Designing a Programming LanguageMay 3, 2006
Something that has been really fascinating me as of late is the prospect of desginging a new programming language. I've spent a bit of pet project time at work thinking about a formatting language, and this has opened my eyes to the broader challenge of designing a programming language. What I've found to be a lot of fun is thinking of a concept, or a syntax, and then writing a program with it even though there obviously isn't a compiler to run it afterwards. During university I would wonder from time to time if I were to do a masters, what I would focus on... I'm starting to think that this is an area of computer science where I could make a meaningful contribution.
Performance of Google VideoMay 3, 2006
The thing that amazes me most about Google, other than their search results, is the speed at which things load. The web is notorious for being slow, but virtually every Google service out there is speedy. One of the better examples of this is Google Video. Most sites that offer video provide an experiece like this: You see a link for video, so you click it... it takes the next page a few seconds to load, and then the video player starts up and displays a "Buffering..." message that lasts a while, a finally, the video starts. (Only to start rebuffering soon thereafter) But Google Video defies the odds. Click a video and
bam, it's playing instantaeously, not dropping a frame, and not rebuffering. Amazing.
Idea: Site to rapidly learn programming languageApril 11, 2006
A common strategy for learning a new programming language is to buy a book. While this is a good starting point, it often leaves you with many unanswered questions. The moment you start coding, you're going to run into frustrating problems/questions that the book doesn't answer. That's where Google comes in, right? While Google is tremendously useful, it can still be time consuming to find what you're looking for. Google solves the problem decently, but not well.
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