Good post by John Carter to the pragprog@yahoogroups.com
Let me relate a few war stories...
Once I had a very very complex problem to solve.
I had not the foggiest notion in which order to compute what.
So I took the cowards way and hooked in the Observer all over the place
so I didn't have to think in what order to do it.
It was very slow and buggy and I was no closer to understanding in the
problem than before. It did work occasionally though.
I put in enough logging to see what order it did things in (when it
worked). After glaring at that for an hour I saw the pattern, recoded
it as a couple of tight while loops.
Result...
Very fast, very understandable, easily maintained, no bugs and no observers.
Story two...
Once I took over the maintenance of some code that had several
observer pattern instances scattered around it.
It was fragile, buggy, and erratic.
After much loss of hair and many hours of poring over log traces I
figured it out.
There were complex loop paths through several observers. No mere
mortal could really understand what would happen if object X updated,
since the possible impacts and possible variants of paths were almost
limitless and depended crucially on the order of registration of
observers.
After a brief killing spree amongst the instances of the observer
pattern the code was still buggy, but at least no longer fragile and
erratic...
"I planned 6 weeks to convert from ST/V to Dolphin, realizing that
much of the non-GUI code was re-usable.—Here’s the killer,
remember this was my First real Dolphin project, and second
‘smalltalk’ project.….The conversion took only 2 days,
mainly because I could build and test in a workspace, and used SUnit
Testing for non-gui stuff as needed. "
Luis von Ahn is an assistant professor in the Computer Science Department
at Carnegie Mellon University, where he also received his Ph.D. in 2005.
Previously, Luis obtained a B.S. in mathematics from Duke University in
2000. He is the recipient of a Microsoft Research Fellowship.
ABSTRACT
Tasks like image recognition are trivial for humans, but continue to
challenge even the most sophisticated computer programs. This talk
introduces a paradigm for utilizing human processing power to solve
problems that computers cannot yet solve. Traditional approaches to solving
such problems focus on improving software. I advocate a novel approach:
constructively channel human brainpower using computer games. For example,
the ESP Game, described in this talk, is an enjoyable online game —
many people play over 40 hours a week — and when people play, they
help label images on the Web with descriptive keywords. These keywords can
be used to significantly improve the accuracy of image search. People play
the game not because they want to help, but because they enjoy it.
I describe other examples of "games with a purpose": Peekaboom,
which helps determine the location of objects in images, and Verbosity,
which collects common-sense knowledge. I also explain a general approach
for constructing games with a purpose.
Forrest Gump: That day, for no particular reason, I decided to go for a little run. So I ran to the end of the road. And when I got there, I thought maybe I'd run to the end of town. And when I got there, I thought maybe I'd just run across Greenbow County. And I figured, since I run this far, maybe I'd just run across the great state of Alabama. And that's what I did. I ran clear across Alabama. For no particular reason I just kept on going. I ran clear to the ocean. And when I got there, I figured, since I'd gone this far, I might as well turn around, just keep on going. When I got to another ocean, I figured, since I'd gone this far, I might as well just turn back, keep right on going. When I got tired, I slept. When I got hungry, I ate. When I had to go... you know... I went.
Interesting statistic.
A Lisp coder earns on average $85k, while a Java-guy $76k. I wonder whether
that statistic would change if one takes out the age-factor. :-)
Let’s admit it, Lisp coders are on average very smart, but so are the
early ruby adapters .. and they get only on average $60k. Sniff ..
Short update, before the conference on
Nov 4 and 5.
We are still evaluating whether we should get a bigger room. Sofar we have
about 30 people that confirmed that they will show up. We have space for 50
people and might simple close the conference registration once we are fully
booked and overbooked by 5% like these airline companies.
O’Reilly might give a free book to every speaker. Please add to the
wiki what book you want. I will send off our wish list o O’Reilly
around Oct 5.
Please put titles of your talks in the wiki, so that some structure will
emerge. In the worst case we do a "planing-game" at the start of
the conference and quickly produce the program as we did last year.
Get-Togethers will be announced in the wiki till Friday this week.
I came across this insane Dilbert-like posting
in the comp.lang.java.programmer group.
> Hi all,
> When you are programming, what kind of music or which song you love to
> hear? Is it classic music, piano, or pop music? Is it by male singer or
> by female singer?
I don't listen to music as such; I listen to an 8-second mp3-loop of my
manager screeching, puce-faced, at the top voice, "WTF is taking you so
long?!?! RELEASE THE CODE!!!! RELEASE THE CODE!!!! WTF AM I PAYING YOUR
SALARY FOR?!?! RELEASE THE F%#KING CODE, YOUR WORTHLESS, DISGUSTING,
INTOLERABLE PIECE OF S@&T!!!"
> I think sometime hearing music would be helpful in
> our productivity, right?
I find that this mp3-loop truly helps <TWITCH> my productivity. I love
<TWITCH> my manager, and dream of him <TWITCH><TWITCH><releases safety>
often ...
> Regards,
> Sam Huang
.ed
I saw that a small team of good people seemed to outperform the most
disciplined process, toolset, or philosophy. A bad team usually failed to
produce a good result, regardless of what magic process was applied. Article
Euruko06, the European Ruby Conference,
will be in Munich, November 4 and 5, 2006.
******************************************
* Conference wiki: http://www.euruko.com *
******************************************
This year, we'll meet in a hotel in Munich,
locations are being searched for. If you know
of a good place, let us know, too.
The conference will begin at 10 AM on Saturday and
end sometime on Sunday.
******************************************
* matz has offered to give us a *
* Skype video message. *
******************************************
Audience: Everybody interested in Ruby is most welcome!
Fee: minimal fee of 20 EUR, T-Shirts will be extra
(cash in small unmarked bills)
Registration: wiki at http://www.euruko.com, follow the link
to the Visitors' Page.
Talks: If you want to give a talk, please put down
topic (an short description) on the wiki, too.
******************************************
* Design the conference T-Shirt *
* or I'll do it again ... *
******************************************
If you have questions drop us a note at
euruk...@euruko.com
See you in Munich,
Approximity GmbH offers commercial ruby and R support
When applying for projects from time to time big Fortune 500 companies turn
down interesting solutions as no company out there offers commercial
support. Therfore, if anybody is out there trying todo great stuff in R or
ruby and the client requires commercial ruby, rails or R support, we are
happy to help.
We have been using R and ruby since 1998.
Please send requests to armin (at) approximity.com.
