All software engineers hate to write the same thing twice. However, at the moment it seems unavoidable when one wants to support both iOS and Android. Some strategies exist to avoid them, however none is perfect. For example, Phonegapp allows to develop your application in HTML/JavaScript, but the look and feel is not as native as one could wish, performance is bad for anything complex and your code is at …
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Scala is a great language. One of its strengths is the effortless interoperability with Java. However, given the fact that the language is still evolving, some compromises are needed in order to facilitate cooperation between Scala in Java. In effect, sometimes you can't write 100% pure Scala solutions. Sometimes you have to add some Java code to your project, even if very simple one. There are two common examples of …
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DSL (Domain Specific Languages) are, as the name implies, software development languages created for a specific niche or limited domain. Where could one use a DSL? For example, when writing a library to evaluate highly complicated financial products, it might be very beneficial to have a language designed to describe such products. The language will check correctness of a new product, will allow sharing of common pieces of definition, will …
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Yesterday I received an invitation to
Google Inbox
- a new mail service from Google on top of the famous GMail. I wanted to use it because it provided reminders and allowed you to snooze emails in the inbox until later. I find these features extremely useful. However, the current versions of both Android client and the web interface are not without issues. Here are some of them I have …
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I have upgraded from Android 4.4 KitKat to Android Lollipop on my Nexus 5 mobile phone over the weekend. Some observations so far:
Overall interface looks slicker and prettier
The system seems slightly faster
Automatic battery saving regime sounds nice
I could say both good and bad things about the new notifications system:
It tries to be more intelligent
It is less useful when the screen is locked - I …
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Again I find myself thinking about how to write as little code as possible when developing applications for various mobile platform. I do find it annoying in the extreme, that iOS, Android and Windows Phone all have mutually incompatible technologies. As if they were doing it on purpose. But maybe they just do? It helps the companies to lock in software developers as well as end users, doesn't it? Maybe …
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Recently Microsoft made a major move and decided to make .NET platform open source as well as compatible with Linux. I personally has always thought, that .NET is much better platform in the long run than Java. Unfortunately, until recently it lacked support on other platforms aside from Windows. However, after the announcement, things will change. I wonder, if among other developments, someone will be kind enough to port the …
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For the last couple of years I repeatedly see submissions of spam comments to my web site, which advertise "essay writing services" (read - cheating at course assignments for money) for students. I receive at least a couple a day, sometimes tens of them. This is despite having enabled CAPTCHA validation of comments submissions. The spammers' software manages to circumvent this protection, albeit not always - most of the undesirable …
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