If only I had a dime for every time Stroustrup used the phrase “This would be disastrous”. It can refer to everything from misuse of pointers, to making your destructors non-virtual in a class that will be a base class for some derived class, to all sorts of other C++ pitfalls. I got […]

I’m up to Chapter 18 of Stroustrup’s The C++ Programming Language. The templates chapter was painful and I had to read it twice. I think I got it the second time through. Stroustrup talks about how people ask him how long it takes to learn C++ and he says (paraphrased) “a year […]

I’m done with 10 chapters of my new book so far. There’s some good stuff in there. I’m always glad when I get a book that makes me realize how little I actually know about something, because it’s probably a good sign I’m learning something.
Stroustrup makes some nice comments about interfaces. He […]

So as I alluded to after chattering on for hours, C++ is my new language of the week/month(/year?). My copy of The C++ Programming Language came in the mail a day early today, so I got to read it on the bus ride home from work, which was fun. I’ve apparently already read […]

Today at 5:00 I bought Agile Web Development with Rails. As of now 10:15 I have finished reading it. Pretty good book. I think for Rails you really need either a good web tutorial or a good book or about a month to read through the API. Way too much stuff […]

I was writing some Ruby and I must’ve had my head stuck in Java, because I wrote something like this:
class Test1
@x = 1
end
That is very different from this:
class Test2
def initialize
@x = 1
end
end
In the latter case […]

I previously prattled on about what the right abstraction should be for an icon theme. I said a hierarchy of subclasses would work.
I was very wrong. It didn’t work at all. For example I tried to write a == method for my Icon class. With the class structure I was using […]

As one of my professors used to say, “There’s no problem that can’t be solved by adding another layer of abstraction”. He was joking, but there’s a little bit of truth to that.
I’ve been working on my other website for a while. It’s all PHP4, not entirely by my choice but I’m limited […]

I’m studying for a Java certification. I haven’t used Java since college, so it’s a nice refresher. The one I’m after is SCJP. You basically study for a while and then pay $200 and take a test and you’re done. You could take classes, I imagine, but they’re optional and having […]

Everyone I know who does Lisp says “Learn Lisp and it will change how you look at all other programming languages!” I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I think I’m starting to learn a bit.