I recently read a blog post by Alex Miller about Clojure multi-methods.
It described and answered a question his friend had asked him, as well as discussing some related problems. I'm going to showcase the different options Perl 6 provides for solving these same problems. Here's the initial question:
Is it possible to write a multimethod that has defmethods which handle ranges of values? For example, say that a person has an age. Can I write a multimethod that accepts a person as a parameter and returns "child" if age < 16, "adult" if 16 <= age < 66 and "senior" if age >= 66?As in Clojure, the answer is "Sure." In keeping with TIMTOWDI, Perl 6 provides several ways to do this.
This post does a rather good job of covering some of the new features in Perl 6 in a very readable way.
This is impressive. Thanks to @jo for showing it to me.
As you've probably heard by now, Oracle has decided to file suit against Google, claiming multiple counts of infringement against Java or JVM patents and copyrights they acquired when they assimilated Sun Microsystems this past year. Since I'm unlikely to keep my mouth shut about even trivial matters, something this big obviously requires at least a couple thousand words.
It's long, but he has some interesting thoughts and a decent amount of background that I wasn't necessarily aware of. It's nice that he lists all of the patents, too.
Awesome short by Michel Gagné. Now I've got to go and check out the Sensology album. Sounds interesting.
Oracle has filed a lawsuit against Google, charging that its Android phone software infringes Oracle patents and copyrights related to Java, Oracle said Thursday.
"In developing Android, Google knowingly, directly and repeatedly infringed Oracle's Java-related intellectual property. This lawsuit seeks appropriate remedies for their infringement," Oracle spokeswoman Karen Tillman said in a statement.
It seems like the many people that have worried about Java being a company controlled language as opposed to a community controlled one are correct, especially those that suspected that Oracle would be much more closed about it than Sun was... This is a great way to kill the language and make people afraid to use OpenJDK in any commercial software.
The simple question of how do you run is largely unanswered in the running community. You have a bunch of pseudo-guru styles like Pose or Chi, but the key to running correctly to maximize performance is a topic that is largely left to elite coaches or biomechanics experts. As Pete Larson pointed out in his blog, elite coaches like Alberto Salazar extol the benefits of working on running form, but no one has told the masses how. In the following article, it's my goal to unmask the "secrets" and provide the answers. The bulk of this article comes from information gleaned mostly from working with world class track coaches like Tom Tellez and a great High School coach in Gerald Stewert. Throw in some biomechanics classes in undergrad and graduate school and the picture is a little more complete.
I don't know if I can put it better than that. It's worth a read.
