Category Archives: Rants

More thoughts on version control

Posted on September 22, 2012 by ejrh

The shadow of Git has lately begun to loom over my programming habits. It has actually become the principal version control system at work, with most active projects migrated to it from ClearCase, Mercurial, CVS, etc. And recent collaborative programming … Continue reading →

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Programmer-friendly blogging

Posted on September 10, 2012 by ejrh

Commenting on a blog post about an interesting use of generics in Java, I’ve had the pleasure of seeing my carefully typed code translated from: to: Gosh, I never realised type erasure could be performed at the HTML level. Unfortunately … Continue reading →

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New SSD

Posted on July 31, 2012 by ejrh

A couple of Fridays ago, a solid state drive — the 256GB Crucial M4 — on which I’d been keeping my eye became available again at a reasonable price, so within a few minutes I placed an order. It arrived … Continue reading →

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Is software “engineering” ?

Posted on July 19, 2012 by ejrh

(TL;DR – Yes, but it isn’t architecture.) This question, and the subject of vocational nomenclature in general, has been grinding my gears for ages, and deserves a rant of its own. Sometimes it is difficult to know what to call … Continue reading →

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Beyond Hello World

Posted on May 10, 2012 by ejrh

A common pattern for introducing a programming language is the Hello World program. But what exactly can you tell about a language from looking at its Hello World program?

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Project summary

Posted on January 20, 2012 by ejrh

Well we’ve been here for over a year now. Although I’ve had the occasional rant or travelogue, it’s mostly been concerned with my “hobby” programming. My State of the Blog follows.

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SQL laziness

Posted on September 6, 2011 by ejrh

A small, but cathartic, rant on what’s irritating me today.

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Sanity checking price formats

Posted on July 9, 2011 by ejrh

Why string operations should not be done using floating point.

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On C++

Posted on May 20, 2011 by ejrh

I had a recent discussion on C++, as part of a wider topic of favourite and unfavourite languages. I was asked to give my opinions on it; in fact, I think I was asked to explain the motivation Higher-Level C.  … Continue reading →

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On the awesomeness of text

Posted on May 6, 2011 by ejrh

Text is one of the most underappreciated technologies that computers give us. This post is about why it’s so awesome, and why we should consider using it more — even in places where the trend seems to be the opposite.

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