON onClick=”alert(dumpInternals.outerHTML)”>Click Me!</BUTTON><BASE href=”foo”></HTML>
Custom Software SolutionsSolid design and Software Development using the Agile Programming approach.www.multisoftgroup.comThe little b project is an effort to provide an open source language which allows scientists to build mathematical models of complex systems. The initial focus is systems biology. The goal is to stimulate widespread sharing and reuse of models.
The little b language is designed to allow biologists to build models quickly and easily from shared parts, and to allow theorists to program new ways of describing complex systems. Currently, libraries have been developed for building ODE models of molecular networks in multi-compartment systems such as cellular epithelia.
Little b is based in Common Lisp and contains mechanisms for rule-based reasoning, symbolic mathematics and object-oriented definitions. The syntax is designed to be terse and human-readable to facilitate communication. The environment is both interactive and compilable.
Yet another biological DSL.
As usual, it is best to start by looking at some sample models.
In early June, we will launch a new social software service for technical professionals called Claimspace (codename, “Rapport”), which will join Tagspace , Blogs , and Forums as the newest member of the Microsoft.Community family. Our development lead, Doug , mentioned Claimspace a few weeks ago so I figured I’d follow up.
Tagspace enables you to say, ‘I found this resource and it appears to be worthy of my attention.’
Conversely, Claimspace will enable you to say, ‘I created this resource, wish to be recognized for it on these terms ___, and I hope you find it worthy of your attention. What do you think?’
What is Claimspace, exactly?
Claimspace is a decentralized, folksonomical resource* evaluation and recommendation system for technical professionals. Claimspace will enable you to take credit for your great ideas and gain recognition for yourself and your valuable contributions, wherever you go**, on the Web. Claimspace will provide a structured and simple way to build social capital, quantify its value, and establish credibility, on your terms. To participate in Claimspace, all you have to do is create and deploy or respond to an xClaim, anywhere on the Web.
*In this context, a “resource” is any item on the Web that is URI addressable. Conceptually, we divide resources into two groups: static and dynamic. A static resource is a resource that does not change. Static resources include Web pages, podcasts, videos, & etc. A dynamic resource is representative of a resource that produces static resources. Dynamic resources include such things as people and RSS feeds. How is Claimspace “folksonomical”? You can write anything you want in an xClaim; absolutely anything. We’re not your parents and we do not impose a claim taxonomy.
**In our first release, Claimspace will be usable only in the context of our new Blogs and Forums. 6-8 weeks later, we plan to extend support for the creation and deployment of xClaims on practically any Web page to which you have write access, on the Web.
Via Scott Rosenberg (whose book Dreaming in Code I think we mentioned here before), I learn than Susan Lammers is making the interviews from her 1984 book Programmers At Work available on the Web.
Here is how she describes the goals of her new site:
Many people have urged me over the years to do a second Programmers At Work (PAW) with a new generation of programmers and I’ve sketched out the project, made lists of new folks to feature, done inquiries, thought about going back to talk to the guys in the original edition, and other variations. Now with this web site, I will make the original interviews available online, and perhaps it will become the seed for a more “thoroughly modern” approach to the PAW series. What I’m hoping we can kindle on this site is an ongoing exploration and dynamic conversation with the “connected” community of programmers on the web about the creative process in programming.
Who better than the LtU community to contribute to such a conversation?
The first PAW interview posted to the site is the interview with Charles Simonyi , a man whose views of the future of programming, and programming languages, are mentioned here often (though not always with great enthusiasm).
Until about 2002 I had a broad disdain for most IDEs. I
just felt they were too pushy. They were always trying to take control
over my build system or the layout of my source tree. If I’m going to give
those things up, I want something in return. For a long time, the tradeoff
never seemed fair. THINK C on the Macintosh was one of the only IDE products I
actually liked.
Visual Studio.NET 2002 was the first Windows IDE that won
me over. I still use vi or emacs almost every day, but I’ll admit that I now use
Visual Studio more.
Last year I switched to Visual Studio 2005, and I love it.
This is a product that is so perfect I worry about its next release. Now that
Visual Studio 2008 is out, I’ll probably give it a try at some point soon. But
Visual Studio 2005 is sort of like “if it works, don’t mess with it”. The last
thing I want is for them to screw it up, and I can’t really imagine how
it could be better.
I guess when it comes to IDEs, I’m just not very
imaginative. :-)
I started using Eclipse a few weeks ago, and now I
understand a bit more about where Visual Studio has room to improve. I think
Eclipse is amazing, and I’ve barely scratched the surface.
So anyway, here are a couple of my current favorite Eclipse
features:
When I first installed Eclipse, the very first thing I did
was look for the menu item to start a build. When I didn’t find one, I assumed
that the Eclipse menu system must be too cluttered and counterintuitive. How
could they make such a frequently-used command so hard to find?
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