Why am I learning Python

To be honest, what can be done with Python can also be done with Perl or Ruby. I am not working in areas, where there is much better library support for Python than for Perl or Ruby. And I like Perl and Ruby very much and I am somewhat skeptical about Python. But there are …

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Meaningless Whitespace in Textfiles

We use different file formats that are more or less tolerant to certain changes. Most well known is white space in text files. In some programming languages white space (space, newline, carriage return, form feed, tabulator, vertical tab) has no meaning, as long as any whitespace is present. Examples for this are Java, Perl, Lisp …

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Loops with unknown nesting depth

We often encounter nested loops, like for (i = 0; i < n; i++) { for (j = 0; j < m; j++) { doSomething(i, j); } } This can be nested to a few more levels without too much pain, as long as we observe that the number of iterations for each level need …

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Not all projects are on ideal paths I (Tom Rocket)

It is nice to write about positive things, how things have been done well, how they should be done well and how good we are and how good we could be if we were just applying the right technology and methodology and process and management… Tom Rocket Let’s leave that for today and write about …

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Microsoft is buying Github

It seems that Microsoft is buying Github for about 7.5 billion USD worth in their own stock. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Probably no reason to celebrate, but Microsoft under Nadella seems to run a totally different strategy than Microsoft under Steve Ballmer. Selling licenses of MS-Windows and MS-Office is probably …

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Scala Days 2018

In 2018 I visited Scala Days in Berlin with this schedule. Other than in previous years I missed the opening keynote, which is traditionally on the evening before the main conference starts, because this is not so well compatible with my choice of traveling with a night train, especially because I did not want to …

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The little obstacles of interoperability

Deutsch A lot of things in today’s IT landscape have been unified and interoperability is much better than 20 years ago. Some examples: Networking: Today networking is TCP/IP. Even the physical cables with RJ45/Ethernet and the wireless networks have been standardized and all kinds of devices can use the same networks. In the old days …

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ScalaUA 2018

About a week ago I visited Scala UA in Kiev. This was the schedule. It was a great conference once again, as it was already in 2017 and I really enjoyed everything, including the food, which was great again… 🙂 I listened to the following talks on the first day: Tales from the trenches, developing …

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Encryption of Disks

Today we should use encryption of disks for many situations. I recommend at least encrypting disks of portable computers that contain the home directory and portable USB disks. They can easily get stolen or lost and it is better if the thief does not have easy access to the content. We should even consider encrypting …

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Water pressure CPU

All kinds of technologies are being investigated to become the successor of our decades old silicon chip technology: quantum computing using light instead of electricity using other semiconductors than silicon … But it is funny that the most obvious approach has not been investigated until recently. Now it has been leaked that companies in east …

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