Programming languages are more about people and less about machines. Programming languages are about staying inside the limitations of people’s minds and their ability to keep track of and work with abstractions. If people had no such limitations, they could code in assembly language all the time. Programming languages and supporting tools and environments are […]
Programming with actors was a new concept to me until I tried it out in Scala. It’s appears to be one of Scala’s most celebrated features, judging by the official blurb. Actors was a daunting word at first but it really ends up being a very simple concept. Actors are a programming model for concurrent […]
I’m now going to share some of the results of my recent experiments with the Scala programming language. In May I wrote that I had started looking at it. I’ve been using it to make some support tools that I needed for research work since. First a disclaimer: It’s been 4+ years since I did serious […]
I now break the longstanding tradition of not posting code on this blog. I just wanted to share what I believe to be a somewhat unusual pattern in Java: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 public IMethod findMethod(String name, String[] types) […]
Computing is very new as a science. Blaise Pascal devised a mechanical calculator in 1645, but Charles Babbage’s analytical engine, widely considered the first programmable computer, was not conceived of until the mid-19th century. However, it was never constructed (unlike Babbage’s simpler “difference engine”), and even at this time there was almost no theory to […]