Error tracking challenge is over

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Just as a reminder: If you participated in the error tracking challenge and haven’t yet mailed your results to me, please do so ASAP. The address is jani at codeutopia net I will be posting some results next week.

Google Wave impressions

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So I got a Google Wave developer sandbox account. If you don’t know what Google Wave is, you’ve probably been living under a rock, and you should go check out the aforementioned link. It has a nifty video demonstrating various parts of it. I’ve had time to play with it for a while now, and while it’s a pretty cool …

What is a null object, and when are they useful?

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If you’ve written code, you’ve probably used the value null to indicate some variable is not set. This is perfectly good, but did you know there’s more to nulls than just the value null? There is also a null object, which doesn’t really have anything to do with the value null, but its purprose is similar. How many times have …

How to get free publicity by screwing up your friendly URL algorithm

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Today I’ll share a fun story with you. Would you like to get free publicity? Go ahead and make a poor friendly URL implementation, like the Finnish Broadcasting Corporation, or YLE – the national broadcasting company of Finland – did. YLE had a very naive friendly URL algorithm on their web site. As you may guess, people found out about …

Improving code with peer reviews

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Peer reviewing is the practice of looking at code written by others to find errors or ways to improve the code. Sometimes also called desktop reviewing, this approach can be useful for various reasons: If you have a coworker who is more experienced than you, you can learn from him/her It’s often helpful to have another set of eyes take …