So, I decided to pick up a book about writing compilers --- Writing Compilers and Interpreters. I figured it would be good for me to at least know what's involved in writing a compiler. Of course, the first thing in the book is a program to just list the contents of a text file with line numbers and paginated. The lister program, as well as much of the rest of the code, is in C (at least in my edition). … [Read more...]

I've been programming in Java since 1998. During the past eight or so years, I've picked up a lot of stuff that doesn't strictly have to do with Java, but makes life a bit easier. Things like scripting, SQL and DDL, XML, CVS, simple stuff with Apache, some PHP, rudimentary Postfix, Ant, make (blech!), C/C++ .... The list goes on. You tend to pick things up as tasks require. I never got around to actually learning anything about design patterns, though. I wanted to. I've had the Gang of … [Read more...]