Starting a new Ruby project on Windows? Consider it twice
April 30th, 2008
If you are about to start a new Ruby / Ruby on Rails project on Windows environment, you should probably reconsider your options. I have encountered many Windows-related problems during the development of a large, Windows/Ruby project—problems I doubt would have existed... Read more »
No, I'm not a "Ruby programmer"
April 25th, 2008
Because I’m rather an enthusiastic of a person, I use to ramble on many things, ideas and any stuff in general I’m happy to fiddle with. So I talk a lot about gadgets – mostly of those I wish I had –... Read more »
On the importance of general skills vs specific technologies
April 14th, 2008
A while ago I discussed the subject of software development skills with my friend. The discussion revolved around the question of how much weight to put on specific technological skills versus general skills related to software design, algorithms, architecture and stuff. Well,... Read more »
Mephisto updated
April 12th, 2008
I just updated mephisto to most recent trunk snapshot. Some features may be missing for a while. Read more »
Documenting your parameters
April 11th, 2008
Consider you are reading a chunk of code, and you see a method mock_person('jack', 1, 24, 72, 180) You’ll probably wonder what the parameters are. As you know, you should avoid using magic constants in your code; they make it less readable,... Read more »
An ideal computer
April 9th, 2008
I just wrote about an ideal language, which means that there are now two articles in the series you can skip over, not wanting to know the kinds of stuff I day dream about (excluding the obvious light saber part, of which... Read more »
An ideal language
April 9th, 2008
From the human (programmer) point of view, all computer languages suck. It’s not the fault of their designers; creating a successful programming language is very difficult, as different tasks call for different kinds of tools. By definition, a general-purpose language will be... Read more »
Opt-out telemarketing
April 3rd, 2008
I’m quite annoyed by the current model of telemarketing. Many consider it even more frustrating than e-mail junk, yet here in Finland, in order to not receive any telemarketing phone calls you have to call certain number every three(?) years. The call... Read more »
State of our church
March 12th, 2008
Sorry, instead of my usual rants or blurbs about intricacies of programming I thought to rant about the state of our church. It’s interesting - no, sad really - how those among the clergy who most clearly indicate actual belief in the... Read more »
How technology changes your life
February 29th, 2008
Ok, it’s somewhat of an overstatement, but it exceeded the threshold of creating a blog about it (threshold being few inches above that of writing about the lint I find in my navel every now and then). You know, I hate walking.... Read more »
(Really) learning to program
February 25th, 2008
Both the professional artists and craftsmen practice a lot. At least all of the professionals whose craft requires creativity or precision of movement. This is so obvious an observation that the willingness for you to slap me around with a wet, particular... Read more »
Yeggified
February 22nd, 2008
There are two kinds of professional programmers: those who have learned of Steve Yegge ’s rants and those who should. If you really don’t know who he is, let me put it short: Steve Yegge is a Googlean programmer and an überprolific... Read more »
Zero-password signins
February 22nd, 2008
Don’t you just hate it when you have gazillion of web accounts (bank, newspapers, forums, gaming systems, post office..) Well, if you’ve up to stuff you know of OpenID which allows you to use single signin system with the systems that support... Read more »
My political compass
February 14th, 2008
See my political compass. Odd. I thought I’d be more authoritarian and right-winged, but the questions were chosen such that I appear more liberal than I (and maybe some of my friends as well :) thought. Read more »
Color me thunderstruck
February 7th, 2008
Do you know the (oddly) funny feeling of having understood something, only to understand later that you didn’t understand it the last time, though some of the stuff you understood was correct, AND having felt that way many times about the same... Read more »