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December 2009
4
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Kylix comeback or something better?
Compas Pascal
– Heise.de reports, that the Qt toolkit is currently being ported to Google's Native Client (NaCl). Qt was known as the GUI framework for Kylix on Linux, and once Qt has been ported, it seems like a very easy thing to make Kylix able to compile GUI apps for Google NaCl, providing a development kit ...
1
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Call for learning about bits and Bytes
Compas Pascal
– I still often encounter people with a Master's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology or whatever, who are not used to think bits and bytes. The world of computing is huge, and I fully understand that the universities need to filter and carefully select what topics they should teach ...
17
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When to use record instead of classes
Compas Pascal
– The original use or the record construct in ObjectPascal was to group different values in a way, that can be used in arrays, parameters etc. Classes have taken over this job, but the record construct is still sometimes important. For instance: type TTest= class a,b,c:integer; end; ...
1
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Why there is no app store on Windows
Compas Pascal
– How long does it take to install Microsoft Office? Well, first you have to order it, and then you have to wait for it to arrive by mail, on a physical medium. Ever wondered why there is no app store on Windows? Steve Ballmer explains it in an article on CNET: "nobody has any trouble getting apps" ...
November 2009
2
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MSIE market share below 13%, the problem of not upgrading
Compas Pascal
– MSIE is still by far the biggest browser on a world scale, but segmentation adds another picture: * In some market segments, MSIE 6.0 is still used on more than 80% of all PCs. * Some websites have MSIE below 50% (like W3Schools or some Delphi developer sites). Users seem to upgrade their ...
1
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Google Wave is a software development platform
Compas Pascal
– Google Wave has been reviewed in multiple places, but mostly by looking at the usefulness of the GUI tool that Google has made available. Instead, this post will focus on it's ability to compete with alternatives. Google originally launched it as "e-mail as it would have been if we designed it ...
0
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The power of app stores and usability
Compas Pascal
– I use Vopium to reduce my phone bill when making international calls and calling back home from other countries. Very nice product, huge savings, no subscription fee, works seamlessly when making calls, and easy to install from their homepage. However, the obvious is to install such tools from the ...
3
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Std. cookie use outlawed in EU
Compas Pascal
– EU has investigated internet technology, and discovered that http-cookies are an invasion of privacy. Therefore, a new directive has been made, that forces consent before using cookies. To many programmers, this seems idiotic - cookies have worked well for 15 years, and continue to do so, and many ...
2
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The case for Domain Specific Languages
Compas Pascal
– Instead of wondering why Domain Specific Languages (DSLs) make sense, let's try to look at the number of people doing programming. According to various sources, there could be about: * 9 million programmers in the world * 0.5 million professional programmers in USA+Canada * 25,000 self-employed ...
October 2009
1
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How to do daylight saving time properly
Compas Pascal
– EU switched to standard time this morning, and as always, this causes trouble. Clocks have to be adjusted, computers can get confused in their scheduling, and IT systems failed during the night. My harddisk TV recorder did not have any TV program after 02:59 but had a proper error message for each ...
1
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Google NaCl roadmap
Compas Pascal
– Just in case you haven't studied Google's "native code safer than JavaScript" project, based on this video from Google, here is a very short summary of Google Native Client (NaCl). Current status is: * Still under review, but basically works * x86 32-bit machine code is supported * Non-accelerated ...
5
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Parallel programming requires multiple techniques, not just one
Compas Pascal
– There seems to be a huge search out there for the holy grail of parallelism. Some want functional programming to be the solution, others think about other solutions. However, the scale of the problem is often ignored: Parallism is introduced on a huge number of levels, each with different solutions: ...
1
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Gaming industry has the next generation GUIs
Compas Pascal
– First, for reference, this blog post is about non-game applications. Usability and GUI design have been hot topics since the dawn of computers. The trends have always been towards increased usability and productivity. Since the world of IT is much more complex than what can be described using ...
September 2009
0
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Chrome platform: Now also on MSIE
Compas Pascal
– Google is continuing its quest to make Google Chrome the next platform for application development.The new invention is, that if you want to target the Google Chrome platform with your application, but your users don't want to use Google Chrome instead of Microsoft Internet Explorer (MSIE), you can ...
0
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Cloud computing deficiencies
Compas Pascal
– If you are considering the use of cloud systems, you may want to read this article about Google App Engine. He may be right or not, but the main problem with Cloud computing is predictability and determinism.
