Speaking of learning to code

May 17, 2012May 24, 2012 Chris Cannam1 Comment

Dialogue in Oracle vs Google, between Judge Alsup and Oracle's lead counsel David Boies: Judge: We heard the testimony of Mr. Bloch. I couldn't have told you the first thing about Java before this problem. I have done, and still do, a significant amount of programming in other languages. I've written blocks of code like… Continue reading Speaking of learning to code

Software Carpentry

May 16, 2012May 24, 2012 Chris Cannam

Elsewhere on my tour of the north-east, I've been helping out this week at the Software Carpentry boot camp at Newcastle university. These events are aimed mostly at postgraduate research students who need to write software for research. They try to provide just enough training in real-world software development techniques to get people started with… Continue reading Software Carpentry

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Unit testing: Why bother?

April 13, 2012May 24, 2012 Chris Cannam

I've just published an article about unit testing on the SoundSoftware site, focusing on how to justify the apparent extra effort—particularly with an eye to the academic researcher/developer. Thanks to James, Luke, Richard and Jazz for input. As always, if you see any mistakes or have any thoughts on the subject, please feel free to… Continue reading Unit testing: Why bother?

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New 1.2 release of EasyMercurial

March 15, 2012May 24, 2012 Chris Cannam

At the SoundSoftware project we've just released a new version of EasyMercurial, our user interface for the Mercurial version control system. This release has one change that I think is quite interesting—we've removed one of the five big buttons that used to occupy the main toolbar. It turned out that the meaning of the "Refresh"… Continue reading New 1.2 release of EasyMercurial

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Spare us humans from XML

March 6, 2012May 24, 2012 Chris Cannam7 Comments

XML appeared in 1996, was refined during 1997, and was standardised in 1998. I remember a lot of excitement about it at the time, from managers who imagined it would solve all their data portability problems. I was conscious of some of this enthusiasm before I really looked at the format. When I did, I… Continue reading Spare us humans from XML

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Wrapping a C++ library with JNI, part 4

March 6, 2012May 24, 2012 Chris Cannam

In this series... Introduction, outlining the general steps from starting with a C++ library to being able to build and run simple tests on some JNI wrappers; Part 1, in which I design some simple Java classes and generate the stub wrapper code; Part 2, in which I add just enough of the implementation to… Continue reading Wrapping a C++ library with JNI, part 4