Geert's WWW Corner - Programming

| Nederlands | | Home |

Programming languages

In 1984 a Commodore 64 appeared at home with the expected results:

• Basic (first on the C64, later too on the Amiga)
• MC680x0 assembler (since 1990) I even managed to write in basic an assembler and disassembler(!)
• Pascal (since 1990)
• OPL (Organiser Programming Language) a kind of Basic-derivate
• C (since 1992)
  • I wrote a C course.
• HP 48 (since 1993) with its own RPN programming language; alas, its LCD screen has gotten rather broken ...
• Java (since 1996)
• Perl (since 1998)
• Tcl/Tk (since 2005)

Own products

Critical readers will notice that none of these has ever gotten beyond the beta stage, but that's the way those things go ... Moreover everything is open source, so these critics can be silenced immediately by remarking that they can fix the situation themselves <evil grin&bt; And I certainly don't feel like joining the habits of some of the commercial instances who seem to like the maxim it's not a bug, it's a feature so much <very evil grin>

• Nemu, a Java interpreter written in C. I started this project to run Java too on my Amiga, nowadays to get it working some day on my Palm. For now, it only works under Linux with X-Windows however (Hello World works both under the command line and graphical). Since the Palm is not good at all at multitasking, Nemu takes care of this itself; in that sence it's a rather atypical Java virtual machine (most seem to use threads or interrupts for task switching). Experimental.
• STDIPP (Simple Three Dimensional Image Processing Program, pronounced standard-ip) a program to edit 3D images. I made it because i knew someone who made his thesis about confocal microscopes, which are things that (surprise) record 3D images.
• SICECAS, a SImplistic Calculator & Computer Algebra System. Was used now and then in the courses of Formal Methods in the second year of informatics at the RUG. Alpha (and currently in major overhaul).
• Girc, an IRC chat program in Java. With some unusal futures like show all what someone said, search for words, and check whether there are chatters that fall into certain profiles. Alpha.

[[[most of these programs need links]]]

Parsers

• Incremental (meaning they parse while you type) LR(1) parsers
  • Practical Algorithms for Incremental Software Development Environments (Tim A. Wagner)
  • Algorithmen und Implementierung eines inkrementalen Scanner- und Parser-Programms (Matthias Schwalbe)
• JavaCC Grammar Repository A collection of grammars for Java, C, SQL, ...

Software design

• Joel on software. Interesting articles.
• Extreme Programming (XP). A methodology for software design that is totally contrary to the commonly accepted practices at some points.
• Scrum An agile, lightweight process that can be used to manage and control software and product development using iterative, incremental practices. Something like an extension of Extreme Programming.
• No Silver Bullet: Essence and Accidents of Software Engineering Why is managing software projects so hard?
• The Programmers Stone
• The 28:1 Grant/Sackman legend is misleading, or: How large is interpersonal variation really? Comparison of popular scripting languages, C++ and Java
• Aspect Oriented Software Development (whatever this may be; still have to check this out)
• The Humane Interface A project of Jef Raskin, the GUI-guru par exellence, about a better (more humane) user interface for computers
• The Debugging Scandal and What to Do About It special edition of the Communications of the ACM about debugging
• Using Redundancies to find Errors Simple checks on redundant instructions (e.g. "x=x") often indicate errors in software. The authors tested this a.o. on the Linux kernel source code and found some surprising bugs.
• How To Be a Programmer: A Short, Comprehensive, and Personal Summary This long essay attempts to summarize the non-technical things that I wish someone had explained to me at the beginning of my career as a professional programmer.
• Why Software Engineering Is Not B.S.
• How to Write Unmaintainable Code
• No Silver Bullet; Essence and Accidents of Software Engineering by Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.
• useit usable information technology; user interfaces
• Code as Design: Three essays by Jack W. Reeves
• Security audit finds critical X11 bug An automated code analysis revealed a critical programming error in the X-Windows system: apparently if (getuid() == 0 || geteuid != 0) should have read if (getuid() == 0 || geteuid() != 0) : two missing brackets caused a big security hole ...
• Computer glitch limits next shuttle launch Space shuttle flights cannot happen too close to New Year because the software does not handle the date change well(!)

Programming languages

• Programming Some links to programming tutorials and software for numerical simulation.
• How To Design Programs On-line version of a book on Scheme programming (MIT Press)

Lisp

• On Lisp, on-line book by Paul Graham
  
• Why Functional Programming Matters
• Practical Common Lisp on-line book

Informatics for a better world

• UNITeS (United Nations Information Technology Service). A global volunteer programme aimed at bridging the digital divide between industrialized and developing countries.
• World Computer Exchange World Computer Exchange (WCE) is a global nonprofit organization committed to helping the world's poorest youth bridge the disturbing global divides in information, technology and understanding. WCE does this by keeping donated PCs, Macs, and Laptops out of landfills and giving them new life connecting youth to the Internet in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
• Braille mobile phone
• Geekcorps.org Geekcorps is a non-profit organization committed to expanding the Internet revolution internationally by pairing skilled volunteers from the high-tech world with small-to-medium sized businesses in emerging nations.

Or is it?

• Where computers go to die: the western computer industry dumps its garbage in countries like China
• Chips with everything makes for a hi-tech mess To produce one DRAM chip (weighing 2 grams), 32 kg of water, 1.6 kg of fossil fuels, 700 grams of elemental gases and 72 grams of chemicals are needed

Open Source

• opensource.org
• GNU, one of the largest open source projects/organisations
• Herman Bruyninckx (see especially under Varia) A local open source supporter of the first hour
• openchallenge.org
• nordicos.org promotes and catalogs open source software
• The CVS Book freely on-line available (GPL) gratis on-line beschikbaar (GPL)
• CleanSoftware.org a resource site with a unique goal: listing free, daily-use software that is free from spyware, adware, and other malicious/intrusive components.
• The Emerging Economic Paradigm of Open Source Open Source can be explained entirely within the context of conventional open-market economics. Indeed, it turns out that it has much stronger ties to the phenomenon of capitalism than you may have appreciated.

System administration

• nagios, a program to monitor network traffic
• The Six Dumbest Ideas in Computer Security
• Rootkit Hunter and chkrootkit two programs to detect rootkit intrusions on Linux machines

Clusters

• The Berkeley NOW project (Network Of Workstations)

Miscellania

• Zeus The student workgroup informatics at the Ghent University.
• Slashdot Must-read for all those who want to be kept up to date of developments in the computing world
• Valgrind an open source memory debugger for x86-linux. It records 9 bits of status info per byte your program uses in order to do a very detailed detection and analysis of program errors.
• A strategic comparison of Windows vs. Unix, version 2.0 This article compares the Microsoft client/server architecture to the Unix approach in terms of systems decisions facing a university faculty.
• The ``Mother of all Demos'': Doug Engelbart 1968 Demo. On December 9, 1968, Douglas C. Engelbart and the group of 17 researchers working with him in the Augmentation Research Center at Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, CA, presented a 90-minute live public demonstration of the online system, NLS, they had been working on since 1962.
• Introduction to Reverse Engineering Software on-line book
• The Graphing Calculator Story The intriguing story behind the Macintosh Graphing Calculator
• The Art of Unix Programming online book
• FindBugs Source code analyser to spot bugs in Java programs automatically analyseert Java broncode om automatisch bugs te vinden

| Nederlands | | Home |