Group items tagged

"Parser combinators are an idea that I enjoy every time I go back and look at again. They are an approach to building parsers by composing very simple atomic parsers into bigger and bigger units which can ultimately express real world grammars. This idea has been particularly popular in functional languages where the parsers can naturally be thought of as functions from input strings to parse trees, and composition of parsers is just function composition. This approach often leads to a simple syntax which makes the resulting parsers pleasantly declarative in that internal-DSL kind of way. "

"In SQL Server 2008 Microsoft has introduced a number of new date and time data types. One of these is the datetimeoffset data type. This data type includes an offset from UTC time as well as the datetime value and ensures that the datetime can be retrieved in UTC or a particular timezone based on this offset. There are also new functions to allow for conversions between different time zones using the new function SWITCHOFFSET(). "

"WAI-ARIA, the Accessible Rich Internet Applications Suite, defines a way to make Web content and Web applications more accessible to people with disabilities. It especially helps with dynamic content and advanced user interface controls developed with Ajax, HTML, JavaScript, and related technologies. Currently certain functionality used in Web sites is not available to some users with disabilities, especially people who rely on screen readers and people who cannot use a mouse. WAI-ARIA addresses these accessibility challenges, for example, by defining new ways for functionality to be provided to assistive technology. With WAI-ARIA, developers can make advanced Web applications accessible and usable to people with disabilities."

"A lot of tutorials have already been written about TPL and the new .NET 4.5 async-await features, the most prominent examples are Task Parallel Library: 1 of n, Task Parallel Library: 2 of n, Task Parallel Library: 6 of n and Threading in C#, PART 5: PARALLEL PROGRAMMING. Here I present my own version of a TPL and async-await tutorial trying to emphasize why TPL and async-await functionality is so useful and how to apply it to some well-known problems. "

"Basically, I've been aware for a while that some people use the terms currying and partial function application somewhat interchangably, when they shouldn't. It's one of those topics (like monads) which I feel I understand to some extent, and I've decided that the best way of making sure I understand it is to try to write about it. If it helps the topic become more accessible to other developers, so much the better."

F# is ideal for data-rich, concurrent and algorithmic development: "simple code to solve complex problems". F# is a simple and pragmatic programming language combining functional, object-oriented and scripting programming, and supports cross-platform environments including PC, Mac, and Linux. We'll provide the tutorials, resources and tools you'll need to begin working with F# right away.

Hammock is a .NET CouchDB library modeled directly on NHibernate and strives for much of the same functionality while avoiding the vast complexity of mapping object data to a relational system.

"Mighty Moose is from this point forward free. Not "free in beta" or "free with a bunch of functionality turned off" but free (license is being updated as I write this). We announced this rather quietly at NDC."

"The Firebug command line provides these special functions for your convenience:"

"Cat.prototype.haveABaby=function(){ var theKitten = this.parent.haveABaby.call(this); alert("mew!"); return theKitten; }"

"Raphael JS is a lightweight and super-sexy JavaScript framework that allows you to draw vector graphics in your browser! In this tutorial, I will introduce you to some basic drawing functionality, take a look at animation, provide DOM access and finally finish off by creating a cool widget for your site…"

Stephanie Forrest believes in applying evolutionary biology principles to the software process creating evolvable software through automated bug repair, improving code and creating new combinations of existing functionality.

"In an earlier blog post, Creating or modifying Entity Framework EDMX files from code: an introduction to HuagatiEDMXTools.dll, I wrote about the EDMX file wrapper that is used by the Huagati DBML/EDMX Tools add-in for parsing, updating, creating, and writing EDMX files. HuagatiEDMXTools adds an easy to use object model on top of EDMX files (see documentation at http://huagati.com/edmxtools/help ), making it a lot easier to create/read/update EDMX files, and to write LINQ queries against Entity Framework 4 metadata. It also has a number of built-in queries and lookup functions that make it a breeze to work with Entity Framework 4 EDMX files from code."

Backbone supplies structure to JavaScript-heavy applications by providing models with key-value binding and custom events, collections with a rich API of enumerable functions, views with declarative event handling, and connects it all to your existing application over a RESTful JSON interface.

"bcrypt is an adaptive cryptographic hash function for passwords designed by Niels Provos and David Mazières, based on the Blowfish cipher, and presented at USENIX in 1999.[1] Besides incorporating a salt to protect against rainbow table attacks, bcrypt is an adaptive hash: over time it can be made slower and slower so it remains resistant to specific brute-force search attacks against the hash and the salt."

"This article describes an All-In-One Code Framework sample that is available for download. This code sample demonstrates how to use complex type, which is one of the new features of Entity Framework 4.0 (EF4). This code sample shows how to add complex type properties to entities, how to map complex type properties to table columns, and how to map a Function Import to a complex type."

"Software development has come a long way over the last few decades. We've gone from extremely laborious, protracted exercises to create even basic functionality (punch cards anyone?), to the drag and drop, WYSIWYG environment of today. We've also gone from a very small number of enthusiast programmers to literally millions of individuals writing software worldwide (there were over 1.3 million software engineers in the US alone in 2008). And we're all looking for ways to make building software even easier."

"I've written before about one kind of memory leak the .Net Garbage Collector cannot protect against: those caused by event handlers keeping objects alive beyond their best-before date. Daniel Grunwald has a very comprehensive article on CodeProject explaining the problem in depth, and giving a number of solutions, some of which I've used in the past."