In Ben’s post, he questions whether switch statements are cleaner than if-else chains. I contend they are, because they better express the semantics of the code, allow less room for errors, reduce […]
Why switch is better than if-else
A Failed Experiment with Python Type Annotations
I like Python, but wish it had static typing. The added safety would go a long way to improving quality and reducing development time. So today I tried to make use of […]
A Parade of Web Tech
Perhaps I wrote that I don’t know how to create a website, but glancing back, I certainlyhave built a lot. And oh boy, there’s quite the variety of technology involved. I thought […]
Terrible interview question: Swap variables without a temporary
“Clever programming tricks have no place in programming interviews. They usually involve a small amount of code and solve an innocent-sounding question like “find the loop in a linked list”. Often unfair […]
Essential code for lists and vectors in an interview
“Lists are perhaps the fundamental data structure in code. There’s virtually no program that doesn’t use lists. Interviewers love asking questions that involve lists, either intentionally, or just because almost everything uses […]
Stop waving the wand of magic numbers
37. You have no idea what that number is, do you? A number without context nor a label is a random value. It doesn’t tell us anything. Imagine walking by a billboard, […]
How to fail a programming interview
“I’ve conducted many interviews. There are many reasons why I reject people, but there are recurring themes. I want to give a list of the most common problems. A few of these […]
We don’t need a ternary operator
A staple of compact code, the ternary operator ?: feels like it’s earned a place any programming language. I use it often; you should use it often. However, I don’t like the […]
How I use `variant` in the Leaf compiler
Variants are data types that can store different types of values in them, as opposed to one fixed type. In contrast to a generic object or an untyped variable, there is a […]
Core Layout Protocol API (UI Engine)
Let’s get into some technical details about how a layout engine works. We assume that we have a tree of elements that comprise the UI. Starting from the root node, we request […]
What is responsive layout?
A good UI design must accommodate the various device formats and resolutions that users have. Element placement cannot be absolute, but rather be constrained and expanded by the available space. Layouts […]
UI Engine Layout: Additive, Partitioned and Layered
Layout determines how children are positioned and sized within their parent element. There are three approaches to placing child elements within a parent: Additive: The children combine to define the size […]
UI Layout: Working with Pixels, Points and Density
Devices have various physical resolutions and densities. One phone may be 10cm wide and have 800pixels across, while another may be 8cm wide and have 1200pixels across. A UI engine needs to […]
Dissecting my Rusty Superhero Bots — The code review
I chose Rust as the language for the Botters of the Galaxy contest. My code structure was suitable enough to get me to the final league, but I had a few […]
