“Good programmers who learn and grow over time have good programming in their DNA, and love to talk about them with a peer. Crappy programmers evade and toss out bullshit or forgot what they did.” Interviews Can Be a Terrible Way to Identify Good Programmers
May
7
Apr
18
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Coder Candy
A nice little row of mobile devices, patiently waiting to have my latest programs installed on them: All this picture needs, now, is a Windows Phone – NOT!
Apr
12
Apr
9
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Galaxy Nexus Quandary
A new Samsung Galaxy Nexus (running Ice Cream Sandwich, or Droid OS 4.0.1) showed up at the office today. The intention was to plug it into Eclipse and deploy a native/Java application that has been running only in the ARM emulator up to this point. The error that appeared in LogCat (“Requires newer SDK version #15 (current version is #14)”) was very misleading. It led me to believe that the device needed to be upgraded to a higher Droid OS version. So I [...]
Mar
27
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Now Serving Droids
They did their best to hide the interesting functionality behind a Java layer. But I installed the Android NDK (and C/C++ support) so I can now go native! Interaction between the Java (UI) layer and native code is well documented and a snap to pull off. The high audio latency is rather disappointing but it is somewhat passible for my purposes. Programming for Droid OS is more like working with Windows than working with iOS. Droid OS and Windows are disintegrated [...]
Feb
23
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Targeting Expectant Mothers
“We are very conservative about compliance with all privacy laws. But even if you’re following the law, you can do things where people get queasy.“ How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did “New parents are a retailer’s Holy Grail.” How Companies Learn Your Secrets Your government is not, repeat: not, interested in spying on you. It is only interested in justifying the use of expensive war machinery on cultures that differ too much from our own. [...]
Feb
6
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Hexadecimal Heaven
A tool that I have been wanting to have on my desk, for over 20 years, now, has finally become a reality. It is a 4 by 4 array of buttons, numbered 0 through F. I always thought I would realize my dream by custom-wiring an old PS2 keyboard or programming a HID-compliant game controller. I even went as far as planning out a keyboard layout. I never thought it would have turned out like this. My coveted hexadecimal keypad [...]
Jan
12
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An Open Letter to Mr. S. Ballmer
Dear Mr. Ballmer, There is a label that is tossed around, with much derision, within the walls of your organization. SDEs fear that it might get stuck on them like a scarlet letter. PMs use it as a wedge to get SDEs to participate in empty rituals. SDETs secretly enjoy the sound of it, but fear it may prevent them from ever dropping the dreaded T from their title (how’s that for a scarlet letter!). Architects use it to justify their [...]
Dec
26
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An Open Letter to Mr. P. Enlargement
Dear Mr. Enlargement, Thank you so much for your short Pidgin English comments, glorifying my posts, and all of the interesting links to sites with such amazing content! I never knew where to find pharmaceuticals at bargain prices before I followed your links. Or how to satisfy my wife. Or how to use a breathing mask. Really, thank you so much! On a technical note, you might want to check your video sites for errors: there are some color palette errors [...]
Dec
5
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Dissing Dennis Ritchie
I am tired of hearing these arguments that portray Dennis Ritchie as some sort of software martyr, on whose shoulders Steve Jobs rose to power and then got all the press and attention by passing away first. Dennis Ritchie was very important, yes, but Steve Jobs deserves credit for what he accomplished, as well. Dennis Ritchie’s contributions to the art of programming are immeasurable. As a C (and C-derivative) language programmer, I recognize the important impact that he has had [...]
No Static at All
Building a Static Library with the Android NDK The Android NDK compiler skips building a static library unless there is some component dependent on it. In order to get ndk-build to actually build a static library, you need to trick the compiler into believing it is some other component’s dependency. In this example, a shared library is built, using the static library (the only output I am interested in) as its input. ./jni/Android.mk: It should not be necessary to play tricks on a [...]
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