2007.06.28
The Tools we Use
It is impossible to sharpen a pencil with a blunt ax. It is equally vain to try to do it with ten blunt axes instead.
— Edsger W. Dijkstra
Continue reading "The Tools we Use"2007.06.21
The Double-Edged Sword of Proprietary Platforms
A recent Slashdot article comment wondered how Windows Vista managed to break existing applications, despite Microsoft having complete control over the platform.
Continue reading "The Double-Edged Sword of Proprietary Platforms"2007.06.15
Handling Downtime
Ideally web sites should be up on a 24 by 7 basis. This is however a difficult and often an expensive proposition. Today I saw on the ACM Portal site an innovative alternative.
Continue reading "Handling Downtime"2007.06.06
Palindromic Palindrome Checking
Stan Kelly-Bootle's column in the April 2007 ACM Queue, titled Ode or Code? — Programmers Be Mused!, was as always very enjoyable. However, I found its ending, a C function that returns true when given a palindromic string (e.g. ABCCBA), anticlimactic. The function given is recursive; I was expecting it to be palindromic. How difficult can it be to write such a function?
Continue reading "Palindromic Palindrome Checking"
