Monthly Archives: November 2011

Thoughts… on plans

November 30, 2011
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I’ve been having discussion regarding plans with some folks recently. It got me thinking and I’ve come to the conclusion that you should keep Eisenhower and Powell’s Axioms in mind, namely: Eisenhower’s Axiom: “In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” Powell’s Axiom: “No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.” To this I’d like to add my own: Eugen’s Axiom: “The foundation of a good plan is to rely on those you trust.” It makes the planning quite useful if you know that when the plan becomes obsolete you can move forward with conviction.

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Lasagna Code: Redux

November 25, 2011
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I write here as sort of a pressure release valve. It seems that my little rant on Lasagna Code got some attention. I read through the comments. It seems most get what I’m on about. But I figure I might as well be a bit clearer, in case any of those posters revisit. Yes, I’m against object oriented programming. I’ve been against it for years. I find it an obtuse and bloated way to code. And beyond Smalltalk, I’ve really not found another decent object-oriented language within which to code. This obsession language designers have of wedging an object system into a language “just because” is rather stupid. After all, all objects are is formalized data structures. It’s really that simple. For those that are about to jump up and down and scream they aren’t, I won’t argue because it’s pointless. I’ve used OO since the early 80s, initially in Smalltalk. Later, much to my horror, C++, and then for a brief period with Java — but I refuse to ever touch Java again. Too horrible and, happily, I’m sufficiently old enough to not have to do what I don’t want to do. Python, as I said, is a very

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Baking Adventures: Lemon Tart Cheesecake

November 22, 2011
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Everyone has their own way of relaxing. Some fish, some golf, some play hockey and I, well, I bake. Recently I baked a cheesecake for friends. It seems to have gone over well. They want the recipe. I figure someone else might be interested in it as well, so here it is. It’s actually a combination of two of my favourite desserts: cheesecake and lemon tart. Enjoy.   Lemon Tart Cheesecake Ingredients Crust 250g     Arrowroot cookies (no gluten is fine)1/3 cup    melted, unsalted butter Lemon Custard 7                egg yolks2                whole eggs1 cup         sugar2/3 cup    freshly squeezed lemon juice (use no substitute)1/4 cup    freshly grated lemon zestpinch       salt1/4 cup    unsalted butter (cut into pieces)1/4 cup    heavy cream Filling 1/4 cup    lemon zest750g        softened cream cheese1/2 cup   sugar3              eggs1 tsp        vanilla extract Method Preheat oven to 325F. Prepare a 12″ springform cheesecake pan (preferably non-stick, if not then grease well). Crust In the bowl of a food processor process the cookies until they become crumbs. Place into a bowl and mix with the melted butter. Press into bottom of 12″ cheesecake pan

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Lasagna Code

November 1, 2011
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Anyone who claims to be even remotely versed in computer science knows what “spaghetti code” is. That type of code still sadly exists. But today we also have, for lack of a better term — and sticking to the pasta metaphor — “lasagna code”. Lasagna Code is layer upon layer of abstractions, objects and other meaningless misdirections that result in bloated, hard to maintain code all in the name of “clarity”. It drives me nuts to see how badly some code today is. And then you come across how small Turbo Pascal v3 was, and after comprehending it was a full-blown Pascal compiler, one wonders why applications and compilers today are all so massive. Turbo Pascal v3 was less than 40k. That’s right, 40 thousand bytes. Try to get anything useful today in that small a footprint. Most people can’t even compile “Hello World” in less than a few megabytes courtesy of our object-oriented obsessed programming styles which seem to demand “lines of code” over clarity and “abstractions and objects” over simplicity and elegance. Back when I was starting out in computer science I thought by today we’d be writing a few lines of code to accomplish much. Instead, we

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Musings

A blog of my musings. Some folks find it interesting and so I continue. Hopefully it will remain fairly interesting. At worst, it'll keep me writing orthogonally to my day job.

Month at a Glance

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