Archive for May, 2006

DDJ and Google Summer of Code

Friday, May 12th, 2006

Last year, Dr. Dobb's Journal ran a series of short articles describing some of 2005's Summer of Code projects, and we'd like to give this year's participants the same kind of recognition. Some samples from the last time around are on the new DDJ web site at: http://www.ddj.com/184406349 http://www.ddj.com/184406383 http://www.ddj.com/184406437 http://www.ddj.com/184406467 If you're an ...

CSS Guru Wanted

Friday, May 12th, 2006

Now that my new laptop and monitor are working [1], I hope to wrap up Version 2 of the Software Carpentry notes and close the file. However, the last step is one I can't take myself: I need 4-5 hours of help from someone who knows their way around ...

Todd’s Coming Home!

Friday, May 12th, 2006

Todd Veldhuizen (who is, as I have observed before, simultaneously one of the smartest nice guys, and nicest smart guys, I know) has just accepted a position at the University of Waterloo. It'll be great to have him back in Canada.

Puzzled by Make

Wednesday, May 10th, 2006

I know a fair bit about GNU Make, but this one has me stymied. The Makefile that rebuilds the Software Carpentry course notes contains the following definitions: GFX_SUFFIX := gif jpg png GFX_SRC := \ $(foreach fmt,$(GFX_SUFFIX),\ $(wildcard ./img/*.${fmt}) \ ...

Revised Lecture on Teamware

Friday, May 5th, 2006

I've revised the Software Carpentry lecture on using team tools. I'd be grateful for feedback.

Book Review: Code Quality

Friday, May 5th, 2006

When Diomidis Spinellis's first book, Code Reading, came out in 2003, I said that it didn't matter whether you were still in high school, or had been programming for 30 years---it would teach you things you really needed to know. Well, guess what? The second one is even ...

Book Review: Software Security and Cryptography in the Database

Friday, May 5th, 2006

I spent the last boom working with a team that took security very (very) seriously. As a result, when I look at most of the software I use---at the web sites I sign into every day, or at the dozen and one applications I run on my desktop---I can't ...

Book Review: Micro-ISV and the Business of Software

Friday, May 5th, 2006

For the past ten years, I've been trying to learn as much as I can about small-scale software engineering: what to do when you have a dozen people, a dozen months, and a dozen major features to implement. My reasons are partly personal---I don't like working in large, bureaucratic organizations ...

Declare Victory and Move On

Thursday, May 4th, 2006

Thanks to Noah Lockwood, I have a workaround for the PNG printing problem in the Software Carpentry notes: get rid of the transparency, and use a colored background instead. If it's light enough, it'll print as white from both IE and Firefox (on Windows, at least --- haven't tried ...

Software Carpentry 1111

Wednesday, May 3rd, 2006

Revision 1111 of Software Carpentry just went into the repository. All the images are now there (thanks, Nick), along with code fragments and exercises (not as many as I'd like, but enough to get people started). Printed, it comes to 346 pages, but don't do this at home---the ...