My people

Levity in the eye of the hurricane. These are my people. [1] [1] https://github.com/WhiteHouse/fortyfour/issues/3

Lambda lambda lambda

It can help ya help ya help ya. It’s Python’s lambda function1! Pesky urllib2 not allowing you to construct a DELETE request? Environment Overlords not letting you install a sane http module like Requests2? Don’t like what a module you have no control over is doing for you? Lambda the damn thing! For example urllib2…

Refactoring problems

Refactoring without unit tests is a lot like playing that game where you splay your fingers out on a table and then stab the spaces between the fingers as fast as you can with a really sharp knife in your other hand. Writing unit tests for one-off scripts isn’t really worth the effort. Refactoring one-off…

Self Worth

Programming is kind of an objective thing. Code works or it doesn’t. This can haunt people who, to any extent, tie their sense of self worth to their current job performance. Starting some time Tuesday afternoon my personal stock plummeted as the IR Index climbed to five tickets, all of which I thought I’d solved…

Java Mathematic Expression Parser

JMEP is exactly what I’ve been beating my head over for the past few weeks. Seriously way better than what I was writing and, from the testing I’ve done, way more robust. If you’ve been looking for an open-source java parser for mathematical expressions, your search is over. Never was interested in building a parser,…

Proud to be a Developer

When your PO is more like your lead you get a boss that writes a blog like this: Proud to be a Developer Yeah, he’s a Microsoftie, but he’s a really frickin’ fantastic Microsoftie who does some pretty cool stuff that could be ported to other environments with relative ease. Anyway, it’s a good read…

Dynamic Classes

I’ve spent about a month trying to work around needing to write / compile Java classes dynamically because I thought it would be an utter PITA. Turns out dynamic classes are not so difficult after all. /me wipes egg from his face and feels dumb for not consulting the Internet sooner.

Dynamic Languages Strike Back

Steveys Blog Rants: Dynamic Languages Strike Back is a great article. Or at least it reads like a great article. To be honest, I don’t have the chops to voice a truly knowledgeable opinion but I figure if I keep reading this stuff it will come to me eventually. It all relates to a paradigm…

Big Ball of Mud

Big Ball of Mud is a great essay on crappy software architecture. Both in how it comes to be and how to pull yourself out of it. Academic enough to be informative and witty enough to keep you reading.