Hack day sounds fun. Two days of hacking and socialising at Alexandra Palace. All the cool kids[1] are going to be there. Are you? The language on the official site is a bit “legal”. Tom Coates explains in English. [1] Places are limited. I hope I’m cool enough :-)
Category: programming
Geo-Coding the UK
I’m currently building a web site that will involve plotting the positions of buildings onto maps. I’m going to be using Google maps for that. Unfortunately, the data that I need to plot is a list of postcodes and as far as I can see, the best way to plot stuff on a Google map… Continue reading Geo-Coding the UK
Real DJs Code Live
This is very cool. An article in Wired features a member of london.pm Some DJs spin vinyl or twiddle fader knobs. Others write subroutines in C++. A new brand of music maestro is turning programming into performance, eschewing turntables for a compiler and a mind for syntax structure. “Livecoding” practitioners improvise using Perl or homemade… Continue reading Real DJs Code Live
BBC Programme Catalogue
From the Guardian Ashley Highfield, the BBC director of new media and technology, also announced proposals to put the corporation’s entire programme catalogue online for the first time from tomorrow in written archive form, as an “experimental prototype” This is the cool Ruby on Rails project that Matt Biddulph was working on last year. More… Continue reading BBC Programme Catalogue
Joel on Rails
Joel Spolsky has been playing with Ruby on Rails. He’s written about some of the problems that he found. This has upset some members of the Rails community. On of the best points that Spolsky makes is one I’ve mentioned here before – the fact that ActiveRecord is a horribly crippled ORM system – it… Continue reading Joel on Rails
Java? It’s So Nineties
It’s been a few weeks since we’ve had a “Java is dying” post. But it seems that the idea is really starting to take hold. There’s a story in Business Week this week which covers much of the same ground as we’ve seen before. Previously I’ve only seen this kind of analysis in media aimed… Continue reading Java? It’s So Nineties
The McCarroll-Cross Productivity Indicator
In my opinion one of the best and most important talks at last Saturday’s London Perl Workshop was the first talk in the beginners track where Greg McCarroll talked about “Rediscovering the Joys of Perl”. Greg introduced a couple of quick hacks that he had written to make his life better. He went on to… Continue reading The McCarroll-Cross Productivity Indicator
BBC Programme Catalogue
When I saw him in Amsterdam, Matt was talking about a secret project he was doing for the BBC. And now he has revealed what it is. He’s putting a web front end on the BBC Programme Catalogue. That’s a database that contains details of almost a million programmes that the BBC have broadcast over… Continue reading BBC Programme Catalogue
On Databases
Last week David Heinemeier Hansson wrote a rather controversial piece about the use of stored procedures, triggers and relational constraints in databases. Later in the week Alex Bunardzic backed him up. What they both seem to be saying is that because we now have powerful tools to represent our data models in code[1] then there… Continue reading On Databases
Beyond Java
Is Java dead? Or dying? O’Reilly have just published a book called Beyond Java and the blurb includes this: If you are agree with the book’s premise–that Java’s reign is coming to an end–then this book will help you start to build your skills accordingly I don’t follow the Java community at all, so I’m… Continue reading Beyond Java