Older blog entries for judge (starting at number 20)

3 Jan 2005 (updated 4 Jan 2005 at 04:34 UTC) »
Desert Spring-Time
Me and my friend are writing an OS. Plan is to have most of it done in OCaml. I stole a simple network driver and am writing the network stack in OCaml.
I have never been so productive in my life. Here is what svn log says about my progress:
  • Monday-Tuesday - Getting network driver to work
  • Tuesday - Network driver is alive
  • Wednesday - ARP replies work
  • Thursday - ping works
  • Friday - I took a break for New Year
  • Saturday - UDP packets can be sent out
  • Sunday - DHCP negotiation works
Conclusion: coding in a functional language is addictive. It's way too much fun.

Functional Programming
joolean you are thinking of currying. I don't know much Scheme, but you can emulate currying. Here is a curry routine for JavaScript.

function curry(fun, param) {
  function n(param2) {
   return fun(param,param2)
  }
  return n;
}

iRATE
I implemented a similarity-search plugin for iRATE. With a correctly configured plugin one can pick any song and discover music that sounds similar. Unfortunately, most users find following installation instructions tiring and end up with a non-working plugin. I have to address that issue.
I wish users would just do the Right Thing(tm).

Mono
I used to be faily excited about mono. However the religious ms is gonna get us propaganda is getting on my nerves. I have no problem with Ximian making a .NET implementation. However I do find it disguisting that they are dissing Java/Sun like there is no tommorrow and portray any Microsoft vaporware as world-changing technology.
Miguels big deployment rant boils down to "in the future Microsoft will allow deploying fat client applications from the web." There is a technology that allows running fat clients with advanced 2D/3D/etc capabilities from a web browser. It's called WebStart and it has been in use for several years now.
So please remember that Miguel has a personal agenda of promoting their .NET port at the cost of distoring reality. Most of the things Miguel talks about have already been put together into Java 1.[45] and they don't require us to wait for Ximian to finish their Mono take on them.

Microsoft
Well, I had a much lower opinion on the state of java web development until I read Microsoft's own comparison of it with ASP.NET. Propaganda aside, that article says that Struts match every ASP.NET feature. That's pretty impressive given that this is coming from Microsoft.

Java
Note: I'm not a Java nut. However, I've developed an appreciation for it after seeing what the rest of the programming environments provide/require. Java is not a universal solution. It just set the standard for the currently hyped platform features. Hopefully the language hype will move on to something other than better versions of Java

Whining
ncm OSS world is not pleading for anything. It's just one "out of touch" person whining for publicity.
Most java users don't care about ESR's attention grabbing. Even Sun doesn't seem to care about him and the nonsense that comes out of him.
"Letters" like that are just PR to feed the "java sux" and "java sux, I can do it in perl" types.
In any case, if you don't belive in a particular technology, stop whining about it. Just go use anything else that you like. Nobody is forcing anyone to get warm&fuzzy feelings about Java. It's a tool, not a religion, it gets the job done.

iRATE
We released the long delayed 0.3. Currently work is being done on finishing the server and redoing the GUI.

Wireless
I've decided that in the future it just won't be worthile for me to get non-linux appliances.
Many of the current breeds of 802.11g routers run linux and can be customized like any linux box. These things are a really great & affordable way to learn about embedded linux and non-x86 architectures. They also make great platforms for exploring ideas and hobby projects. Linksys wr54g is easy to find and cheap. However asus wl500 is even cooler due to a host usb controller on it. It can work with a great number of usb gadgets. Hmm, wonder what use plugging in a usb mouse into a wireless router would be.
I suspect the same will hold for linux phones when they become generally available. Those of us who want to tinker with every software thing will find them to be much more exciting toys than silly proprietory alternatives with no room for creativity.

iRATE
We are nearing a new release. Current iRATE codebase is considerably more polished and usable than the last release.
Mockups needed - we would like to improve the UI after this release out. If you have any GUI talent, please sketch some ideas and send them(as pictures) to the mailing list. Feel free to reinvent the UI completely. We are looking for an innovative(but mainly intuitive) solution. Current UI is written by programmers and it shows.

Lunacy Cruise
On a completely unrelated note, linux lunacy people stopped by last year and did a Q&A session at my LUG.
This photo of my most wonderful woman was taken by one of the speakers. Does anybody know who the photographer was? He did a damn good job.
Pardon the silly dhtml trick.

Help wanted
Would a self-proclaimed gui-sketcher/designer do a big favour for iRATE? We need a better UI. I'd like something simple and eye pleasing. All we need is a couple of sketches, a glade mockup would be great. No java skills required, me or other developers would happily code up the gui.
Currently we really need to improve on the main window, menus and possibly options windows.
Help us revolutionize the music distribution system :)
glek.net has been updated! I have converted most of the tables to div tags and make use of CSS extensively. It's soo much nicer to have a homepage that feels like 2003.
Zealotry and fans of those other OS(rant)
I generally like to read windows-oriented websites to keep myself in touch with what's going on in the computer world. I mainly try to keep up with development-related news. This helps me ensure that I'm not using an inferior tool for a job. codeproject and activewin.com are interesting websites. One is filled with lots of smart people posting about windows-related programming and the other is filled with people who defend microsoft like their firstborn child(and occasional announcements of interesting ms stuff).
OS/vendor biggots really drive me nutts. They are (probably clueless) non-productive people who make too much noise. osnews.com has become unreadable due to ease-of-use/snappiness comments. Anyways, I decided to rant because I wanted to see some interesting development blogging about longhorn(akin to monologue). Instead I had to wade through lots of apologetic crap and open source insults at longhornblogs. I'm so mad at how unproffesional people can be sometimes.
iRATE
The current CVS is very solid. We are slowly closing on all of the release-critical bugs. Please try out CVS or webstart "releases" and report bugs.
On an unrelated note. It seems that some iRATE users are buying CDs by artists discovered with iRATE. This is pretty impressive because we haven't implemented(yet) an "artist website" button and people are resorting to google. I know that myself and one other iRATE contributor purchased iRATE-discovered CDs. Several users also reported buying CDs. Has anybody here purchased iRATE music?

Arnie
I love it. First we had the Bush/Gore humour, now Arnie. What is USA gonna come up with next?

18 Sep 2003 (updated 18 Sep 2003 at 22:45 UTC) »
Professional Project Management
Judas I was very interested by your discussion of project development and management. I'm very much an amateur in the area due to lack of big company experience. All of the little companies I worked for used floppies/cds for version control and word-of-mouth for bug tracking.
However I am compensating for that with open source experience. I have stumbled upon version control and decided that it was a basic need, I also setup autobuild systems and eventually decided that they were a basic need too.
However I haven't had any experience with version control integrated with issue tracking(like you described). Can anybody suggest open source projects that allow for that level of integration? By the way, I'm a subversion user.
I'm still not conviced on the likes of bugzilla(and sf bug tracker) due to crappy bug descriptions and a horrid UI. I find it much more effective to exchange emails(or phone, or icq) with the person who is experiencing a bug. It's just impossible to track down weird bugs otherwise.

Borland C++Builder
mrorganic I found BCB to be a kickass RAD C++ tool. It was just too easy to create GUI C++ programs. I don't think anybody else even comes close to that. I loved VCL's properties and simplicity. Too bad that C++ doesn't support those.
Also, builderX will have a wx design tool. It's one of the biggest features. However I agree that it's a very stupid tool. It looks like a massive resource hog with a single feature: compiler/debugger agnosticness(got a better word?). Since when is application development dependant on being able to compile with 6 different compilers on windows and 2 or 3 on other platforms? In my experience 1-2 compilers-per-platform is plenty and it's easy enough to learn their debuggers. It just seems that borland decided to give up on their C++ development tools and just pretend that they didn't by having a GUI compiler wrapper.
On the other hand, this is good news for wxwindows. As any opensource project, they can always use more help.

Life
My brain feels much better lately. I guess I finally got a good mix of gym, socializing, love, sleep, food and god knows what. It feels nice to be in working condition.

iRATE
Well, as a result of the recent spike in life energy, much has been done on irate. I added http resume and the prev button. Some protocol optimizations are being worked on.

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