rexmere.com » Uncategorized http://rexmere.com Technical Arcana, Software Ephemera and Miscellaneous Bits. Keith R. Fieldhouse proprietor. Wed, 18 Mar 2009 00:36:18 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 en hourly 1 Packaging Upgrades http://rexmere.com/2007/07/05/packaging-upgrades/ http://rexmere.com/2007/07/05/packaging-upgrades/#comments Thu, 05 Jul 2007 13:07:00 +0000 Keith Fieldhouse http://rexmere.com/2007/07/05/packaging-upgrades/ This weblog entry details the opening of the FreeAgent external drive from Seagate. As the blog entry title suggests, it's clear that Seagate's been influenced by Apple's packaging habits. What I found interesting isn't so much the overall look (white boxes with decent design) but that they also seem to have done a decent job of capturing the "we're in this together" attitude. Interestingly, instead of going with Apple's "we're all hip here, right?" sensibility, Seagate seems to have landed on more of an "isn't this fun?" spin.

]]> http://rexmere.com/2007/07/05/packaging-upgrades/feed/ 0 Rejoined the Mac Nation http://rexmere.com/2007/06/19/rejoined-the-mac-nation/ http://rexmere.com/2007/06/19/rejoined-the-mac-nation/#comments Wed, 20 Jun 2007 02:29:01 +0000 Keith Fieldhouse http://rexmere.com/2007/06/19/rejoined-the-mac-nation/ The first computer I ever purchased with my own money was a Macintosh LC which, if I recall correctly, cost about $2000 back in 1990 or so. I bootstrapped that LC into a consulting gig that kept me occupied with Mac development for a number of years. A number of Macs followed, a Quadra 700 and a 520c laptop. But then the the late 90s happened, I endured ownership of a one of the PowerPC pizza boxes (which had its best value as a server running MkLinux) and I stopped paying much attention to Apple's computers for a while.With the advent of OS X I began paying attention again but never really took the plunge.Fast forward to a week ago. My old Sony Vaio just wasn't cutting it any more for a variety of reasons, so it was time to get a new laptop. The lure of the possibility of triple booting OS X, Windows and Linux was just too much for me and I am now the proud owner of a brand new MacBook, which even with the Apple care plan cost a bit less than that original LC.Thus far, I'm delighted. This is one nice piece of hardware. Sixty seconds flat from opening the box to Google is pretty good. And software like Scrivener, Ecto (which I'm using to post this) and Quicksilver makes the experience even better.It's good to be back.

]]> http://rexmere.com/2007/06/19/rejoined-the-mac-nation/feed/ 0 Efficient Syntax http://rexmere.com/2007/05/19/efficient-syntax/ http://rexmere.com/2007/05/19/efficient-syntax/#comments Sat, 19 May 2007 21:23:05 +0000 Keith Fieldhouse http://rexmere.com/2007/05/19/efficient-syntax/ My day job is pretty interesting On some projects, over the course of fixing one bug or adding one feature I may write or modify code written in C++, Java, Python and Lua. If our code generator is involved, you can add Perl to that mix. None of those languages is used trivially so I get a good chance to use them all "in anger".I'm not much of a language zealot though I'll admit to a strong fondness for Python and I no longer write C++/C code "for fun".Often the debate between languages these days focuses on dynamic vs. static typing. I can understand that, duck typing in particular can be awfully handy especially if you're trying to deal with an impedance mismatch between client code and pre-existing libraries. On the other hand, my sense of getting it right when I'm refactoring Java code is higher. Test coverage can be spotty on occasion especially for GUI code but the compiler sees all.Which is a long way around to get to Scala. Scala is statically typed, compiled language targeting the Java VM. While it has numerous other features that make it interesting, its significantly more efficient syntax is the reason that I'm downloading it to experiment with.That said, I do find myself drawn to the simple efficiency of a language like Python. I've had occasion to move a bunch of Java code to Python. The design was fairly good and the process was a simple translation. The reduction in code length was quite dramatic. The translation process consisted almost entirely of deleting unneeded lines of code. When I'm writing Java code (with heavy use of Eclipse tools) the process goes fast but the result just feels cluttered. There's simply more to look at when trying to understand the code. C++ and Java are really noisy languages.

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]]> http://rexmere.com/2007/05/19/efficient-syntax/feed/ 0 Smalltalk for Everyone http://rexmere.com/2006/09/22/smalltalk-for-everyone/ http://rexmere.com/2006/09/22/smalltalk-for-everyone/#comments Fri, 22 Sep 2006 12:54:31 +0000 Keith Fieldhouse http://rexmere.com/2006/09/22/smalltalk-for-everyone/ My latest article, "Smalltalk for Everyone" is up on O'Reilly's OnLAMP site. With this I article, I'm hoping that someone who is initially approaching Smalltalk will get their bearings on the language and the environment in a way that helps them navigate the vast array of information about Smalltalk that's available.

]]> http://rexmere.com/2006/09/22/smalltalk-for-everyone/feed/ 0 Croquet Videos http://rexmere.com/2006/05/27/croquet-videos/ http://rexmere.com/2006/05/27/croquet-videos/#comments Sat, 27 May 2006 11:47:03 +0000 Keith Fieldhouse http://rexmere.com/2006/05/27/croquet-videos/ Mark McCahill has some nice videos/screencasts up relating to the Croquet SDK. The first two are a brief introduction to the environment. The third is a rather nice, quick introduction to developement in the Squeak environment on which Croquet is based.

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