Tuesday, 29th April 2003
In praise of functional programming
Via Joe Gregorio, Functional programming in Python Part 1 and Part 2. I’m reading Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs at the moment (available for free online, but I’ve got a library copy) and it has been getting me seriously interested in the functional programming paradigm. It’s also by far the most enlightening (in terms of “wow, that really makes sense”) computer science text book I’ve ever read. There’s something naturally elegant about the functional style, probably thanks to the encapsulation encouraged by the lack of global variables and the extensive use of recursion in functional code examples. It’s definitely true that exposure to a variety of programming styles encourages you to think about problems in different ways.
[... 134 words]XmlWriter: Generating XML from PHP
Lars Marius Garshol’s XMLWriter class for Python struck me as a particularly elegant solution for generating simple XML documents without having to worry about encoding issues, missing tags and so forth—so I re-implemented it in PHP:
[... 112 words]Skill Swap
Via Zeldman, Skill Swap is a community based new mania free training scheme based in Brighton:
[... 112 words]Threads and Dynamic Content
Sterling Hughes: THOU SHALT NOT USE THREADS TO SERVE DYNAMIC CONTENT.
[... 12 words]