In this era of declining computer science enrollments â and ongoing concern over the math and science competency of American students â I believe it is time for technical institutions to undertake similar soul-searching. In particular, we need to rethink the historic divorce of science and engineering from the so-called liberal arts â those nominally intended for "free men."
7/11 & 7/25 ShoesFests with Why The Lucky Stiff
why the lucky stiff and friends invite all interested Ruby hackers -- and wannabe hackers -- to join them for two 24-hour ShoesFests: Friday, July 11th noon GMT to Saturday, July 12th noon GMT Friday, July 25th noon GMT to Saturday, July 26th noon GMT The goal of these events is to write and share fun little applications using Shoes, a clever little cross-platform GUI toolkit written in Ruby.
SproutCore JavaScript framework in the news
Go Charles! SproutCore » home SproutCore blog Want to Try Out Apple’s MobileMe? Check Out SproutCore Cocoa for Windows + Flash Killer = SproutCore — RoughlyDrafted Slashdot | Apple's SproutCore, OSS Javascript-Based Web Apps AppleInsider | Apple's open secret: SproutCore is Cocoa for the Web InfoQ: Client-Server Computing: The Future Web? and a little historical... Continue Reading →
Things I wish CompSci courses would teach
1. effective email communication and managing online teams (cf. Open source governance) 2. event-based multi-core programming (cf. Erlang, the Actor model, NSOperation) 3. real-world profiling and optimization (cf. DTrace) 4. data-parallelism via the GPU (cf. OpenCL - Open Compute Language) 5. "holistic" application design (cf. interface-first programming )
Building a GUI for MacPorts
In a fit of enthusiasm/hubris, I volunteered to be a mentor for MacPorts participation in the Google Summer of Code. Specifically, I'm taking on the issue of Graphical User Interfaces, because I once wrote one for DarwinPorts (the predecessor to MacPorts. Unfortunately, the code seems to be long gone; FreeBSD mirrored the dp-cocoa and PortsManager projects, but all the folders appear to be empty.... Continue Reading →
iPhone Fever!
iPhone FeverWith apologies to Bucker & Garcia (and PacMan)[Updated 3/17 to match iTunes] I got my ninety-nine in hand, and I head to A-D-C.I slurp on down the S-D-K and bringing up Xcode 3Don't bother me with Java, or tempt me with a Zune.I'm gonna make my own app, and ship it out in June!'Cause I've got... Continue Reading →
Basic Instruments.app Demo
[This is a follow-up to my Rails 2.0 demo] In Finder, Double-click to launch /Developer/Applications/Instruments.app Select "UI Recorder" for new document In toolbar, Select Launch Executable -> Safari.app Quit Safari if currently running In that instrument, Click "i" for info subwindow Configure UI Recorder to NOT Record Mouse Move, Drag Open Library from Toolbar Select... Continue Reading →
Rails 2.0 on Leopard
I wanted to try out some of the new Ruby on Rails 2.0 features in Leopard, so I may as well blog my notes here for future reference. 1. Update Gems Use this if you haven't ugpraded your system to Rails 2.0 yet. sudo gem update --system # Update "gems" itself sudo gem install rails... Continue Reading →
Leopard UNIX Links
Since someone else asked, I figured I'd capture a list of UNIX-related resources for Leopard (Mac OS X v10.5). Apple - Mac OS X Leopard - Technology - UNIX UNIX Development on Mac OS X Apple - Open Source Apple - Mac OS X Server - Technology - Xgrid Apple - Mac OS X Leopard... Continue Reading →
Character-Driven Branding
Steve Jobs once famously claimed that Apple's Executive Team spent "zero" time focused on branding; instead, they worry a lot about "who they are", and ensuring that their actions are consistent with that. While that may reflect the luxury Apple has as one of the world's best-known brands, it raises a crucial point. In today's... Continue Reading →
iHack, therefore iBlog 
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