General Development Archive

The Speed of Software Halves Every 18 Months?

Eugenia Loli 2006-03-22 General Development 82 Comments

"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?"

FOX v1.6.0 Released

Submitted by Niall Douglas 2006-03-21 General Development 8 Comments

FOX v1.6.0 has been released with the biggest major new feature being Unicode support but also with a raft of new system code such as extra threading and I/O APIs. This should be viewed as an interim release as unicode keyboard input is as yet unfinished.

Submitted by fsmdave 2006-03-20 General Development 2 Comments

"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."

Build UNIX Software with Eclipse

Submitted by anonymous 2006-03-20 General Development 8 Comments

"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."

Types and Objects in Python

Eugenia Loli 2006-03-20 General Development 21 Comments

All the data stored in a Python program is built around the concept of an object. Objects include fundamental data types such as numbers, strings, lists, and dictionaries. It's also possible to create user-defined objects in the form of classes or extension types. This chapter describes the Python object model and provides an overview of the built-in data types.

C++ Command Pattern for Network Operations

Eugenia Loli 2006-03-20 General Development No Comments

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.

Confidence Games in Software Engineering

Eugenia Loli 2006-03-20 General Development 4 Comments

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.

Math for Programmers: What You Need to Know

Eugenia Loli 2006-03-18 General Development 39 Comments

"I've been working for the past 15 months on repairing my rusty math skills, ever since I read a biography of Johnny von Neumann. I've read a huge stack of math books, and I have an even bigger stack of unread math books. And it's starting to come together. Let me tell you about it," writes programmer Steve Yegge.

Submitted by Valour 2006-03-16 General Development 119 Comments

"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?"

Setting up a Subversion Server Under Windows

Eugenia Loli 2006-03-15 General Development 11 Comments

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.

GCC 4.0.3 Released

Eugenia Loli 2006-03-13 General Development 7 Comments

Mark Mitchell announced the availability of GCC 4.0.3. He explains, "this release is a bug-fix release for problems in GCC 4.0.2. GCC 4.0.3 contains changes to correct regressions from previous releases, but no new features." GCC 4.0.2 was released nearly 6 months ago in September of 2005. GCC 4.1.0 was released in early March of 2006.

Aspect-Oriented Programming for Production Code

Eugenia Loli 2006-03-12 General Development 6 Comments

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.

C++ Modularity with Namespaces and Exception Handling

Eugenia Loli 2006-03-06 General Development 14 Comments

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.

AOP Myths and Realities

Submitted by anonymous 2006-03-03 General Development 7 Comments

"What's keeping you from trying out AOP? Whether you think it's only good for low-level functions like tracing and logging, worry that it'll get in the way of unit testing, or would simply rather stick with the object-oriented alternatives, Ramnivas Laddad gives you good reason to reconsider. Follow along as this popular author and speaker digs beneath the surface of 15 myths that hinder the adoption of AOP."

All Hail Shale: Shale Isn’t Struts

Submitted by anonymous 2006-03-03 General Development 10 Comments

"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."

Submitted by Rahul 2006-03-01 General Development 32 Comments

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.

Submitted by luzr 2006-03-01 General Development 13 Comments

Ultimate++ 602 has been released. Ultimate++ is a C++ platform. U++ competes with popular scripting languages while preserving C/C++ runtime characteristics. New features of the 602 release include a new report package, otimization of C++ refactoring and assistance (Assist++), and improvements in project organization and building.

Submitted by samyem 2006-02-28 General Development 12 Comments

Potix has released ZK 1.0, the XUL-Java-Ajax-Beanshell based web application framework. The framework aims to simplify developing Ajax based web development by minimizing configuration and lowering developer skill requirements. A live demo is available.

Build Enhanced AJAX Toolkits on Linux

Submitted by anonymous 2006-02-28 General Development 4 Comments

"The AJAX Toolkit Framework is a J2EE based technology that assists in constructing Eclipse framework support for AJAX toolkits on Linux and provides enhanced DHTML/Javascript IDE features for AJAX developers. This enables support of DOM browsing and JavaScript debugging by using Mozilla XULrunner to embed the Mozilla browser component (Gecko) in the Eclipse framework."

Perl Gets Ported to z/OS

Submitted by anonymous 2006-02-25 General Development No Comments

"Perl for zOS is a statically-linked, pre-compiled port of the Perl (Version 5.8.7) scripting language to the z/OS UNIX platform with all known defects resolved. This new porti of Perl 5.8.7 provides a pre-built version of Perl with a dedicated support team to address new problems that may arise."