February 3, 2010 That's pretty much my whole rant right there in the title. But I suppose I should elaborate a little.
At work, I write a lot of code in Progress (I know, nobody's ever heard of it.) In Progress, you can put if statements in the RHS of an assignment operator, like so...
C++, Code, Programming September 19, 2009 The following code snippet is part of the PAUSE BUTTON implementation in a video game. The game is paused by setting Time.timeScale to 0 and it is unpaused by setting it back to 1.0.
if (GUI.Button(Rect(25,100,100,30),"PAUSE"))
{
if (Time.timeScale == 1.0)
{
Time.timeScale = 0;
}
else
{
Time.timeScale = 1.0;
}
}
The code is simple and straightforward. The solution is logically consistent with the way most people would naturally think through the problem. But is this the most efficient solution? With just a little more thought, one might come up with something similar to the following solution.
if (GUI.Button(Rect(25,100,100,30),"PAUSE"))
{
Time.timeScale = 1.0 - Time.timeScale;
}
Code, Programming August 8, 2009 I'm going to try something new here. Normally when I write a post, I think through everything that I want to say before I start writing. But I think I'm going to just shoot from the hip on this one and see what happens. Since I'm just writing this as I'm thinking about it, the end result may be brilliant or it may be senseless drivel that will make you dumber by reading it - Proceed with caution.
I was just reading Joel Spolsky's argument against programming with exceptions, and I'm inclined to agree with him.
A better alternative is to have your functions return error values when things go wrong, and to deal with these explicitly, no matter how verbose it might be. It is true that what should be a simple 3 line program often blossoms to 48 lines when you put in good error checking, but that's life, and papering it over with exceptions does not make your program more robust. I think the reason programmers in C/C++/Java style languages have been attracted to exceptions is simply because the syntax does not have a concise way to call a function that returns multiple values, so it's hard to write a function that either produces a return value or returns an error.
While I completely agree with this, I think one could argue that we do have a way of returning multiple values: Pass-By-Reference.
Development, Programming April 20, 2009 I have to confess something. In my last post, I talked a lot about good coding practices. Well, it seems I have a tendency to break one of my own rules. I was looking through some of my Memories of Hyrule code and I realized that I have a tendency to leave the default cases, in my switch statements, blank.
C++, Code, Memories of Hyrule, Programming April 11, 2009 
There exists programmers who do not love what they do... I know, I can't believe it either.
To many, software development is just an everyday 9-5 job. But to others (such as myself), programming is practically a way of life! But I suppose not everyone can have the same love for code that I do. Not everyone can really admire the elegance of a well-formed recursive function. Not everyone can read a piece of code and appreciate it in the same way that others might appreciate a song, film, or book. But the problem is not that there are people who don't love software. The problem is that there are people who don't love software despite the fact that they CHOSE a career in which they write it every day.
But how do I know? How do I know that the people writing software don't love it the same way that I do? How do I know that people chose to go all the way through school in order to start a career in a field that they don't love?
I know because I read their code.
Programming March 14, 2009
I just came across this awesome video, and thought I'd share it.
Richard Buckland, a UNSW professor, discusses problem solving, craftsmanship, and what it means to be a good programmer. If you enjoy this video, you can watch his entire COMP-1971 course here.
Programming, Video March 1, 2009 Offbeat, Programming February 21, 2009
Updated on June 26, 2009 by
Errornix
As I'm sure you've noticed, I recently added a Twitter widget to the site. Twitter does a pretty good job of getting you started with a generated chunk of HTML/JavaScript (or Flash). But I figured I'd go ahead and describe what all I did to add the widget to Squarespace as well as give some insight into how you can customize your Twitter widget.
CSS, Development, Programming, Tutorial, Twitter, Web 
