Short

I am looking at the total posts for 2009 and finding myself behind, compared to last year. I really expected to meet-or-exceed last-year's count.

Let's blame it on Employment and Other Outside Forces cutting into quality blogging time.

Here are some other Real Life Adventures that stole time and/or money (All True) in relative order:

• Crashed replacement car on the day-of-purchase (it was a nasty blizzard).
• Severe weather felled huge tree, which crushed part of the house (it was an even-nastier thunderstorm).
• Lost 6% of base pay due to Our Glorious Economy (thanks sub-prime assfucks)!
• Coffeemaker failed (cheap and inconvenient; thanks Mr. Crappy).
• Refrigerator failed (not cheap and more inconvenient).
• The Cat died (he was 18).
• The Sump Pump failed (again).
• Hard drive on my main development workstation failed (thank you Ghost).
• Upstairs toilet failed (soooo not cheap, see next item).
• Water damage due to failed toilet.

That covers the highlights and lowlights for 2009.

It won't be missed....

Tales From the Lambda

Head spinning, eyes rolling into back of the head...

Neo: Whoa! I know Script-fu....

Morpheus (played by GIMP): Show me....

Operator: I think he likes it....

Well, not quite as good as the scene from the movie, but that was exactly what I was thinking, when I realized I needed to script some image exporting.

I've been assimilating GIMP for a while, and I knew that Script-Fu was the scripting language, but I didn't know, until I looked, is that Script-Fu is Scheme!

Well how ironically wonderful!

Yes! I have been embracing the FP mojo more-and-more, and what better dialect than one of the original FP dinosaurs!?

Looking around for examples (they are plentiful) was quite an education, mostly in how not to do it. No Offense to anyone personally, but if you are using begin and while and set! all over the place, that is just fighting the language! Leave that shoehorn-procedural-crap-into-FP nonsense where it belongs!

I was ready. I know how to use for-each and lambda and let*, and that's pretty much all anyone needs to get-R-done, and I did-do.

But not without some scars er, learning. Here are my main take-aways from the whole thing.

• It's all about lists. You are either building a list to traverse later, or traversing a list you built earlier.
• I hate S-expressions!
• Scheme is powerful, if you embrace it!
• I wanted to use commas, but it wouldn't let me. It produces wonderfully vague syntax error messages instead.
• Closures (lambda plus let*) make Scheme powerful.
• Error messages in GIMP are way vague. Does that suck, or should we just be grateful we get any kind of message? How 1970s!
• Debugging in GIMP is way painful! Can you say printf? Again, how 1970s!
• Did I mention: I hate S-expressions! Simple tasks like arithmetic become a prefix adventure in parentheses!
• It kicks ass anyway!

Functional argv

I've been mostly chatter lately, so I figure it's time to poot forth some code!

I've been increasingly trying to incorporate Functional Programming into my everyday coding, and with .NET Framework that means anonymous delegates.

My current project produced a command-line tool as part of the infrastructure. As usual, command-line tools require command-line arguments with the associated parsing. How many times does that get re-written? Pretty much every time.

I've coded this task many times before. I wanted something simple, but reusable. My disadvantage from previous implementations was lack of closures to bridge the scopes between my tool's option parsing, and the argument-traversal algorithm.

Here is what I ended up with:

static void processArgs(
  string[] args,
  Converter<String, int> argcount,
  Action<String[]> argproc
)
{
  int ix = 0;
  while (ix < args.Length) {
    String argx = args[ix];
    ix++;
    if (argx.StartsWith("-")) {
      int ac = argcount(argx);
      List<String> collect = new List<String>();
      collect.Add(argx);
      while (ac > 0 && ix < args.Length) {
        collect.Add(args[ix]);
        ix++;
        ac--;
      }
      argproc(collect.ToArray());
    }
  }
}

So argcount takes a string (starting with -) and returns how many additional "arguments" should follow it, for stuff like -dir directory.

The argproc takes the collected items and processes them.

Let's take a look at the call-site to get a better picture:

bool wait = false;
String outputf = null;
String template = null;
List comppath = new List();
processArgs(args,
  (parg) => {
    if (String.Equals(parg, "-dir", StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase) ||
      String.Equals(parg, "-out", StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase) ||
      String.Equals(parg, "-template", StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase)) {
      return 1;
    }
    return 0;
  },
  (pargs) => {
    if (String.Equals(pargs[0], "-dir", StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase)) {
      if (pargs.Length < 2)
        throw new NotSupportedException(pargs[0] + ": missing argument");
      comppath.Add(pargs[1]);
    }
    else if (String.Equals(pargs[0], "-out", StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase)) {
      if (pargs.Length < 2)
        throw new NotSupportedException(pargs[0] + ": missing argument");
      outputf = pargs[1];
    }
    else if (String.Equals(pargs[0], "-template", StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase)) {
      if (pargs.Length < 2)
        throw new NotSupportedException(pargs[0] + ": missing argument");
      template = pargs[1];
    }
    else if (String.Equals(pargs[0], "-defdir", StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase)) {
      comppath.Add(Settings.Default.ComponentsPath);
    }
    else if (String.Equals(pargs[0], "-wait", StringComparison.InvariantCultureIgnoreCase)) {
      wait = true;
    }
    else {
      throw new NotSupportedException("Unrecognized option: " + pargs[0]);
    }
  }
);

Without mixing of contexts or storing the results of all the processing, it becomes easy to tweak the command-line option handling from the point in the source code that makes the most sense.

Now if you're not down with if/else chains, you could refactor (hint: use Dictionarys), but the good news is, that doesn't affect the core algorithm, only your call-site.

qed.

(Don't Go Back To) Zzzzzzzsville

Not much interesting going on, hence nothing bloggable.

Until now.

I love it when an author is so pissed off they don't hold anything back. Imagine my surprise to find this gem:

The HTML5 drag and drop disaster

Due to my high number of blogs followed, I regularly keep updated on the saga that is HTML5. But I won't digress here; there are plenty of authors for that.

When you see fuck in the headings, now it's got to be good....

Go have a read, and share the pain! That will be us soon enough.

Get Yer 9ers Together

With the approachment of September 9, 2009, this would be a good time to post something remotely relevant.

As you know, this date translates into 09.09.09 or if you like, 09/09/09. Since it's symmetric, we en-USers cannot fuck it up for the rest of you!

Anyway, the story revolves around the English word "nine" (9) and the German word "nein" (no), which are obviously homophones.

We were using "nein" a bunch, and confusing people, since they couldn't figure out why were were nine-ing, when we were actually nein-ing! We even found ourselves 9-ball ("nein" ball) key chains, What Luck!!

To add to the fun, I constructed a command line application that checked for unread mail, and played the indicated audio file if there was any. I had this on a scheduled task, at the bottom of the hour, mostly because I hated having Outlook running all-the-time (this was the 1990s).

I didn't have a microphone, but my lab-mate "Al" did, and he recorded one of our favorite phrases at-the-time:

Nein! Nein! Nein!

That was the punchline, wasn't it....

Huh-huh, yea...

The Final Countdown

Here are a couple links to read-up on:

• Functional vs "Java" Style
• Go Ahead: Next Generation Java Programming Style
• Next Generation Java is not very different from today's Java

Some interesting points all around, but I was very concerned with the condescending dismissal of using the final keyword, especially on local variables, making lame arguments about readability and clutter. If you want to talk about some actual clutter problems, start using more anonymous inner classes in functional style; now that is clutter.

Well, their (bloated) opinions (of themselves) are incorrect (after all this is a rant and My Opinion), because final is telling you important things about your code, namely that you believe in immutability, and don't just pay lip service to it. Just because Cedric

can't even remember last time I was bitten by a bug involving the reassignment of a variable to a different value within a code block.

doesn't mean Dick to us, but I'm sure it's good for his Ego! I guess we should all be so effin perfect as that, and final is the dirty little secret to take us there!

Thankfully, the comments sections bear this out, as I was delighted to see others extolling the virtues of final for the same reasons I endorse:

• Method parameters and previously-assigned local variables are not scratch-buffers to play reuse/optimization games with.
• Your code/dataflow are moving forward (literally down-the-page) and there's no need to look back and see if anything is getting re-used, or determining whether variables "magically" change meaning 10 lines into the method.
• The perceived noise claim is actually a Grail-shaped Beacon illuminating the locked-down nature of the data, which means visual scanning is rapid. If I see final I don't bother reading the rest of the line, because I know it's an immutable assignment guaranteed by the compiler.
• The converse of this is that missing final is now a Bad Code Smell, and warrants closer examination.

The only part where it weighs down for me, is the conditional assignment initialization scenario, where you start down the jumping through hoops path to maintain finality:

final Blah theThing =   big-fat-conditional ?   value1 :   value2;

Depending on how hard you feel like working, and the complexity of the three terms, and any number of other (emotional) factors, you may punt on this scenario at some threshold; I've been there. Eventually the urge to rectify things takes over, typically after stopping at the code enough times triggered by the non-final "Smell".

Pledge Drive II

It's that time again! We are asking for Your Support as a TEEG Follower!

The last Pledge Drive was 9 Months ago, and it basically blew. So, rather than torment you like the Public Radio Stations do, I will simply link to the previous Pledge Drive.

Now, wasn't that painless? See, it's already over!

COBOL.NET!!!?

Are you fucking kidding me?

Converting C# to COBOL

And I'm actually old enough that I learned it in college! Fortunately, I never had to actually create any as a professional. However, I did have to analyze a COBOL program listing (from an active system) for a consulting gig I was on in 2006.

Back to the rant then?

I'm sorry, but aren't we already typing enough characters already? I'm tired of wiring up Java anonymous inner classes that pretend to be closures. We just finally got closure syntax in C# boiled down to something reasonable! What the fuck will that look like in COBOL? There wasn't an example, thankfully.

So will the dinosaurs be building stunning GUI applications on their old mainframes? ROFL!!!

Music Critic: Rating the Podcasts

This post has been sitting in edit mode for several months, so I'm just turning it loose.

I've been thinking about this for a long time, so I'm just going for it.

I listen to a lot of podcasts. Enough that I have content playing pretty much 6-8 hours every work day. Sometimes the backlog takes several days of concentrated listening to get through.

Most podcasts have lead-in and lead-out music. I'm a musician. It's only natural that I have an opinion on everyone's choices of music.

Disclaimer

I'm trying to cite musical sources where possible. I tried to use Due Diligence there, namely I could not locate a citing of the artists or titles on the relevant web site by using the Home Page, and any pages directly accessible from that, e.g. Legal, About, etc. Feel free to correct me in the Comments.

Further Disclaimer

Also note that I like all of these podcasts, or I wouldn't even be listening to them or blogging to you about them or *cough* encouraging you to listen to them. Take any criticism as tongue-in-cheek, and applying to the music only, not the content!

So without further disclaimers, let's launch into it.

First thing to notice, is that pretty much no one cares to cite the music they are using, and I doubt these are all original works.

The Java Posse

Java (Loose Bruce Kerr)

In the House (Juan Carlos Jimenez)

The lead-in music is well-known to their followers, a parody of a classic tune, poking fun at the whole Java phenomenon, and espcially jabbing at M$, as the Javanistas like to do.

The lead-out music is a bouncy little tune with silvery guitar, plus voice-over.

Cincom Smalltalk

"Effortless" (Josh Woodward)

2009-08-13: Thanks to an actual Reader Comment, this was corrected! Thank you.

The lead-in and lead-out music on this one are about my all-time favorites. Some kind of drop-D zhingmania, very very groovy. Makes me dance in my chair.

Scheeeeeeemiiiiiiiiiiiiing, hang me out to dry....

Anyway, even if you don't give-a-shit about Smalltalk, listen to the first and last minute of one of these podcasts!

Stack Overflow

Unknown (Unknown)

Sounds like porno music, no offense. Maybe that's what they were going for, then in that case, well done mates!

Hanselminutes

Unknown (Unknown)

Some kind of horn-sectioned jazzy number with latin rhythm instruments supplying the beat. Not too offensive, except for the voice-over.

Software Engineering Radio

Unknown (Unknown)

Since these guys are obviously German, it's surprising the lead-in music doesn't sound like something off Trans-Europa Express, but is in fact a high-energy rock guitar tune. Lots of good interviews on wide-ranging topics. They have pages where it would be appropriate to post the info, but none was obviously present.

CNET

Unknown (Unknown)

News jingle, and thank God it's very short. Maybe they could lengthen that and cut the commercial crap they use for lead-in and lead-out instead.

Open Sources

Fix up, look sharp (Dizzee Rascal)

Drinkin' and Gamblin' (Barbecue Bob and the Spareribs)

These guys are right out there; a really fun listen with liberal use of adult language, and the song credits are right up front, where you expect to see them!

Symbian To Be Crushed By Linux-Powered Juggernaut

Ja, for sure, from Sweden....

But you're wearing Lederhosen!

Not sure what triggered that, probably someone mentioned Sweden, maybe something about Nokia. Nowadays that would probably trigger a TSA passenger take-down!

Speaking of Nokia, Symbian is going to go down hard; I think all their open-source posturing is too-little-too-late. Android and iPhone will crush them like the Linux-powered juggernaut that they are. The good news for Nokia is they can just switch over to Android at the inflection point; Symbian is just an albatross for them, which is why they pushed it into Open Source.

An impressive amount of non-Wikipedia anchors!

Theme Change

Enjoy the new visuals.

Why You Should Be Using Factories

Before I hit you with the punchline, let's set everything up.

Read up on Factory Pattern and Dependency Injection, so you will get the punchline. If you are already cool with these techniques, please still read the story, and have a good laugh (I did)!

Okay, here's the situation: parents went away on a week's vacation... Oh wait, not quite.

The real situation was: I had to leave work by a specific time to be home by a specific time, etc. Meanwhile, a coworker calls and asks me if I'm ready to demonstrate that User Interface Prototype hitting the Web Service for that 4 o'clock meeting! I was way ready, but I'm like, "Was this on my Calendar?" and of course it was not on there; Nobody hipped me to that meeting, dude.

Are we there yet?

So, no problem. I will take my rig home and get on VPN access and we are golden.

Except for one thing....

It was so fucking slow on the VPN link to the virtual hosting my remote service that everything was timing out all over the fucking place!

On the upside, I'm glad I was able to test for latency; put timeouts at the top of the list for The Very Next Day.

On the (very) downside, there was only 15 minutes before the start of a 21-person conference call! Out go the "I'm Panicking!" emails to my teammates, as I look into searching for some help with the settings, then determine I'm too panicked to try to deal with it, since the actual timeout would still need to be discovered, and the default 60 seconds was already timing-out.

Are we there now?

We are here now. That's when I remembered the main parts were interface-based, and the class name of the implementation was specified in the configuration file. I simply switched to my debug implementation, with 5 minutes to spare, then sailed through the Demo! You all have one of those, right? Right? Right?

Obviously, the punchline is: It will save your ass in a demo!

Another Modest Proposal: Ending Drug Violence

Simply kill all of them!

Dear CIA: What the fuck are you waiting for? You know who they are, and you have a Black Ops division. Don't make me connect the fucking dots for you!

Ok, don't want to do that one, how about this:

Dear CIA: Get your asses down there, and "explain" to these people that they are now paying tax to US, or they will start mysteriously disappearing. Again, Black Ops to the rescue!

You can be sure we are doing similar things with Other Bad People, how about focusing the laser on on people who can cross our borders by walking over!

Who's Got Balls?

I'm sorry but this was spontaneously funny, and I'm behind on posts....

Our company has some software that we demonstrate at trade shows, and the demo's theme is Golf-based; it makes use of golf equipment to lead prospects through our software's features.

Show Time is approaching, and our Sales Lead was in the office across-the-hall, and exclaimed
We Need More Balls!

Of course he meant Golf Balls, but the innuendo was so good, my office-mate and I burst out-loud laughing. Our Sales Team does need More Balls (sales is down)!

A Journey into The Depths of Hell, aka Interop

By way of a current project, I have had to revisit territories that I hoped were long since Gone and Forgotten.

A land of explicit lifetime management, raw pointers to everything, pointer arithmetic, and variable-length structure layouts that make your head spin off its axis!

Of course, I am talking specifically about C++ and unmanaged code interop ala Visual Studio .NET.

It's been a looonnnng several weeks of dual heaps, pinning pointers and accessing other arcane compiler directives and keywords that can only exist in This Universe.

Want to convert a managed Unicode string to an unmanaged buffer of ANSI characters? Good fucking luck! Obviously possible, but for some reason, there's no one-liner to call for this exteremely common interop task. Just for reference, here is what I ended up with:

void convertStringTo(System::String^ str, char buf[], size_t buflen) {
  if(str != nullptr) {
    pin_ptr wch = PtrToStringChars(str);
    size_t convertedChars = 0;
    wcstombs_s(&convertedChars, buf, buflen, wch, _TRUNCATE);
  }
}

Many "published" solutions used a scheme that allocated a buffer for the ANSI part using Marshal.StringToWhatever(), but this is just one more piece of IntPtr lifecycle bullshit to manage, and you are shit out-of-luck if you want to just put them into a char[] buffer, aside from a stomach-turning extra buffer copy.

The good news is the other primative types box and unbox like butter, once you know the secret:

Object^ value = ....;
Double^ sx = (Double^)value;
double dx = *sx;

Much less painful. Here is how you can use a managed buffer with unmanaged code:

array^ bufx = gcnew array(BUFSIZE);
...
pin_ptr buf_p = &bufx[0];

That's some awfully strange-looking C++, if'n you ask me; but then again, look at the universe we are working in!

So this is only a pseudo-rant, then?

So don't forget to keep your power dry, and all of your punctuation in order! If you can do that, this stuff will get you back on the Long Road Home in no time....

Welcome Blogged Followers

I almost forgot I registered over at Blogged. I say almost, because now I am getting emails from them indicating I have people following this blog from there.

The more the merrier! Tell your friends. Then they'll tell two friends, and so on, and so on, and so on, and so on.

Yo Miss Skanklifornia

We do have Free Speech in the United States, however that does not mean:

• Anyone will agree with what you say,
• Anyone will like what you say,
• Anyone will listen to what you say without reacting.

Do those all say the same thing? Probably so, albeit true, no matter who anyone is talking to. Sorry no one hipped you to that, dudette.

Miss California Carrie Prejean, running your mouth, like I am right now, (aka Free Speech) does not occur in a vaccuum; you can be sure there are people listening, and they will react, no matter what you or anyone else is blathering on about.

You just woke up the Skinhead-equivalent of Same-Sex Marriage fanatics.

You said it on Television, so what did you think would happen? I am saying it in my blog, where no one looks, ROFL! However I am ready to take the heat if anyone should come by and criticise, instead of bitching that everyone didn't Just Leave Me Alone for Speaking My Mind.

You are just as annoying as anyone else who speaks up about views. That is America. That is how you get heard around these parts.

And as for your risque photos, I have regular Internet Porn at my house, so a big fat yawn to you!

I Have Services In My Pocket

And I wrote them myself!

I have to say that as a Software Developer, things have never been better. Even more, as a Mobile Software Developer. It is fucking great! As FZ said during a monologue in Call Any Vegetable:

If there's anybody here who doesn't believe that it is fucking great to be alive, I wish they would go now, because This Show will bring them down so much....

Then they kick into a line from God Bless America, but that's another story.

Anyway, to all you iPhone developers, good luck Sucking Apple's Dick to get that going on their platform. I'm sure They think you are Not Good Enough to be allowed the hallowed privilege of getting down in the system to do something all-the-time.

And by-the-by, I am talking about stuff in Java, not obscure whateverness. I am happy to live in the managed code Matrix.

You can't see, but I'm sticking my tongue out at y'all and flipping you the bird. I have my own services running my pocket, and you don't, and just fuck off! Unless, of course, you want the same thing, then Welcome Aboard!

Braveheart

I love one particular scene from this movie, and now that Oracle is acquiring Sun, I just played this back in my head:

Java The Language:

What's that Lord?

to Java Mobile Edition:

He says I'm going to be Okay, but He's pretty sure You're Fucked!

I am totally convinced, since I now have a revenue stream, thanks to Google Android Market.

If I was in shit-hole Java Mobile-land, I would still be saving up for a CA Certificate.

Thanks Sun! You gave us Java, now get the fuck out and enjoy your slow death at the hands of your Spanish Acquisition.

Are You On The Right Track...

On my latest side project, I have found myself using some classical data structures and algorithms, ala The 1970s:

• Finite State Automata
• Directed Acyclic Graph (also makes a good FSA)
• Topological Sort

This is on top of the usual assortment of ArrayLists and HashMaps that are now ubiquitous, but back-in-the-day, we had to build that shit ourselves.

I'm taking liberty there, because I was A Child during The 1970s. I didn't know what a hash function was yet, but I was tinkering with BASIC on some old TTYs with the acoustic-coupled modems.

Takes you back to a simpler time, doesn't it?

I just hope it means I'm on the right track....

OMFG I Went Back In Time!

This is hilarious....

I came in this morning, and as part of the usual ritual, I removed the top sheet of the notepad, which contained the previous day's notes. Each day has the date in the upper left.

I'm looking at that sheet, and plain as day, I had written 2007 as the year! There was no mistake; I cross my sevens European-style. I went through the entire day yesterday, oblivious to the fact that I had travelled 2 years backward in time. Wow! I wrote that down without so much as a second-thought to it being wrong.

I'm sure there was a seven in my head somewhere while I was writing it. I scribbled a nine over it, but you can tell it was overwritten. Oh well.

Android Rocks, ME Still Piece-of-Shit

Not technically part of the Piece-of-Shit series, this post leverages your familiarity with it.

I have my Android ADP1, and I am jamming!

I am accessing Contact List, Current Location, everything, and all without annoying user prompting or paying Certificate Authority fees!

I am also happily using the JRE1.5 feature set, which includes annotations and generics, making for some downright fun development.

You see, I have freed myself from the straightjacket woven by that other piece-of-shit Java-based mobile platform.

Of course, the damage control is on. We are seeing JavaFX Mobile coming.

This sounds promising, but I have already built desktop JavaFX applications, and I can tell you it is a big fat memory hog! You cannot run a non-trivial application without tons of heap space because it connects all of your binds (can't do UI anything without those) into a big evaluation graph, so that boolean in your app is way bigger than one byte! Not to mention all the memory it needs for those nifty animation effects and whatnot. Last I checked, most mobile platforms don't have 500MB of Free Memory in them!

The Jail is Broken. Praise Your Favorite Deity for that!

Malaise

Man, I just realized I haven't posted dick in over a month!

That's just no way of keeping up with yearly posting targets and what-not.

There has been activity, just not on this blog; not like I'm neglecting many anyway, after all, you can see there's only 2 followers, and you don't even want to look at my Google Analytics page for this blog!

Like many other industrious developers, I am working on some Android Market mojo. My current incarnation is selling for free and enjoying a 3-star rating and people are contacting me and asking for features (of all things) and it's actually fun and makes me feel good about building shit.

Man that was some long-ass sentence that last one....

The Latest in Javanicity

It's been rough assimilating this Java technology! Why does it fight me the whole way?

Oh yes, I'm not down with the system. The old system, that is.

I must say, however, that things are finally improving a great deal, and it's all thanks to annotations and Our Beloved Inversion-of-Control protocol.

All of the current EE stuff using annotations is just muy bueno to me! I axed all of my Axis 2 infrastructure for JAX-WS, and if you get it, it just works. I do, and it does!

Welcome to reflection-based metadata Java! We've been using it elsewhere for years now!

I also have had the opportunity to immerse myself in the arcane world of JavaFX development. If you don't get functional programming, and being able to keep an application's entire dependency graph in your head at the same time, then stay away! You will have better luck with WPF and it's declarative XAML mojo.

I admit it: it's good to be bi-platform!

And as one more funny thing, I was visiting my Ning page, which is music-oriented, and I also have a cross-link to this blog. It was a satisfying feeling to see the context-driven ads hawking both Peavy Amps and Multi-threaded Development Tools.

It does me proud; that is my context!

Oh Yeah, Link-Enhanced Now

Just in case people visit here, I have put link enhancement into the posts.

Since I have built several RSS Aggregators, I know to put the tags into each post, and not the blog template. Anyone out there blogging, make sure to do that, or people will not see your cool styling and whatnot in their Feeds.

Postscript: that link went dead, we have removed all traces of it from this blog.

Closing Safely

I have been working on a Web Service using Apache Axis2, and trying to keep everything free-threaded.

The service maintains data collection scans, and service requests (each on a separate thread) must interlock with the scan thread, possibly blocking until their "index" in the buffer becomes available.

Needless to say, Thank Deities for the java.util.concurrent package!

Internally, the service maintains a Session for each scan job. There are two important methods here, request() and close(). These are represented by two separate service APIs. Sessions are reference-counted, and the last call actually closes the session, which involves cancelling any in-process scan thread, without interrupting any synchronization going on between it and request() callers.

Of course, how do we make sure close() can operate safely? We have to know that no one is inside of request(), or we will mung up some synchronization somewhere.

This is where inspiration struck! The trick here is the ReaderWriterLock, which has exactly the semantics we need. Callers inside request() obtain the read lock, and callers inside close() obtain the write lock. This keeps everyone organized and off each other's toes.

The Egg

Heh. I'm listening to a podcast and they are talking about Easter Eggs, those wonderful programming gems the more-industrious of us put in.

Personally, I barely have enough time to get the core stuff debugged, let alone providing special prizes sprinkled everywhere to debug too.

One place I worked at actually had one in one of their products. That was a fun time.

Anyway, one day one of my co-workers was working on some code, and I got involved, and we were noticing all of these if statements scattered all over the place, with seemingly unrelated operations going on, throughout the main algorithms.

Our boss had written most of the system, so curiousity finally got the best of us, and we had to ask.

"Oh that's the Wild One." he said to us, matter-of-fact.

And we're like, "Well what-the-fuck is the Wild One?"

And the story unfolded. He sat back in his chair, smiling.

"Go to the New File command, and enter W-I-L-D-dash-O-N-E for the file name."

It was wild, indeed!

Entering this part name triggered a whole series of random changes and additional behaviors:

• Every character that displayed was assigned a random color.
• Play random tones on the PC Speaker (this was 1987) between each displayed character.
• At key moments, it would "play a little tune" on the PC Speaker.
• When drawing graphics primatives, pixels were assigned random colors.

It was fun for about 60 seconds, then you were done with it. Man, there were a lot of if statements devoted to that one!

Welcome Back

Cue up the music....

Man I cannot believe I forgot to clean my coffee cup before I left for 3 weeks of vacation! It left a shiny Sanka-like residue in the bottom; I could only get it out with hot water. It did look like Sanka, and no, I didn't try it.

My only resolution this year is to use more functional programming techniques. Anonymous closures are the best! I just finally started using currying and I'm digging it. Of course you need a language that supports that, and some make it easier than others, but don't let that deter you!