I am an open source developer, and I need to write a highly-scalable web service. For a variety of reasons (basically poor support for concurrency), I am using Ruby on Rails for my app front-end but not for the back-end (read: http://www.ddj.com/go-parallel/article/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=212903282). My web service will need to call ...
I was speaking to an experienced lecturer recently who told me he could usually tell which programming language a student had learnt to program in by looking at their coding style (more specifically, when programming in other languages to the one which they were most comfortable with). He said that there have been multiple times when he'...
Which interpreted languages pointer-free languages (IE: Python, Java, Perl, PHP, Ruby, Javascript, etc) have manual memory management? I don't recall ever hearing of one. Isn't the major concern about interpreted languages the non-deterministic delays (or space complexity when there isn't enough delay) of garbage collection? So why not ...
Please Note: Portable as in portableapps.com, not in the traditional sense of a language that can be used on multiple architectures or operating systems. Whoever coined this usage of the word portable should be whacked. :) I'm a DBA and sysadmin, mostly for Windows machines running SQL Server. I'm looking for a programming/scripting lan...
I'm speaking specifically of something like the PLT Scheme make-evaluator. It will run scheme code, but under certain conditions: It only uses a definable amount of memory, and will quit execution if the script needs more It behaves similarly with time It restricts all IO except for what I specifically allow in the code Is anyone ...
Today I saw a job description that requires "significant experience coding in C++ and a thorough grounding in structured design principles", so I thought about what these principles are. First I felt it was a little odd to see C++ and "structured design" in one sentence, then I thought, OK C++ is a multi-paradigm programming language, so...
len = length(range); K = 2^nextpow2(2*len - 1); halfK = round(K/2); U = zeros(halfK, 1); centfreqs = data.model.cochlea.centfreqs; for i = 1 : data.model.cochlea.gt.nch % number of channels x = data.au(range, i).*window; X = abs(fft(x, K)); bin = round(2*centfreqs(i)*K/data.fs); % if i==4 plot(X); pause; end X(bin : ...
I have to write a prototype app for an engineering company. Most of the work is calculating various engineering properties (I'm talking pipes and real things here, not software engineering). However, there will also have to be a GUI for: parameter entry displaying results some basic diagramming The calculation work at the moment does...
It seems I've got to agree with this post when it states that [...] code in dynamically typed languages follows static-typing conventions Much dynamic language code I encounter does indeed seem to be quite static (thinking of PHP) whereas dynamic approaches look somewhat clumsy or unnecessary instead. Most of the time, it's just a...
A long time ago I remember thinking that the Forth programming language was pretty cool. I really haven't heard anything about it in years. Is Forth still in use? If so, what types of applications is it being used for? ...
I think object oriented programming is overrated, however I want to learn this paradigm. I have been trying to do this in PHP 5 and C++ with QT 4. Unfortunately, I tend to program in structured way, I do not use much of inheritance nor multiple instances. I think I have to learn a pure object oriented language that force me to use above ...
I've been programming as a consultant for years, and I adore my work, which involves a lot of object-oriented analysis and design of software systems using managed languages (ie. software engineering). But I'd like to get a doctorate eventually, and it bothers me that I never really "got" Computer Science theory. In university I only did...
Suppose you have this pseudo-code do_something(); function do_something(){ print "I am saying hello."; } Why do some programming languages require the call to do_something() to appear below the function declaration in order for the code to run? ...
Hello, I'm about to develop some commercial software that will run on OSX and Linux. The program will be doing some heavy string manipulation, base64 encoding, zlib compression and may require http libraries in the future. Does anyone have a suggestion? Many thanks in advance, Toby. ...
I know C# and PHP pretty well, and I have a start on Java, but it seems like a lot of the more intense and powerful applications use either C or C++. What are your recommendations? Im interested in being able to target the widest variety of mobile OS's. ...
Hello there! I'm trying to figure out how to convert a file's (or directory's) byte size into kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes, etc... respectively according the file's or directory's size so that is matches what the Finder displays in the panel when you hit "Get Info". The byte size I get perfectly matches the byte size as reported in...
Background: I have been teaching a short course for 12-14 year olds interested in learning how to program video games. We have been using Alice now for 3 years. In this time we have used both Alice and Story Telling Alice. Question: When is the right time to move on from Alice (or Scratch if that is what you prefer) and move the stude...
It's my understanding that C#, though created by Microsoft, is a programming language that can be used or implemented for things other than .NET programming. For example, I could create a compiler for C# to target native x86 or other processors or even a JVM. Is my understanding incorrect? Does anyone know if C# is used for anything besi...
So Adobe gives GIVES US mxml FOR AIR ( Flash ) design/development (cross platform, ActionScript) Microsoft gives us XAML for .Net design/development (Windows, Silverlight, C# + VB+ F# +...) What mark up language gives us Apple for design/development of our Mac native apps?!? ...
I have wonder that many big applications (e.g. social websites such as facebook) are build with many languages into its platform. They usually start with AJAX browser support, then scale down to PHP scripting, then move towards a powrful OOP technologie such as Java or .NET, and finally a primitive language to increase performance in cr...