General Development Archive

Algorithms can often be implemented recursively or nonrecursively; the decision rests with the programmer, who might shy away from a recursive solution because the algorithm might not terminate or that performance might be poor. In reality, recursion can allow for very elegant code as well as facilitating an interesting and economical type of code reuse. Software consultant Stephen B. Morris explores this interesting topic with a data-centric application drawn from the field of networking.

Cameron and Tracey Hughes conclude their exploration of cluster programming with an example of a cluster-based text-file analysis utility that processes and analyzes multiple files in parallel.

"I'm happy to announce today that ROTOR 2.0 has released to the web. You can download the release here. ROTOR contains most of the CLR and base class libraries found in our commerical product. It is released under the shared source program. There are several new things in this release: generics implementation; Lightweight Code Generation; stub-based dispatch support; new reflection and reflection emit; new C# features like Anonymous Methods, Anonymous Delegates and Generics."

"Newer software does try to be sexier by doing flashy things such as the talking paperclip. This causes a tendency for the software to bloat to the point of saturation, i.e. until it performs at barely acceptable speeds. But application programming seems to get worse with faster processors. Even with more memory, faster disks and multiple CPUs, your average web application runs slower. Is it possible that the faster hardware has made us worse programmers?"

"Recurring themes at this year's PyCON2006 Python conference, in Dallas, Texas, included quality control techniques for Python, and interoperable content management systems. Guido van Rossum presented some previews of features to be expected in Python 2.5, and Jim Fulton presented the 'State of Zope', with some musings on where to go from here with Zope 2 and Zope 3. Also starring at this conference was the S5 based on the Python docutils package - most of this year's talks were presented with this package, and one of the talks presented the S5 package itself."

"Become more productive with your own code and others by utilizing Eclipse's syntax highlighting, code completion, and other amenities. It runs on any UNIX platform with a JRE (1.4 or newer) and an SWT port, such as Linux, Solaris, AIX, and HP-UX. It's easy enough to start a new project using Eclipse or to import an existing Eclipse project, but how do you bring existing code into the IDE? And what if you need to get an existing project compiling right away without modifying its existing makefile or configure script? Read along for the answer to all of these questions."

It's all too easy to place operations code inside class definitions (that is, code that does create/delete/modify). In many cases, such an approach is not necessarily a reflection of real world objects. But there are other reasons for abstracting operation code. Stephen Morris spells out these and other advantages of using the command pattern.

Have you heard the pitch for the tool that gives a 600% productivity improvement, or the new programming language that will solve all of your problems? Matt Heusser explains that confidence games abound in software development—and suggests what to do about them.

"There are several possible reasons why you might choose to use the command line interface as your desktop environment. For one thing, it uses less electricity, so you could maximize battery life on your laptop computer. Secondly, it forces you to think about your operating system and directory structure in a totally different way than a GUI does; this could greatly enhance your understanding of GNU/Linux and cause you to be more creative in your technological problem solving. And thirdly, everyone will think you're a supreme computer genius for ditching X11 for the CLI. People passing by your desk will think you're some kind of computer god. Who doesn't want that?"

Team System posted a tutorial on how to install and configure Subversion under Windows, while this article describes how to create both the repository and your projects while running on Windows or Linux.

Aspect-oriented programming is more than just a clever means of adding tracing to in-field code. The language has matured to a point where it can support both development-time and production-time code aspects. Stephen Morris briefly provides some background and then shows you how to get productive quickly with AspectJ.

Did you know that there are three different C++ namespace types? Namespaces, which are simple to learn and apply, offer a clever means of packaging your code and can assist when symbol conflicts occur. And how well does your code handle exceptions? Inserting exception-handling code can make your code more ready for packaging as external functions. Stephen Morris contends that just as namespaces offer an efficient way to package code, the skillful use of exception handling can quickly simplify that code.

"What Shale isn't is a shrink-wrapped, well-documented, well-tested product complete with an automated installer and a polished management interface. now find out what it is, as Brett McLaughlin unveils this mighty - and rightful - heir to the legacy of Struts. In this first of a five-part series, Brett explains what Shale is, how it's different from the Struts framework, and how to install and set it up in your development environment."

GCC, the GNU Compiler Collection, version 4.1 has been released. The list of changes details the improvements. The Fedora team has already incorporated it and Fedora Core 5 will have 4.1 as the system compiler with GCC 3.2 provided as an alternative for compatibility reasons.