I can’t come up with anything to write right now, so I’ve decided to publish some random notes :-)

Random notes:

  • I’m listening to Duffy - Mercy on thesixtyone right now - I’m kind of surprised to find it there to be honest.

  • Right now I try to read “Design Patterns” by the “Gang of Four”. Reading it is kind of tedious though because it contains a lot of text for simple things, but I don’t just want to skim over it either, so I constantly have to force myself to continue reading.

  • I’ve stumbled over some good links from going through the Wikipedia entries for some design patterns. One interesting one in particular is: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PatternBacklash Quote (so true):

    I’ve gained the impression that DesignPatterns violate OnceAndOnlyOnce. If you need to use a design-pattern often enough for it to become a ‘pattern’, it should be refactored into a single language statement just like every other ‘pattern’ you refactor. If you can’t refactor the design-pattern due to language limitations or other constraints, you’ll end up apply the same pattern, by hand, repeatedly (thus the name ‘pattern’). Of course, given a TuringComplete language you can potentially refactor anything, but beware GreenspunsTenthRuleOfProgramming and the overhead required to refactor design patterns in any generic manner. The need for DesignPatterns should be considered a LanguageSmell. A language that has a lot of DesignPatterns smells a great deal worse than one that requires only a few.

    – DesignPatternsAreMissingLanguageFeatures

  • I’ve installed Visual Studio 2008 because I had a) access to it b) I once read that it contained some stuff to simplify the addition of new languages to it. There is an SDK available and I recommend to anyone to check it out - especially the stuff about using the Visual Studio Shell for your own projects (it’s neat-o). My only issue with it is that all my work project are still using Visual Studio 2005 and there is no way to open 2005 projects without converting them which sucks - I let you guess why :-)

  • There is an SDK available for Visual Studio 2005, too.

  • I’m looking into writing a language extension for QuakeC, though I’m not sure whether it is worth the trouble, because most people I know who still code in QuakeC use Linux **>_>’**

  • Doing the same for TorqueScript might be a good idea though, and I could probably even sell it - again I’m not sure whether coding it would be that rewarding.

  • I’ve been playing Aquaria a lot in the last days and I really enjoy it, although it’s not the kind of game I usually play. It certainly is worth its 30 USD.

  • http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/adverbs.htm is an awesome site about English grammar!

  • The latest Linux-Hater is simply awesome - and funny: Bundle me this

I think that’s enough for now and I’m going to back to reading/playing/listening to music.

Cheers,
Andreas