Programming in Objective-C, 3rd Edition is out

Addison-Wesley quietly released the third edition of their Programming in Objective-C book (USA | UK | Canada). I own the first edition of the book and it’s stellar, so I’m really looking forward to reading this upgraded version which includes the latest changes to the language, the main IDE (XCode), and the Foundation framework for developing Mac, iPad, and iPhone...

Would you use a Mac mini as your development machine?

Apple just released a brand new, gorgeous looking Mac mini. This major upgrade brings us two different models: a desktop one and a server version (priced at $699 and $999, respectively). Equipped with a HDMI port, the desktop edition of the Mac mini makes for a perfect Home Theater PC. It’s small and stylish, and as such is a great fit in your living room. Most of the reviews I’ve read focus on its use...

Benchmarking MacRuby 0.6

Recently MacRuby 0.6 was released. The development team put a lot of emphasis on improving compatibility with Ruby 1.9, and the viability of MacRuby as a tool for developing Mac OS X applications. Focus on these aspects took precedence over performance, but I was still curious to see how well it performed when compared to Ruby 1.8.7 and Ruby 1.9, respectively. This article showcases the results of a small Ruby...

My kingdom for an iPad

Tomorrow the iPad goes on sale in the States. Announced in January, the iPad sits squarely between a laptop and an iPod Touch. Large lines are expected to form in front of Apple Stores across America; ants scurrying to grab their crumbs. What is uncertain is whether this release is going to be much ado about nothing or more an event that will revolutionize the computer market. Among the iPad shortcomings are the...

Getting MacRuby’s compiler to work

There is major news in Rubyland today. MacRuby’s team just released their fist beta of version 0.5 (an experimental, still incomplete version of Ruby), which brings JIT, removal of the dreaded GIL (Global Interpreter Lock), native threads, GCD (Grand Central Dispatch) for multicore computing, and a whole new set of features found in the release announcement to the table. The most important new feature is the...

Installing the Ruby driver for DB2 on Mac OS X Snow Leopard

Now that Mac OS X 10.6 is out, it’s time to leave the world of 32 bit computing behind. The pre-installed Ruby interpreter will run in 64 bit mode by default, so you may need to pay attention when installing some C-based gems. The ibm_db Ruby gem for DB2 can easily be installed or updated to the latest available version by following these simple steps: $ sudo -s $ export...

DB2 on Mac OS X Snow Leopard

Earlier today I headed over to the local Apple Store to purchase a copy of Snow Leopard, the newest version of Apple’s operating system. There was a decent line up, as I expected. Not the kind of line up you’d encounter with the launch of a new iPhone, but it was fairly busy for a Friday morning. When I arrived, I took my place at the end of the queue where rumors were swirling around about the store...

Apple “Genius”

Recently I sold my old, damaged MacBook Pro on eBay, and in doing so I claimed that there was a chance that it could be repaired (by Apple) for free. But how, you may be wondering, could I make such a bold claim? Was it all a strategy to over-sell my broken laptop? Not in the least. Back when I first found out about this Apple’s KB article, the contents of which appeared as though they would entitle me to a...

Selling my old MacBook Pro

A few days ago I placed my old MacBook Pro up for auction on Ebay, with a starting price of $200 and no reserve. While the auction has generated interest, so far there has been only one bidder. The auction ends in a little over two days. If you are interested, please read the description carefully and then bid with confidence. Despite being damaged, a laptop like this is still worth a few hundreds dollars due the...

Do Androids Count Electric Sheep with DB2 or MySQL?

Counting rows is an ubiquitous operation on the web, so much so that it’s often overused. Regardless of misuse, there is no denying that the performance of counting operations has an impact on most applications. In this post I’ll discuss my findings about the performance of DB2 9.5 and MySQL 5.1 regarding counting records. For those of you who are not into science fiction, let me clarify that the odd...

TextMate bundle for DB2

Before leaving on a recent business trip to Italy I begun working on a TextMate bundle for DB2. Here I’ll introduce it in the hope that it will interest some TextMate and DB2 users. Installation There are two simple prerequisites for using this bundle: 1) Install DB2 as a regular user (not root); 2) Source the db2profile by, for example, adding . ~/sqllib/db2profile to your shell profile (e.g., in ~/.profile)....

Screencast on how to install DB2 Express-C on Mac OS X

Over the weekend I recorded a screencast on how to install DB2 on Mac OS X. You can watch it below: Installing DB2 on Mac OS X from Antonio Cangiano on Vimeo. The blog post I reference within the video can be found here. Yes, that’s an Italian accent. I hope you don’t mind it. ...

Why MacRuby Matters (Present & Future)

Over the years the inadequacy of Ruby’s main implementation has led to the creation of several alternatives. The greatest common divisor between these is an attempt to improve the performance of Ruby, both in terms of time and space. But every Ruby implementation has another, deeper reason for being. For example, Ruby 1.9.1 is a refactoring of the language that provides the chance to incorporate several much...

Install DB2 on Mac OS X and give us feedback

A little over a week ago IBM released a new version of the DB2 beta for Mac OS X Leopard, following up on valuable feedback that we’d received in response to earlier versions. This version is important because it resolves a reported issue that was occurring when building drivers for languages like Ruby and PHP. Hence, I highly encourage you to download the latest DB2 for Mac now and save yourself the hassle of...

DB2 on Mac officially released

As pre-announced in my two previous posts, DB2 for Mac OS X Leopard is finally available for download. It’s now official, DB2 on Mac is here. Reflections on DB2 on Mac Several people, including myself, would happily ditch their virtual machines and start introducing DB2 into their native Mac development stacks. But this milestone represents much more than the immediate implications would have us believe. A few...

DB2 on Mac to ship before Christmas

This is not an official announcement, but I must share the news with you. DB2 Express-C for Mac OS X Leopard will finally be shipping out (before Christmas), in all likelihood it could be as soon as early next week. You may recall how more than a year ago I blogged about how the work on porting DB2 to the Mac had started. It took admittedly longer than expected but DB2 on Mac is coming, and is absolutely free of...

The Great Ruby Shootout (December 2008)

The long awaited Ruby virtual machine shootout is here. In this report I’ve compared the performances of several Ruby implementations against a set of synthetic benchmarks. The implementations that I tested were Ruby 1.8 (aka MRI), Ruby 1.9 (aka Yarv), Ruby Enterprise Edition (aka REE), JRuby 1.1.6RC1, Rubinius, MagLev, MacRuby 0.3 and IronRuby. Disclaimer Just as with the previous shootout, before...

My visit to the Apple Store

Two days ago my MacBook Pro’s screen turned black. Following what I assume was an unsuccessful firmware upgrade, my laptop stopped displaying anything on its LCD. It would boot, greet me with a chime and I could even login and adjust the volume, all without seeing a thing. After researching the issue online, I ended up trying many possible solutions all to no avail. Some people managed to resolve what seemed...

Pygments TextMate Bundle

Following my last post, a few people asked me to create a Pygments TextMate bundle. Ask and ye shall receive (on GitHub). Prerequisites Install Pygments following these instructions. Installation First method: sudo mkdir -p /Library/Application\ Support/TextMate/Bundles cd /Library/Application\ Support/TextMate/Bundles git clone git://github.com/acangiano/pygments-textmate-bundle.git...

Integrating TextMate and Pygments

Like many, I don’t use TextMate just for coding. All of my posts are first drafted in my trusty editor before being published. One of the problems that I had, and that others probably face too, is the less than smooth process of publishing properly highlighted code in posts and HTML pages. A few solutions exist, including embedding gist snippets, using “Create HTML from Document” in TextMate, or...