See Joel On Software: The Duct Tape Programmer: he lauds the programmer who gets stuff done with "duct tape and WD-40".
Here's why: "Shipping is a feature. A really important feature. Your product must have it."
Dave Drake sent the link along with the following:
This "speaks of coding for …
more ...The USPS ZIP codes have a multi-part structure. The first three digits are a prefix that defines a sectional center facility.
The USPS table L005 3-Digit ZIP Code Prefix Groups—SCF Sortation maps clusters of ZIP3 prefixes to Facility and State codes. The following URL has this table.
A co-worker has mistakenly cloned a directory tree rather than link to it. Then they made some number of changes to files in that directory.
Your job is to compute a directory-level difference between an official copy and the changes they made. Sadly, you can't trivially …
Good stuff in ComputerWorld: Partnerships can Go Too Far.
"Consider vendor innovation. As companies become large and entrenched, they typically become more risk-averse and less creative, often rejecting ideas that challenge conventional wisdom."
This is really only half the story.
Programming is hard -- really hard. Read EWD …
Upgraded a VM to Fedora 11 recently.
This -- it turns out -- comes with Python 2.6 installed.
It is, however, an incomplete build. To do anything, I had to install a some additional Python packages. Specifically, the "libraries and header files needed for Python development". Also, IIRC, the tkinter package …
more ...I cannot believe that people still consider top-down, uni-dimensional, taxonomic hierarchies useful.
This Stack Overflow question (REST: How to Create a Resource That Depends on Three or More Resources of Different Types?) repeats an assumption. Essentially the confusion comes from assuming that "URI's map directly to a hierarchy".
I think …
more ...See this in Boing Boing: http://www.boingboing.net/2009/09/11/hairy-type.html
They're talking about NodeBox, something I'd never heard of before.
"NodeBox is a Mac OS X application that lets you create 2D visuals (static, animated or interactive) using Python programming code and export them as a …
more ...A recent request for an API quality check sent me into a paroxysm.
The request seemed simple enough. They had two varieties of API design: varietal M had a lot of methods, each with relatively few parameters. Varietal P had a few methods, but each had a boat-load of parameters …
more ...The first issue is that the RDBMS code base in ancient. The second issue is that we keep pushing the envelope on the RDBMS model; examples include OLAP and RDF triple-stores.
Some folks want to say "reports …
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