Learning A New Programming Language per Year in the Age of AIPeople don’t really learn new programming languages every year anymore thanks to AI, so why do I stick with this activity? Call me old fashioned, but I still like to dive into a new programming language every year, no matter what, and thus here comes yet another update in my lifelong obsession to learn more and more programming languages.
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.
Yup, Still Learning a New Programming Language Every YearI gave an update on this lifetime activity of mine in 2006, 2007, 2011, and 2013, and here we go for 2023.
Containers and DLL HellBack in the 1990s, shared libraries were all the rage. Instead of having to ship a 20 MB *.exe file to your customer in various floppy disks, you could cut some code out, put it in a set of *.dll files, and reuse that code across all your products. Every vendor would then install lots of DLL files in your system, and they would be reused by other apps from the same vendor.
The New MicrosoftMicrosoft is a big, big, big name in our industry. No matter what they do, everybody notices. Whether it’s good or bad, useful or ridiculous, big or small, it never goes by unnoticed.
Fortune AppsAs part of my work in VSHN, I lately prepared a set of demo applications ready to be containerized and deployed in our new product APPUiO Cloud.
A Linker for JoelIn January 2004 Joel Spolsky wrote a blog post titled “Please Sir May I Have a Linker?, where he described his tribulations trying to install a small .NET app in computers not bundled with the original .NET framework.
Polyglot ConwayMy personal project during the pandemic was Conway, a project providing implementations of Conway’s Game of Life in as many programming languages as possible.
Password Hashing in DjangoThis technique can be useful when migrating applications from Django to ASP.NET or PHP, keeping usernames and passwords intact.
Visual J++Once upon a time, there was a programming environment made by Microsoft called Visual J++. It was their attempt to do with Java what they had done with JScript before, and to be honest, it was quite cool. You could compile and run Java code on Windows with a very good IDE - this was 5 years before IntelliJ released IDEA! It generated much faster binaries than what the official Java compiler from Sun produced. Developers could access functionality inside of packages starting with the microsoft. name, but that of course that kind of broke the whole point of Java which is to make cross-platform stuff that you only write once and then you run everywhere.
iPhone Apps without Objective-CYes, it’s possible. Even if Objective-C is one of my preferred programming languages, in any case I think it’s worth mentioning that, 2 years after the official iPhone SDK has been announced, the iPhone development landscape has really grown up, and many, many different options are available today. This article provides a very high-level enumeration of some options I’ve found on the web, but I’m sure there are even more alternatives around.
AOP and the DataServices ProjectFive years ago I worked as a Software Engineer for a startup, based in Geneva, Switzerland, which had the goal of creating a web-based systems management console, to control and monitor the status of large computer installations, much like Microsoft SMS (Systems Management Server) does. This tool would eventually benefit from being a web-based application, and as such it could be used from anywhere, without having to install a “fat client”; just launch a browser, point to a particular URL, and you are done.
Preferred Programming LanguagesThere are basically 5 languages that I really like. For several reasons. 2 of them are proprietary, while 3 are open-source. 2 are statically typed, and 3 are dynamically typed. All are fully object-oriented. 3 can be used for web development, 4 for desktop apps. And none is Java.
This Year's Programming LanguagesTrying to keep my promise of learning a new programming language every year, I have identified a couple of candidates for 2007:
Some .NET CodeI just updated the Projects subsection of this site with some .NET code that I wrote, between 2003 and 2006.
Quick Comparison of C# and RubyI have been working as a software developer since 1996, and as such I’ve used a variety of different languages, both compiled and interpreted. But the who languages that I know and use most today, are two somewhat different ones, C# and Ruby. I will begin my presentation with a short explanation of both, providing their major similarities and differences, and then providing some code samples of both.
Geneva Techdays 2006 Powerpoint SlidesWell the PowerPoint slides that I used during the TechDays 2006 conference have been published in the TechDays page. You can download them from this site as well:
The Exception to the RuleThe rainy, later snowy, Swiss weather of this weekend has made me just stay at home, and take the chance to try out a few things: that’s how I made my first steps in Ruby and WebObjects. These two deserve an article of their own.