McDonalds has shipped a new McFlurry with the taste “Strawberry Surprise”. I had a recent opportunity to try one out and the results… well, it could be better, and it could be worse. Firstly, on the plus side: The McFlurry Strawberry Surprise is a McFlurry. This means that it derives a lot of its fame from [...]
Monthly Archives: June 2006
June 29, 2006
13:06
13:06
June 24, 2006
16:10
16:10
Tetelestai
Tetelestai is a greek word meaning, literally, “it is finished”. It is not without a sense of achievement that I now have finished reading all six volumes of Churchill’s memoirs. In a way, it feels as though I have myself been a witness to all the workings and dealings of the British Government during the [...]
June 23, 2006
17:54
17:54
Erlang: Smart Stuff
I just recently came upon a page devoted to introducing functional languages. Functional languages is an interesting concept since it approaches software development from a radically different angle. It focuses heavily on functions and immutability (in everything!). In some aspects it really shines when you understand it. Erlang is a functional language developed by Swedish [...]
June 22, 2006
18:51
18:51
C++ is the New COBOL
I’ve spent the last few days coming to grips with this huge, enormous system written in C++. The more I see of it, the more I’m thinking that C++ is the new COBOL. It worked well during the time of its glory days, but now it’s old, it’s cumbersome, and all of the new features [...]
June 19, 2006
17:54
17:54
First Day at Work
Today was the first day at my new job. It’s always a little special, those first few hours of the new job. It’s new people, new environments, new languages… A lot of things to learn, and a lot of things to become familiar with very quickly. C++ is a very different environment from Delphi. I [...]
June 14, 2006
17:36
17:36
Live Communications Server 2005 and the Buzzword Bingo
We just watched a series of presentations from Microsoft’s Live Communications Server 2005. Microsoft must be the world champion in buzzword bingo. Any product, any product, that Microsoft releases promises “increased uptime”, “increased availability” and “enhanced scalability” while “improving performance” and “enabling communication”. If the program doesn’t “enable workflow efficiency”, it “empowers decision-making” or “increases [...]
June 11, 2006
22:42
22:42
June 5th, 1944
After at least a year and a half of reading Churchill’s memoirs from the World War II, I have now come to the end of the fifth book. It is the 5th of June 1944. This night, some 160.000 soldiers will cross the English Channel by sea and by air. Airborne soldiers will jump over [...]
June 11, 2006
01:35
01:35
The Old Mainframe Computer
I wrote this poem many years ago. I thought I might post it here. In a dark and gloomy dungeon Racked by storms and thunder A valiant server stood on guard As lightning ripped the night asunder. It stood there lonesome and forlorn Working quietly in the freezing cold But not a tear was seen [...]
June 11, 2006
00:18
00:18
Thoughts on Threading
Threading, as I’ve mentioned before, is hard. Especially in non-managed languages, such as Delphi for Win32. Various people, including Allen Bauer, is thinking about how languages can be adapted to support thread-based development easier: “This increases the need for the average developer to be become more adept at writing multi-threaded applications. What if the compiler [...]
June 1, 2006
16:41
16:41
Nightmares on Serialization Street
Serialization is the process of taking an object, and streaming the contents of that object into a file, or communications channel, or any other form of media; and then rebuilding that object on the other side, so that it takes up the exact same representation as it did on the sender side. Think of it [...]