All of the things labelled as Posts, so that crawlers have a place to find them.
Writing software for a malicious world
How do we write software that survives in a world of malware? Is it just a matter of writing safer code or do some of
What is functional programming?
Three key concepts comprise the essence of functional programming: first-class functions, pure functions, and immutable data. Together they express a fundamental architectural paradigm on how
Improve quality and lower costs with assisted manual testing
Testing graphical user interfaces is a challenge. Full automation is appealing but it’s expensive and doesn’t yield good results. UI’s are something where a real
Microsoft is absolutely at fault for WannaCry
Microsoft has played a significant role in the damage of the WannaCry ransomware. Certainly the proximate cause lies with the malware’s authors, and they should
Sorting a file: A real program in Leaf
Finally, a big step for Leaf: something that could be called an actual program. Over the weekend I finished a program that loads a file,
What is imperative programming?
Imperative programming is a paradigm that explicitly tells the computer what to do and how to do it. Unlike most other approaches it is a
Why does Amazon taunt me with surround sound?
Despite a label of 5.1 surround I only ever get stereo sound from Amazon Prime. I mange to get surround from other providers and devices,
Yummy UI food with keyframe animations
When I saw the below demo I thought “neat, how’d they do that”? That may sound surprising if you knew that I wrote the API
Fix your crappy ads and I’ll stop blocking them
Ad-block users are finding an increasing number of sites blocking access. I wonder if any of them asked themselves why we block ads? Do they
Bravely squash or cowardly refuse: a git conundrum
Why would somebody ever want to take perfectly fine code history and erase it? Phrased like that it makes git squashing seem ridiculous. Alas, some
Working with types and named constructors in Leaf
As types are a keystone in Leaf, working with them must be fluid and simple. I recently improved this area by adding named constructors and
Calculating pleasant stepping values for a chart
I needed pleasant range values for the charting API in Fuse. These are the values written by the ticks on the plot, typically on the
The horribly horrible horrific horrifying horrid word horror
What’s the difference between “horrible” and “horrifying”? It’s a simple question posed to me by a friend in the process of editing her novel. It
The agonizing necessity of cached calculations
Language support for caching sucks. Despite an ever present need to cache data and calculations most languages require the programmer to do all the work.
Why can’t I get organic salt and vinegar chips?
As a Canadian, eating potato chips is part of my DNA. I was understandably alarmed when I moved to Munich and was greeted with a
What is orthogonality?
The flexibility and usefulness of an API relate directly to its orthogonality. But what does “orthogonal” mean? It’s a term that’s tossed around a lot
Programming won’t be automated, or it already has been
I’m afraid of a robot taking my job. I don’t care about the job part much, I’m afraid of the actual robot. To replace my
The meta-field dilemma: `a.size` or `size(a)`
I can’t decide whether a.size or size(a) is more correct when getting the length of an array. While writing Leaf I have a recurrent feeling
Importing Blender object normal maps with permutations
We used a lot of object normal maps in RadialBlitz. Figuring out how Blender encoded these was part of the challenge. It didn’t seem to
A game of what’d they press? Hit testing in a 2d/3d layout
A simple tap of the screen invokes a staggering amount of calculations. That screen is actually big tree of UI elements, and we need to
The bitwise complement, or not operator, is unsafe
I came upon a problem with bitwise complement (logical not): it isn’t safe. It’s nothing new, but it really registered while implementing the logical operations
Stuffing curves into boxes: calculating the bounds
Now that we’ve drawn beziers and arcs there’s only one piece missing in the vector API. We need to calculate the bounds of the curve:
