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These days, I mostly post my tech musings on Linkedin. https://www.linkedin.com/in/seanmcgrath/
Tuesday, December 02, 2003
Pssst, object oriented design doesn't always work
Works great in the small, less great in the large. What we need is a grand unifying theory of how applications can interact with other applications. God, as far as I'm concerned, does not play DCE with the universe:-)
Thick client web apps and blame allocation
Before getting too excited about the potential of desktop applications that connect to the web but run outside the browser, it is worth considering what might be lost. In particular, the sheer simplicity of apportioning blame, in the event of a malfunction. In a Dilbertian way, this is a very important issue and one that thin client web browsing has brought sharply into focus. The fine art of blame allocation is an ITWorld article on this subject.
Monday, December 01, 2003
XML as legacy?
This article on recent moves towards a standard binary encoding of XML contains the phrase "legacy XML".
I cannot believe how anyone would think it a good idea to have to go back to the back old days of funky binary decoders to understand the bits on the wire.
If XML bulk is killing the performance of your application (and I say "if" - you need to back that up with real data). (1) use standard text compression technology e.g. gzip. If that fails (2) consider not using XML at all.
I would prefer to see application specific syntaxes - like CSS or Relax NG compact syntax - bloom instead of letting the binary encoding genie back out of the bottle. Been there, bought the T-shirt, had troulble opening the packet and when I finally opened it, it was "corrupted" whatever that means :-)
I cannot believe how anyone would think it a good idea to have to go back to the back old days of funky binary decoders to understand the bits on the wire.
If XML bulk is killing the performance of your application (and I say "if" - you need to back that up with real data). (1) use standard text compression technology e.g. gzip. If that fails (2) consider not using XML at all.
I would prefer to see application specific syntaxes - like CSS or Relax NG compact syntax - bloom instead of letting the binary encoding genie back out of the bottle. Been there, bought the T-shirt, had troulble opening the packet and when I finally opened it, it was "corrupted" whatever that means :-)
Sunday, November 30, 2003
What the heck is "maths frameworking"?
Every John Steinbeck book on Amazon has "maths frameworking" in parentheses after the title. A publishers name? Sure looks weird.
Debugger as tool of last resort
Robert. C. Martin on the two edged sword known as "a good debugger".
Odd, but in my years programming Python, I have never felt the need to fire up the debugger that comes with it. I lived in a debugger when I was a C++ programmer.
Odd, but in my years programming Python, I have never felt the need to fire up the debugger that comes with it. I lived in a debugger when I was a C++ programmer.
Titanic herculean translations
Tim Bray points out a considered piece of language translation where the mechanical choice of 'titanic' has been eschewed for the more apposite 'herculean'. As Tim says, language is a slippery, slippery thing.
Douglas Hofstadter, of Godel, Escher, Bach fame, wrote an entire book centered around the translation of one 28 line French poem by Clément Marot.
Highly recommended if you are interested in language and the difficulty (futility?) of mechanizing the interpertation and translation of natural language.
Douglas Hofstadter, of Godel, Escher, Bach fame, wrote an entire book centered around the translation of one 28 line French poem by Clément Marot.
Highly recommended if you are interested in language and the difficulty (futility?) of mechanizing the interpertation and translation of natural language.
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