//extrabright

Interesting article on how to use a functional programming style in Java:

Functional Programming in the Java Language Article

I would like to mention 2 websites that index interesting AJAX applications/sites. The first one, ajaxmatters, lists a collection of sites using the AJAX technology. Some of them are really cool. I like in particular the AJAX dictionnary — choose between different dictionnaries or search even PHP functions.

AjaxMatters

The second one is the top-10 Ajax applications (according to the author), which link can be found below.

Top-10 Ajax Apps

I am just dropping a short post to mention that Goanna is also very briefely reviewed in the inside tech column of USA Today. This also comes as a result of the Techfest presentation held in Sydney. I like the part where Goanna is described as a bug eating lizard — this is in fact what a goanna is, a big australian lizard. More information under:
USA Today – Inside Tech – Goanna

This small AJAX Whois availability check page, seen on Roberto’s blog, is very handy:

AJAX Domain Name Availability Check

LINKS, that interesting unified multi-tiers programming language developed by Philip Wadler, about which I saw a talk at the UTS in Sydney and wrote a post some time ago, has now a test version available. Very interesting indeed. It enables as well to develop easily AJAX applications, like this small dictionnary suggest example. There is also an interesting paper describing its use. In my humble opinion a good idea to check its further development, as the concepts behind it are pretty clean and elegant.

I can recommand the review of the brand new MacBook computer. The comparison with the pro line shows that the gap that was existing before between the ibook and powerbook does not exist anymore with Apple’s Intel based laptop.

MacBook Review

To sum up the differences between the MacBook and MacBook Pro mentioned in the review, the only things the MacBook does not have compared to its big brother are: an aluminium shed, a lighted keyboard, a ambiant light sensor, an auto-dimming display, an express card port, a PCIe graphics system, a higher resolution display, a matte option display and a larger hard drive. More details can be found on the conclusion page of the review.

MacBook Review Conclusion

The idea of the Computer Language Shootout is to propose a benchmark of a large number of programming languages. This is achieved through the definition of particular problems — allocate many binary trees, compute a Mandelbrot fractal, implement a specific version of the sprectral-norm algorithm, etc — and benchmarked implementation of them in various languages. The method is indeed not perfect, gives however a first comparision point of the overall performance of the considered languages.

Apparently and to my surprise, functional languages — even though they tend to solve problems in a more mathematical and elegant way — have good positions in the ranking (as of February 13, Haskell being number one, just before C being number 2 and OCaml number 3; SML is 5th and C++ 7th). This is probably not to be considered too literally though, as it depends of the available implementation for each language and of the weight given to each problem. But, as I said, this gives already a 1st comparison point.

Computer Language Shootout Ranking

By the way, I attended yesterday at UTS Sydney, a talk by Philip Wadler about his new LINKS language. Sounds exciting. Philip Wadler, Professor of theoritical computer-science at Edinburgh university has been involved in numerous projects around the functional programming paradigm (he has been in the Haskell commitee and involved in the XQuery standard definition to cite just a few). LINKS aim at targeting the programming of web applications in some kind of unified view between the 3 tiers that are the database server, the web server and the client browser. LINKS would be a unified language making unnecessary the use of the numerous languages associated with each tiers (HTML and Javascript on the client; PHP, Java or Perl on the server as well as SQL or XQuery on the database server). I’ll definitely keep an eye on that interesting project.

LINKS homepage

Quite interesting. I saw on Philip Wadler’s blog a link to the Tiny MCE WYSIWYG HTML editor implemented in Javascript, that is completely web-based. Don’t hesitate to follow the link for a quick example of the capabilities.

Interesting link. After Oracle and Microsoft, IBM delivers a free version of its famous database server DB2 in reaction to the always broader use of open-source products like MySQL and PostgreSQL.

Original Post

Already some time that I haven’t posted something on the blog. That’s the famous trade-off between living and speaking about it. I have choosen the former in the previous weeks. Additionnaly I have posted a lot of new pictures on the gallery.

The following link points to an interesting page about the functional programming paradigm. Concepts such as currying, higher order functions, side effect or lazy evaluation are spoken of in a koans-like form. A great classic.

Functional Programming Koans

I don’t know if compiler could be sold as everyday products, and I doubt that we would need a new compiler pack everyday — I would not hope so, if the compiler is well designed and thought it shouldn’t be necessary. Anyway nice pic that come from the following website:

ocaml blend

I have just seen today the press conference webcast of the 100 dollars laptop project of the MIT Media Lab. Very promising and well thought. The idea of giving access to technology to children in developing countries is of course very interesting, be it for the interest in the technology itself, for the integration of the computer in the learning process or to give the opportunity of better education, what is definitely a promising factor for a better economical future. The idea of the power supply provided by a crank (manivelle) on the side of the laptop, of wifi enabled devices building an ad-hoc network, enabling to share an internet access as long as one of them is connected to it, or the possibility to use the device as an e-book reader, with integration of the school books, are however not less interesting.

More details about the project on the link below:
100 Dollars Laptop

I have found an interesting page detailing the benefits of the OCaml language, compared to standard imperative languages (C, C++, Java). I guess that most of the stated points apply generally to functional languages (e.g. SML) and are not specific to OCaml, though I know too little about Haskell to say something about it.

OCaml Benefits