Back in 1995 things were different than they are today. Most PCs weren’t networked and interfaces between computers were mostly relegated to large systems and systems in large organizations — such as corporations and educational institutions. At the time, I was working in the Emerging Technologies Group at Westech Information Systems (a subsidiary of our […]
The Need for Functional Programming in Smallworld GIS
The Magik programming language is imperative and leans heavily toward the Object Oriented Programming (OOP) paradigm. It relies on mutation, hidden state, side-effects and tight coupling between data and behavior. Code-reuse is achieved primarily through inheritance. The Functional Programming (FP) paradigm, on the other hand, is declarative and relies on immutable objects, minimizes side-effects and […]
Why You Should Never Ignore that Little Voice Inside Your Head
I decided to replace my 2014 Razerblade laptop with a new PC because, although it’s still a gorgeous machine, 8GB of RAM, an antiquated GPU and a 7 year old CPU wasn’t quite keeping up with my applications. I was all set to build my own, and even selected the parts on Amazon, including 64GB […]
The Value of Logging
Logs. I know. Logs are boring. The mere thought of scanning through hundreds or thousands of lines of a log is enough to bring even the most diligent among us to tears. Yet logs are one of the most valuable sources of information when we need to determine why something isn’t working in an application. […]
Observables
It’s common knowledge that loose coupling within an application leads to lower- maintenance systems and fewer bugs. To that end there have been numerous techniques and paradigms developed to achieve the loosely-coupled goal. The Observer Pattern One such design pattern is the Observer, also called Publish-Subscribe in some circles (let’s break into a small sidebar […]