David J. Pearce (Blog)

Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) denies problem with Leap Year?

Monday, March 5th, 2012

It’s 8:30am on the 29th Februrary, 2012. After a large number of complaints, ATM and Eftpos services are finally restored for the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA). See this, this and this for more details.

Jobs versus Allen

Monday, March 5th, 2012

I’ve recently finished Paul Allen’s excellent memoir entitled “Idea Man” and the recent biography of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. Obviously, I didn’t read them at the same time … but one after there other!

Type Aliasing in Java?

Friday, March 2nd, 2012

A problem I often encounter in Java is that I want to say “these two things are the same”, but Java won’t let me. Suppose I want to maintain an int[] array which is always sorted in my program.

A Problem of Decoupling?

Wednesday, February 29th, 2012

Recently, I’ve been working on improving the core framework that underpins the Whiley compiler. This provides a platform for reading/writing files of specified content in a structured fashion. Like Java, Whiley provides a hierarchical namespace in which names live and can be imported by others.

Writing a PNG Decoder in Whiley!

Saturday, February 18th, 2012

Over the last few days, I have been writing GIF and PNG decoders in Whiley. These form part of an image manipulation benchmark which I’m planning to use for experimenting with the compiler.

Connecting the Dots on the Future of Programming Languages

Wednesday, January 18th, 2012

Yesterday, I serendipitously came across two things which got me thinking about the future of programming languages: The first was an excellent article entitled “Welcome to the Hardware Jungle” by Herb Sutter.

Three Rules for Programming Language Syntax?

Wednesday, January 11th, 2012

I’m always pondering the question: what makes good programming language syntax? One thing occuring to me is that many languages often ignore the HCI aspect. For me, it’s a given that the purpose of a programming language is to simplify the programmer’s life, not the other way around.

Merchants of Doubt

Tuesday, December 27th, 2011

I’ve just finished reading this book, which I have to say was really good. The book is about how a handful of rogue scientists deliberately spread disinformation on a range of key issues, including tobacco, acid rain, the ozone hole and climate change.

Efficient Value Semantics for Whiley

Tuesday, December 13th, 2011

The latest release of the Whiley compiler (v0.3.12) includes an optimisation for passing compound structures (e.g. lists, sets and records) by value. This is really important because all compound structures in Whiley have value semantics, meaning they are always passed by value.

Final should be Default for Classes in Java

Tuesday, December 6th, 2011

We were having an interesting discussion the other day, and the issue of final classes came up. For some reason, it suddenly occurred to me that all classes should be final by default.