When I was first learning Java there was a big trend towards using design patterns. The extreme edge of that trend was critiqued wonderfully by Mark Jason Dominus in Why Design Patterns Aren …

I’ve finally finished myseven languages in seven weeks adventure. Ittook, as I’d oringinally expected, significantly morethan seven weeks, though the actual amount of time which I dedicatedwas only a couple of days more that the amount allocated in the book. It wasjust that the wee …

Day three and I’m now sort of getting the hang of Scala. Either that or the excercise is easier! I think that in learning about the neat text processing tricks that Scala allows, it helped me to click with it a bit more than in previous days. I’ve also started to get more used to the ty …

It all seemed so straightforward at first. And it was. Until I needed to split an array into key value pairs for the second excercise. I spent about two hours trying to find a nice way f doing that. I’m not entirely happy with the way I came up with, but it works at least.The scala synta …

Tate compares Scala to Edward Scissorhands in his metaphorical introduction to the chapter. What I’ve seen of the language so far certainly made me feel it was a little on the odd side. Its just near enough to Java that it feels wrong when it works more Rubyishly or more Lispishly. The first …

There is an idea, popularized in the Pragmatic Programmer book that its good to learn a new programming language every year. Seven Languages In Seven Weeks takes the concept one stage further, although clearly only for certain values of learning. One is never going to be proficient at any lan …