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Trees and Roots

Magnus — Tue, 04 May 2010 17:24:20 +0000

A friend on Facebook mentioned a nice little naming problem I had not been aware of in years of computer science:

We are always drawing tree structures with the root on top, sometimes with the root on the left, but almost never with the root where it belongs (according to biologists) in a tree: at the bottom.

In a comment, a kind soul suggested viewing the usual top-down trees as Christmas trees, and thus naming the root “star“. Should I ever teach data structures again, I will use this one.

And the start of a tree drawn from left to right could be … the source (of a creek, a river).

Javagötterdämmerung

Christopher — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 18:08:34 +0000

James Gosling has left Sun.

And I hadn’t heard of it until now. Looks like I’m not such a geek after all.

But it shocked me just as much as when I heard that J.D. Salinger had died – it actually made my eyes well up – so I guess I am quite a geek.

When I wrote about the departure of other Java Gods, I thought I was making a joke when I wondered how long James Gosling would remain at Sun. Now Guy Steele is the last man standing… but for how long?

Ever since the takeover by Oracle, I haven’t had a good feeling about the future of Java. IBM would have been a much better match. Oy vey…

Ruby Version Reminder

Arne — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 18:40:16 +0000

rvm is great, but I still sometimes lose track of which Ruby version I’m currently using. As a little reminder, I put the Ruby version in my shell prompt, like this:

PS1="\u `ruby -v | grep -e "[0-9]\.[0-9]\.[0-9]" -o` \w"

Works nicely.

Hoccer

Arne — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 21:01:54 +0000

I use this posting for blatantly advertising one of the development projects I was recently involved in – an Android application called Hoccer. It was released by ART+COM Technologies as a free app on the Android Market and as entry for the 2nd Android Developer Challenge.

The aim of Hoccer is to simplify the process of sharing data (currently pictures and contacts) between devices – you use certain gestures for one-to-one (tap) or one-to-many (throw/catch) to determine sender and receiver(s) and the data is transferred over the internet subsequently, so no other mechanism of pairing etc. is needed.

An iPhone version is currently under development, and there’s a web client to hoc data from a desktop computer to a mobile device, so no one’s left out.

The Departed

Christopher — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 21:52:35 +0000

Back in July 2004, I was shocked to hear that Josh Bloch and Neal Gafter had left Sun. A few months ago, in October 2006, another shock came – Gilad Bracha has left Sun as well.

Not many big names are left at the home of Java. Bill Joy already went away in September 2003. How long will ~~James Gosling~~ and Guy Steele stick around? Makes me wonder what the future will bring for Sun and Java. Especially considering Bracha’s ominous farewell Good luck to you all – you’ll need it. Am I just being paranoid, or do these words and these events forecast a gloomy future for Sun, Java, and everyone involved, that is, me and you, my fellow programmers?

(In case you don’t know, Gilad, Josh, and Neal are Java Gods. Josh wrote the Java Collections Framework and Effective Java, one of the best books about Java. Neal Gafter was in charge of Sun’s Java compiler. Together they wrote Java Puzzlers, another great book. Gilad Bracha was heavily involved in the specification of Java itself, the JVM, Generics… you name it.)