EDITOR'S EYE

The World of Software Development.

As Michael Swaine pointed out in It's Time to Get Good at Functional Programming, it's time for you to get good at functional programming. That was a year ago, and it's even more true today, what with multicore processors and parallel programming continuing their march at the forefront of software development.

Among the programming languages Michael touched on was F#, a functional language for .NET. To tell the truth, Michael didn't have a lot to say about F# since it was relatively new at the time with not much information about it available. He did point out that F# was designed specifically for .NET, based on the OCaml language, gives you easy access to .NET libraries and tools, and is integrated well with Visual Studio. Clearly, more information would be better.

Which is why it's a particularly good thing that John Puopolo and Sandy Squires have released a freely available e-book entitled the F# Survival Guide, which covers all of the essential elements of functional programming and the F# language.

To get you started in functional programming, we've excerpted the first chapter entitled Introduction to Functional Programming. With that as background, you should have no problem moving on to F# in depth. And did I mention it is freely available? Check it out. It's a great vehicle for moving into the world of F# and functional programming.

-- Jonathan Erickson
jerickson@ddj.com

Posted by Jon Erickson at 04:33 PM  Permalink |

That place where people, places, and things intersect is usually referred to as a "community." It doesn't matter what kind of people, places, and things we're talking about, it's still a community, and social networks are simply the most recent incarnation. One thing disparate communities share, at least according to Weixiong Zhang, a Washington University associate professor of computer science and engineering and of genetics, and Jianhua Ruan, a faculty member in Department of Computer Science at the University of Texas at San Antonio, are networks within communities that define the community's structure.

Continue reading "Communitites and the Networks that Define Them"

Posted by Jon Erickson at 09:11 AM  Permalink |

That place where people, places, and things intersect is usually referred to as a "community." It doesn't matter what kind people, places, and things we're talking about, it's still a community, and social networks are simply the most recent incarnation. One thing disparate communities share, at least according to , Weixiong Zhang, a Washington University associate professor of computer science and engineering and of genetics, and Jianhua Ruan, a faculty member in Department of Computer Science at the University of Texas at San Antonio, are networks within communities that define the community's structure.

Continue reading "Communities and the Networks That Define Them"

Posted by Jon Erickson at 04:07 PM  Permalink |

Microsoft is supposed to be all about software, right?. After all, Gates and Allen didn't start off by calling the company "Microhard". But from time to time, hardware still pops up. The Microsoft Mouse, Microsoft Keyboard, and other devices come to mind. But this time around, Microsoft is going big-time hardware with a hardware platform called BEE3.

Continue reading "BEE3: Microsoft, FPGAs, and the Future of Computer Architectures"

Posted by Jon Erickson at 10:03 AM  Permalink |

Dr. Dobb's has announced the winners of the 18th annual Jolt Product Excellence and Productivity Awards at the SD West 2008 conference. The Jolt Awards recognize those products, books, and websites that have "jolted" the industry in the past year. Winners are selected by a panel of judges consisting of industry insiders, columnists, and technology leaders. This year's winners include:

Continue reading "Jolt Award Winners Announced"

Posted by Jon Erickson at 12:25 AM  Permalink |

SD West 2008 is underway for me this evening. Actually, if I had gotten up earlier this morning, it might have been underway for me a lot sooner. However, sleeping-in made it possible for me to save up all my energy for this evening's panel discussion on "Beautiful Code." Not that I needed a lot of energy -- the panel participants did all the heavy lifting for me, which means that I didn't have to do a whole lot once I had them introduce themselves.

Continue reading "SD West 2008 Underway; Beautiful Code First Up"

Posted by Jon Erickson at 12:51 AM  Permalink |

Does robotics need or require a special-purpose development environment? Apparently the folks at Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Academy think so. Which is why they developed ROBOTC, a programming environment optimized for educational robots.

Continue reading "ROBOTC: A Programming Environment for Robotics"

Posted by Jon Erickson at 10:53 AM  Permalink |

There are two things to cover today:

Continue reading "Taking Care of Business, or I'll Be the One With the Hang-dog Look"

Posted by Jon Erickson at 05:46 PM  Permalink |

Wait a minute! Make up your mind! For years now, we've been hearing that cell phones and automobiles don't mix (or, as Microsoft might say, they don't Sync up). Now all of a sudden, its okay to have cell phones in your car, at least according to researchers at Nokia and the University of California at Berkeley.

Continue reading "Cars and Cell Phones: Maybe They're Not So Bad After All"

Posted by Jon Erickson at 01:49 PM  Permalink |

There's been a lot going on with Python--and a lot yet to come. For instance:

Continue reading "Python In the News"

Posted by Jon Erickson at 10:32 AM  Permalink |