Google has taken another step toward world domination with the launch of an experimental new programming languages aptly named “Go”. Go promises to pick up where C and Python left off, providing programmers with a new garbage-collecting low level languages suited to efficient server programming.
I spent the better part of last night looking for a way to get Go’s tool chain to run under Windows using Cygwin. Unfortunately the tools can’t be created; even if they could, they would produce binary files which would be unusable within Cygwin/Windows due to their low-level nature.
If you are a Windows programmer hoping to give Go a try, your best bet is to download the andLinux distribution – this is a native Linux distribution that runs similar to a virtual machine under Windows. Once you have set it up, go to the Installing Go page for instructions on getting started with the new language.
The BBC just discovered that Microsoft has been banning the Xbox Live accounts for users it discovers attempting to play using modified Xbox consoles. According to Microsoft, modified consoles are an enormous problem because they are often used to play pirated games, costing the video game industry more than $1B annually. Mod enthusiasts counter that they have every right to make alterations to hardware they have purchased legitimately.
What do you think – are Microsoft’s actions necessary to protect fair play within the XBox Live community?
It seems like correcting Seth Godin is a favourite pastime enjoyed by folks online. Sorry to break from the group, but I happen to think he is a deep well of relevant information.
This week he brought up the idea of upsides versus downsides – how much effort do businesses put into minimizing their downside versus the time they put into offering the best user experience?
One of the primary examples from the post is that of a hospital spending a huge amount of time doing paperwork to prevent litigation and prevent people from getting worse when their primary goal (and reason for existing) should be improving the lives of the patients coming through their doors.
The hospital example was interesting and timely because in “real life” the Jewish General Hospital recently came out and said it has been able to improve patient care (upside) by reducing errors (downside) through its new(ish) full disclosure policy. This ties in nicely with Seth’s article because it proves that it is possible for even large organizations to let go of the status quo and achieve new levels of excellence.
In the case of the Jewish General Hospital, it seems paradoxical but by admitting and dealing with errors, the hospital is actually less likely to be sued and face costly litigation. In essence, they have found a way to improve patient care, cut costs, and foster an open corporate culture. Way to go!
If you’re fortunate enough to be using a dual-screen setup (I suggest that everyone should be using dual screens), check out these 45 wallpapers from the constantly amazing Six Revisions.
When creating reports that are calculation-heavy, it’s tempting to create functions like ‘calculatePercent()’ or ‘calculatedMedian()’ so the correct numbers are available on demand.
Sounds good and convenient, but what happens when you have 100 different calculations to make across 50,000 data records? Each report will take 5 million passes to generate. That could take a long time especially if there are multiple reports being generated.
DRY – Don’t Repeat Yourself
Fortunately, the solution is straightforward. Rather than passing through those 50,000 records 100 times (once for each percentage needed), create an array for your values and calculate ALL of them in one shot. Then, just have calculatePercent() and calculateMedian() call from that array. Sounds simple, and it is as the pseudocode below shows:
for each record:
for each value:
valueList[value].append( record[value] )
Don’t worry folks, I haven’t disappeared. I’ve been buried under a mountain of RSS. One of the disadvantages of trying to stay informed about absolutely everything is that if you take just a few days away from the newsfeeds you will fall way behind.
Google Reader makes it extra easy to lose interesting posts when you scan too fast. I still prefer it over all other software I’ve tried so far.
