My Faithful Logitech C930e WebcamI like boring technology that lasts decades: 2 years ago I was raving about my Harman Kardon SoundSticks (spoiler alert: they are still in service) and today I’d like to rave about my faithful Logitech C930e, an HDMI webcam that’s been with me for 10 years this month.
Conway in BashI’ve added a new version to my venerable Polyglot Conway project, this time as a good old Bash script, a version bootstrapped with the help of ChatGPT.
Conway in C89Another year, another version of my Polyglot Conway project, this time for C89, also known as “ANSI C”, targeting quite a few compilers of the early 1990s, and some others from our more recent times.
The New Clock and the Evolution of JavaScriptThe attentive readers among you might have noticed that the artsy clock that appears on every page of this blog (except on mobile devices) behaves slightly different now. In fact, I’ve removed its dependency to the old and unsupported Raphael.js library, and migrated it to new and modern JavaScript features.
Jumping to Random PostsThe attentive among you might have noticed a new “Random” link at the bottom of each post in this blog, taking you to a (you guessed it) random post on this blog, powered by the RANDOM() function of SQLite (because, you do remember that the search feature in this blog is built on top of SQLite, do you?)
Revisiting Ruby on RailsI’ve blogged about Ruby on Rails quite a few times in the past 18 years. I’ve delivered lots of Rails apps, I’ve used it for my own company, and I have been a historic fan of Rails against all odds and against all opinions.
On DocumentationIn my career I’ve seen lots of teams struggling, not only to get their software out of the door, but much more often (even if successful in the previous step) to have a decent level of documentation next to it.
Conway in Minimal BASICLast Monday I released the 59th issue of De Programmatica Ipsum, my dear monthly magazine about code, developers, and society, and this month I talked about BASIC in all of its flavors. As part of the preparation of this issue, I dived into the world of Minimal BASIC code, the one with source code line numbers, the one that would start immediately after powering up your computer, and the one that brings endless nostalgia.
Back to MonolithsSo Amazon Prime Video (of all people!) published a blog post about how they’re returning to monoliths, relayed by DHH, generating lots of noise, to the point that even Dr. Werner Vogels himself, CTO at Amazon, had to pour some thoughts about the subject.
GaMMADigging in my archives I found a backup of my personal home page from 2000 to 2003, and through a little work of archeology and restoration, I made it work in our modern world of 2023.
RedmineI was surprised to discover recently that good old Redmine not only still exists in 2023, but it thrives in various unexpected ways.
BootstrapI love Bootstrap. No matter which web frontend framework I try, I always end up returning to it.
20 Years of Harman Kardon SoundSticksTwenty years ago, months before the scorching (and deadly) summer of 2003, I bought the transparent Harman Kardon SoundSticks that I still have above (and below) my desk today.
Server Side Rendering FTWI am, I have been, and forever will be a big advocate of server-side rendering. I think it is an essential way to build dynamic web content. I believe in this adamantly, feverishly, strongly, and relentlessly.
Stockholm Syndrome in SoftwareDevelopers working for a particular vendor tend to develop a bizarre version of Stockholm syndrome. It’s something I’ve witnessed at least twice in my career.
What Objective-C 3.0 Could Have BeenIn a parallel universe, in a parallel WWDC 2014, instead of Swift, developers got Objective-C 3.0, and this is what it would have looked like. It’s the same parallel universe where Russia doesn’t annex Crimea, by the way.
The Languages That Bend Your MindMany programming languages have been sold to unsuspecting software developers with enticing descriptions, promising “transformative experiences” that “irrevocably alter their way of thinking” and other ethereal descriptions, seemingly belonging to other categories of products, such as yoga classes, religions, drugs, progressive rock albums, or role playing games.
D, or What Go May Have BeenIn my quest to learn more and more programming languages, I recently dipped my toes into the D Programming Language. My reaction to it involves sadness; on the positive side of things, the language is undeniably brilliant.
Crystal is a SurpriseI blogged about Dart a few weeks ago, and I said it was refreshingly boring. I am probably late to the party, but I discovered Crystal recently, and it is not only boring but also surprising in many delicious ways.
Dart is BoringLately, I’ve been playing with Dart, the programming language powering the cross-platform Flutter UI framework. I’ve added a Dart implementation to my collection of (now 21) programming languages in the Conway project, and another to the collection of sample Fortune web APIs.
Hay un Lenguaje llamado COBOLSoy un escritor. Reivindico mi pertenencia a un subconjunto de la raza humana que escribe.
Preferred Programming LanguagesThere are basically 5 languages that I really like. For several reasons.