Michael Fogus's Blog, page 16
June 24, 2012
June 20, 2012
Not enough
Let’s start with a premise, indulge me if you please: You’re creating a system for some client You’re using a dynamic programming language like Clojure, Ruby, Io, etc… How do you know your system works properly? One answer is that you write unit tests. However, as Evan Farrer wrote in his excellent blog post, “Unit [...]
June 19, 2012
Why I Don’t Post “Why I Don’t ___” Posts
While surfing the vast and crapulent Internets I’ve seen many a blog post kind, but one of the more insidious1 is the “Why I Don’t ____”2 variety. Typically the premise of such posts starts as why the blogger “don’t use some programming language”, “don’t like cake” or “don’t not club baby seals” and follows up [...]
June 12, 2012
Panda loss as libel
This morning I tweeted1 what I thought was a funny comment on the ridiculousness of a litigious society: After tweeting I thought a little deeper and came to fear the possibilities. Currently, the great comic site TheOatmeal.com is in danger of being sued by a content bottom-feeder FunnyJunk where one of the points of “damage” [...]
June 8, 2012
Announcing Marginalia v0.7.1
Marginalia v0.7.1 Release Notes Marginalia is an ultra-lightweight literate programming tool for Clojure and ClojureScript inspired by docco*. To get a quick look at what the output looks like, visit the official Marginalia website. Usage notes and examples are found on the Marginalia Github page. Places Source code Ticket system manifesto Changes from v7.0.0 lein-marginalia [...]
June 7, 2012
An object-oriented influence graph
this is a follow-on to the functional programming influence graph and these graphs are intended to connect. With the help of Twitter friends I developed a directed graph of traditionally (and bolted-on) object-oriented programming languages and their influences on one another. The latest version is as follows: View the Graphviz Dot source | Render the [...]
May 23, 2012
Extreme reading
Why do people have trouble reading books? The primary answer you’re likely to receive when asking this question is that reading is boring. And to this response I agree. Reading is boring – but it doesn’t need to be boring. The reason that reading is boring is that many people view there relationship to reading [...]
May 14, 2012
Pet tagging
I’m constantly on the lookout for fresh perspectives (and unknown old perspectives for that matter) within various computing topics that I find interesting. Sites like Delicious and Pinboard are great for finding information, but they are far from perfect. One downside is that they are largely driven by user tagging, but the clear problem is [...]
May 2, 2012
A Functional Programming Influence Graph
With the help of Twitter friends1 I developed a directed graph of traditionally functional programming languages and their influences on one another. The latest version is as follows: View different sizes | View the Graphviz Dot source | Discuss on Hacker News note: Ovals represent languages, hexagons are “ideas”, and blue boxes represent language families [...]
May 1, 2012
Resolutionationism
I rarely declare new year resolutions but for some reason I felt oddly compelled to do so this year (2012). These were formulated in the beginning of the year, but here they are for posterity’s sake: Read 52 books (done) Listen to everything Béla Bartók ever composed Create a programming language Commit to open source [...]
