Comments for Databases and Life

Comment on Reading row-by-row into Java from MySQL by Bob

Bob — Tue, 20 May 2008 22:40:05 +0000

btw, this was logged as a bug against MySQL (http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=18148).

Comment on Reading row-by-row into Java from MySQL by Bob

Bob — Tue, 20 May 2008 22:38:36 +0000

OK, I’m not the only person who finds that this is crazy. I have a similar kind of use case–I want to read the whole result set in order to cache it (in a compressed form). I had to set the fetch size to 2^-31 too, but this blows up on other databases and it’s non-trivial to put in code that tests for MySQL, so I’m in a quandary.

Comment on Encapsulation or public attributes: but nothing inbetween by Aviad Ben Dov

Aviad Ben Dov — Tue, 20 May 2008 15:11:59 +0000

Adrian,

I wish pingbacks would work too. :)

Anyway, what you said is something I completely agree with, this is why I always go for the paranoia approach. However, as I wrote in the post itself, this approach causes problems with some frameworks. What do you do when these things happen?

Thanks for the response. :)

Comment on Encapsulation or public attributes: but nothing inbetween by Robin Salih

Robin Salih — Mon, 19 May 2008 18:56:29 +0000

I agree with the paranoia approach for sure.

Comment on Java gotcha: anArray.hashCode isn’t deep by Peter Lawrey

Peter Lawrey — Mon, 12 May 2008 11:24:56 +0000

Unfortunately, arrays inherit their implementation of hashCode(), equals() and toString() fro Object. There is no Array class type that all array inherit from only an Array & Arrays helper classes.
This means the hashCode for an array is based on it internal object number, equals is only true for the same object and toString() prints the internal class name and the internal id… Not very useful IMHO.

Comment on From Summer: Austria (instead of the UK) by adrian

adrian — Tue, 06 May 2008 07:48:43 +0000

Update: http://www.databasesandlife.com/2008-05-the-next-few-months/

Comment on Programming Languages: Is newer always better? by Nick

Nick — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 15:07:53 +0000

Basically, you’re right, though a few of the points are debatable. The example that I agree with most strongly is the last, auto-creation of variables. Didn’t people learn in about 1972 that auto-creation of variables is a Very Bad Thing? Every good Perl programmer I know puts “use strict” at the beginning of all executable code (which forces declaration of all variables). So why doesn’t PHP have “use strict”? If you ask this question on the PHP forums, you get answers that reveal the responders just don’t understand the issue.

Comment on Anti-aliased polygon filling algorithm by Flo

Flo — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 09:41:23 +0000

It’s cool to see someone is enjoying implementing low-level graphics algorithms over and over again like myself! Kudos for the Amstrad fonts!!!

Comment on Programming Languages: Is newer always better? (Part 2) by Flo

Flo — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 09:37:55 +0000

A late comment on this one:

Thanks for the enlightening statement that a programming language is firstly a communication tool between developers! This has never occurred to me so clearly, and I agree 100%.

Two more thoughts to add from myself: For me, the available tools for a given language are actually more important than the language itself. I’m still preferring Java not because I am in love with the language specification, but because Eclipse is a great IDE and the whole toolchain works for me. I wouldn’t mind programming C++ (or nearly any other language) instead, but when I think back to the days when I was forced to use Visual Studio as a tool to do so, I shiver. Another way to put it: I don’t care if “for” loops in Java are cumbersome, as long as I can hit Ctrl-Space after the “for” and the IDE writes the code for me. Same goes for refactoring etc.

Secondly, I have to say I am increasingly judging languages and toolchains not by how good they work for me, but by how good they would work for a team of mediocre(!) programmers - after all, that’s the reality we face when we tackle larger projects. We just cannot rely on everyone on the team being a genius, and strongly typed languages help to force some discipline into the project. For myself, I enjoy coding in Javascript very much as it helps me to find elegant solutions fast. When I was forced to work with a very mediocre programmer for some months on a Java/Javascript project, his Java code was a mess but basically worked, but his Javascript code was so terribly bug-infested and contaminated with side effects the only thing one could do to really fix it was throw it away and rewrite it from scratch. And Unit tests don’t help at all here because mediocre programmers fail to write tests with decent coverage.

Comment on Transfering some hex. Sometimes gets replaced by string "INF". Why? by adrian

adrian — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 04:38:11 +0000

See http://www.databasesandlife.com/explicit-vs-implicit-data-typing/