Havoc's Blog

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Tag: tech

Layout APIs don’t have to be terrible – lessons from Bokeh

Our APIs for arranging elements on the screen are stuck in the stone age. Using these APIs in the simplest way results in an ugly layout. To achieve pretty layouts we deploy tricks that aren’t obvious to newcomers, though many of us have internalized them and don’t notice anymore. If you ask a designer to […]

It’s not new

If you’ve ever written a technical article, or announced some software you created, chances are someone commented “this isn’t new, it’s just like _____.” Commenters of the world, slow down. Think about why you would say that. Readers, ask why you would think it, even if you don’t comment. Do you mean: “I have already […]

Fedora 20 Beta on Thinkpad T440s Report

Before buying a T440s I kept asking people on Twitter to tell me how it works with Linux, so I figure I should write down the answer. Note: this is a beta distribution on a brand-new laptop model. Punchline: Lenovo’s new clickpad is worse than the old physical buttons for me with the trackpoint, but […]

What Matters In Software Development

Lots of traffic on Twitter about Steve Yegge’s post defining a “software ideology” spectrum. Myles Recny made a survey to help you place yourself along said spectrum. Thinking about it over the weekend, I can’t identify with this framing of software development. Those survey questions don’t seem to cover what I think about most in […]

Developers: request for complaints

I’m looking for a new personal weekend project that would be useful to others. Maybe there’s a useful book or useful piece of software I could create for fellow developers, tech leads, project managers, etc. Doesn’t have to be anything related to any of my current or past work (Linux, C, GTK+, Scala, etc.), but […]

Desktop Task Switching Could Be Improved

In honor of GUADEC 2012, a post about desktop UI. (On Linux, though I think some of these points could apply to Windows and OS X.) When I’m working, I have to stop and think when I flip between two tabs or windows. If I don’t stop and think, I flip to the wrong destination […]

The best answer requires some aggravation

Once you think you have a good answer to an important problem, it’s time to drive everyone crazy looking for an even better answer. Here’s a scenario I’ve been through more times than I can count: I thought I had a pretty good approach, or didn’t think anything better was possible, and wasn’t looking to […]

Binding an implicit to a Scala instance

In several real-world cases I’ve had a pair of types like this: An implicit often leaves a policy decision undecided. At some layer of your code, though, you want to make the decision and stick to it. Passing around a tuple with an object and the implicit needed to invoke its methods can be awkward. […]

A few thoughts on open projects, with mention of Scala

Most of my career has been in commercial companies related to open source. I learned to code just out of college at a financial company using Linux. I was at Red Hat from just before the IPO when we were selling T-shirts as a business model, until just before the company joined the S&P500. I […]

The Java ecosystem and Scala ABI versioning

On the sbt mailing list there’s a discussion of where to go with “cross versioning.” Here’s how I’ve been thinking about it. Disclaimer I’m a relative newcomer to the Scala community. If I push anyone’s buttons it’s not intentional. This is a personal opinion. Summary Two theories: The largest problem created by changing ABI contracts […]