Programming
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Math Error vs Code Error
→: Math Error vs Code ErrorThere’s a fractal I’ve been wanting to make for a while. And the other week I woke up with a flash of insight and coded it, and it looked like this: And I was really happy, until I realized it wasn’t the fractal that I’d meant to make. Oops. So I revisited it and remembered…
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Testing Code that Depends on Remote APIs
→: Testing Code that Depends on Remote APIsThis is something I did for a course I’ve been taking, but as I couldn’t find much information thought it might be helpful to document it here. Let me know if there’s anything you think I’ve missed! Overview The internet is a rich source of dynamic data, and is increasingly used in our applications. Many…
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Processing Workshop
→: Processing WorkshopI’ve been a little quieter than usual for a number of reasons, one of which is that I’ve been working on a workshop for the University. It’s aimed at getting 17-18 year olds interested in taking Computer Science, and I’m using Processing for that. I’m experimenting with what I’m calling an Activity Based Curriculum. I.e.…
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What Makes a Programmer Great?
→: What Makes a Programmer Great?This is a post I co-wrote with Douglas Gresham. Douglas is a software engineer at Google, who blogs at www.douglasgresham.co.uk (less often than he should, go bug him for updates). I’m a graduate student, though I firmly believe that great programmers are not the result of university courses in programming. But university courses take us…
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Can You Flow Your Way to Great?
→: Can You Flow Your Way to Great?If you know me at all (or have just been reading my blog for a while) you’ll know I’m really interested in how to be more productive, more effective, and generally achieving more. And of course I read Zen Habits and all these other blogs that talk about flow. Flow is about being completely absorbed…
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Not a Scientist, Nor an Engineer
→: Not a Scientist, Nor an EngineerWhen I was doing my undergrad, I knew a lot of geography students. One of them told me that geographers spent a lot of time debating what geography was. I found this completely ridiculous, of course, imagining the only thing to be more pointless than studying geography was angsting about nature of geography. (Of course,…
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The Desire for 100% Coverage
→: The Desire for 100% CoverageI recently handed in an assignment on testing. It was fairly simple, and I expected it to take just a couple of hours and not teach me anything. That was not the case. I really think that every situation is an opportunity to learn something (even if it’s not what you think you will). Lesson…
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Parameterized Testing in JUnit 4, or Twitter is Awesome Because…
→: Parameterized Testing in JUnit 4, or Twitter is Awesome Because…You can ask a specialized, fairly technical question to the world in general… And get a response from someone who really knows what they’re talking about! (I have books by this guy!) Made my day! If you’re interested in JUnit 4 and testing, a brief explanation. JUnit 4 allows you to create parameterized tests. I.e.…
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Progress
→: ProgressHow do you define progress? As a grad student, the weeks I spend reading papers and thinking don’t feel like progress – it’s the week, or day, or hour, when things start to come together that does. In going back to training, it’s not the gradual improvements in fitness and energy. It’s when I can…