This post contains the results of a Ruby shootout on Windows that I recently conducted. You can find the Mac edition, published last month, here. I was planning to have this one ready much sooner, but a couple of serious events in personal life prevented that from happening. Be sure to grab my feed
Continue ReadingSeveral years ago I knew a programmer, we’ll call him Joe, who fancied himself to be a great developer. He was a senior developer at “Big Co.”, who received a large enough pay check to just as easily compensate a few junior developers. The guy had Microsoft certifications, as expected of one in his
Continue ReadingProgramming is the type of discipline that requires countless hours of dedication to reading and writing code, rather than purely theoretical learning from books. Yet programming books can be enlightening and provide guidance while one attempts to hone their craft in the pursuit of mastery. In this post I’ll share a (necessarily incomplete) list
Continue ReadingFor years Zen and the Art of Programming has been hosted on my domain antoniocangiano.com. However, I’ve decided to switch it over to a new one, programmingzen.com. This move was done for two main reasons: first, it is sometimes hard for native English speakers to communicate and remember my name. Second, my blog isn’t
Continue ReadingApple 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,
Continue ReadingMy previous post about a possible intrusion by non-authorized parties on my Gmail account has received a lot of attention on Hacker News, and was even linked to from LifeHacker. There were a lot of questions, concerns, and critics that quickly surfaced, and in this post I’ll address most of them. Given the volume
Continue ReadingThe Gmail team recently introduced a new feature (in the footer) that enables account holders to verify the latest login activities on their account. I routinely check mine and the results are usually boring, reminding me I check my email way too often (and I do so mostly via browser, through my Canadian IP).
Continue ReadingFrom the Padrino’s site: Padrino is a ruby framework built upon the excellent Sinatra Microframework. Sinatra is a DSL for creating simple web applications in Ruby with speed and minimal effort. This framework makes it as fun and easy as possible to code increasingly advanced web applications by expanding upon Sinatra while maintaining the
Continue ReadingAdobe has just made an important announcement: We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of the Adobe AIR 2 runtime. Starting today, you can download and install the new version at get.adobe.com/air/. Adobe AIR is rapidly becoming a very viable solution to the desktop cross-platform conundrum. MicroISVs pay attention, this new release includes
Continue ReadingApple is receiving copious amounts of bad press due to their somewhat arbitrary and restrictive App Store policies. This isn’t going to change a thing at Apple, but the complaints are warranted. Android on the other hand is touted as being “the open platform”, and developers are invited to develop and sell their apps
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