Code Glutton

I stopped posting here 9 months ago or so. You can still find me over at stungeye.com.

I’ve also started a blog about mobile programming using HTML5 and Phonegap.

Catch you on the flip side.

Things Caches Do

The effect of Reverse Proxy Caches on modern, dynamic web app design.

Rock Paper Scissors Programming Competition

Although rock-paper-scissors (RPS) may seem like a trivial game, it actually involves the hard computational problem of temporal pattern recognition.

Test-Driven Game of Life

Test Driving Conway’s Game of Life.

An experiment of mine in test-driven development using Minitest.

Please see:

• The Documented Source Code
• The Minitest Specs
• The Companion Shoes App

Reading source code you wrote when you were first learning to program can be a sobering experience.

Here are a few examples of beginner source posted on reddit:

• C++ Hangman
• Pascal Game
• C Wheel of Fortune

What I love about this kind of beginner code is the sheer persistence of the programmers. I can remember writing PET BASIC programs like this when I was first figuring out coding. I’d make up for my lack of knowledge (of arrays, loops, functions, etc) by brute forcing my way with variables, conditionals and lots of typing.

The Programming Historian

An open-access introduction to programming in Python, aimed at working historians.

via

Associative Arrays and Hashes in Ruby 1.9.

Skip ahead to 8m40s. Watch in HD and fullscreen if you want to be able to read the code.

The Destructive Programming Manifesto

We are programmers. We strive to write good code. We acknowledge that efficient code is often locally unclear. We cannot stand writing more comments than code to document our hacks. We would rather not have to fix code we wrote ages ago. We are sick of trying to decipher code others wrote.

more…

Principles of Computational Thinking

1. It’s all just data.
2. Data doesn’t mean anything on its own—it has to be interpreted.
3. Programming is about creating and composing abstractions.
4. Models are for computers, and views are for people.
5. Paranoia makes us productive.
6. Better algorithms are better than better hardware.
7. The tool shapes the hand.

Ruby Style Guide

By Christian Neukirchen.

Join SkullSpace on March 19th for their fourth hack-a-thon.

SkullSpace is a whisper of a hackerspace in Winnipeg. SkullSpace is a place for hackers, builders, programmers, artists and anybody interested in how stuff works to gather in a common place and help focus their knowledge and creativity.

I teach a Rails course a Red River College. I’m sometimes asked by students and co-workers about Rails employers in Winnipeg.

After a bit of Googling and a tweet, I’ve compiled a list of…

Ruby on Rails Employers in Winnipeg

• Canada Drugs
• Emerge Knowledge
• Innovatis
• Redline Software
• Styckyd
• Tactica
• Winnipeg Transit

It should also be noted that there is a healthy community of Rails freelancers in Winnipeg. If you wish to meet some of these freelancers you should attend one of the upcoming SecretHandshake or WinnipegRb meetups.

If you know of any other Rails employers in Winnipeg, please leave a comment.

Voir QR: The History, Use & Abuse of QR Codes

Slides from a recent New Media Manitoba talk on QR codes by Erica Glasier.

Flocking Algorithm

Flocking algorithms written in CoffeeScript with lots of explanations and in-browser demos.

Also see my flocking projects:

• Hungry Boids (Processing/Java)
• Hungry Boids (Ruby)

The programming font Inconsolata with emboldened punctuation.

It’s especially helpful in environments that don’t offer syntax coloration.

Nicest for Lispy languages. I’ll continue to use Bitstream Vera Sans Mono when I have syntax highlighting available.