December 26, 2008
Briefly
Briefly this evening, I thought about spending some time playing around with Processing.
I'd take a few days, learn some new stuff, create animations that do nothing in particular but look cool, set it to some music. I have lots of ideas I want to explore, things that I think will look interesting and cool and maybe interactive. A toy someone can play with.
I'd get better, develop a following, buzz, excitement, yada yada. Eventually I'm like a Processing guru, making wicked cool animations at a whim. Sounds neat.
But when would I start this? Hmmmm. How about, do it fucking now? Ok, sounds good.
Go to the website, start looking at some code. It all looks interesting and approachable. Cool.
Hmmm, wait. Should I really be fooling around with this? I really need to do the replication testing for the new security features of CouchDB. For some reason I don't want to. But If I can fool around with Processing, then I clearly have the mental focus necessary to do the tests. The replication tests need to be done, then I can work on the Lucene integration and get closer to 1.0. So then I decide to fire up TextMate and have at it.
But before I do, I have this idea for a blog post. The CouchDB testing work will have to wait...
December 25, 2008
Arrays, What's the point? Good Question
As I'm programming I haven't seen an instance where an array is better for storing information than another form thereof. I had indeed figured the added "features" in programming languages had improved upon this and by that replaced them. I see now that they aren't replaced but rather given new life, so to speak.
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/392397/arrays-whats-the-point
I saw this on Reddit, and the reaction wasn't kind. Most of the discussion centered around how it was such a dumb question, and what is it that has failed in our educational or professional communities that such basic knowledge isn't known. My initial reaction, unfortunately, wasn't much different.
But then as I thought a little more about it, I realized it really isn't such a dumb question. I found I really don't use arrays in Erlang, they aren't necessary. In C and C++, I used them all the time, you pretty much have to. But in Erlang, lists rule the day. Erlang has facilities for arrays, but the closest thing I use is small fixed-sized tuples. It's weird, but until just now I never really noticed how little I use arrays any more. The only place I can think of ever using them in Erlang is in the CouchDB btree code for doing binary key searches.
The truth is, unless you are doing low level programming, arrays (or even vectors) are rarely necessary or even optimal for most coding problems. The most notable feature of arrays are constant time access to any value given it's ordinal key. The problem is few programming problems call for a structure that gives them constant time access to ordinal mapped values. Most uses of arrays are just as a collection of values, and can be better satisfied with a list.
My Development Methodology
Try real hard.
Expanding that out a little: Sweat the small stuff, sweat the big stuff, question everything, panic, don't panic, throw out everything, change focus, stay the course, tell everyone, tell no one. And above all, try real hard.
That usually seems to produce good results. YMMV.
December 3, 2008
Interview at Rubyfringe
Here's a video interview I did at Rubyfringe. Enjoy.
http://www.infoq.com/interviews/CouchDB-Damien-Katz
Major Award
I recently won Erlanger of the Year at the Erlang User Conference 2008 in Stockholm.
I couldn't go to accept the award in-person, but here's a picture of me accepting it from my daughter, in a small ceremony at home.
It's an honor and a surprise to win this award. I hardly feel deserving, Erlang has been a key part of the success of CouchDB and it's such an astonishingly good match I was lucky to have discovered it when I did. Thanks!
November 21, 2008
CouchDB is now officially Apache CouchDB
CouchDB has graduated from incubator to a top level project. This is a big step for the project. Congratulations to Chris Anderson, Jan Lehnardt, Christopher Lenz, Noah Slater and everyone else who's contributed to the project.
As a special limited-time promotion,you can get free sugar and cream packets with your coffee at participating 7-11's when you say "I hope I don't spill this on the CouchDB." The promotion is not supposed to start until tomorrow, but I just tried it and it works already.
We are looking to release 0.9.0 in the coming weeks, which will finally include the security and validation features and will be feature complete enough to be called beta.
November 15, 2008
Free TV Show Idea: The Obsessive Compulsive Time Traveler
I was reading a story about a guy whose been obsessed for 50 years with building a time machine to warn his dad not to smoke.
Someone brought up the point that if the guy was one day successful, wouldn't his father have not died?
So that gave me the idea for a new TV show: The Obsessive Compulsive Time Traveler.
It's about a guy who travels back in time to make sure previous events still happen correctly, because he's afraid if he doesn't things will go wrong and the present will be wrecked. He's not right in the head, plus he's got a time machine, like a combination of Monk and Voyagers!.
It practically writes itself. Every week he get himself into hilarious new predicaments where he has to fix the history he just broke. Plus you can learn about history and stuff ("To learn more about Sam Houston, visit your local library."). All I ask is the producer thank me when they win their Emmy.
November 9, 2008
News at Couch
News at Couch - November 2008Welcome to another installment of News at Couch, our review of what's new with, on and around CouchDB.
November 1, 2008
Happy Halloween!
Nifty CouchDB Jack-O-Lantern by Chris Anderson.
October 28, 2008
Relax with CouchDB
O'Reilly Media is publishing an Apache CouchDB book! How cool is that?
I was hoping they'd put David Hasselhoff on the cover, for good luck and of course good looks. But they said it's always an animal on the covers. Oh well.
