Author: grant

A Brief Review of PragProg's Coding in Objective-C 2.0 Screencasts

I just finished watching the first 3 episodes of this screencast series. The videos have sort of an odd tone in that the content seems to be tailored to beginning programmers, but at times details are added that would only make sense to an experienced programmer. For example, “the debugger is cool” versus “sending the autorelease message causes the runtime to register the receiver with the most recent pool on the stack” (caveat, he did follow that by commenting that you don’t need to know what is the stack, the most recent pool on the stack, or how the runtime finds it, but nonetheless). The result is that for beginners it is distracting, and for experienced programmers it is disappointing because you never get the depth that you want.
Additionally, the author has the habit of making statements explaining the current operation that he is demonstrating, and then ending the explanation with “or whatever”. For example, “the program counter steps over the instructions of the generated assembly code… or whatever”. The result of such an approach leaves the viewer wondering whether or not he should believe what the author just explained to him.
I feel like the author did something of a “rush job” to get these screencasts out. The downside is that the time you spent watching them could have been better spent doing something else, like reading Programming in Objective-C 2.0 for example.
My gut feeling is that the author is very knowledgable on the topic, and that the screencasts don’t represent his expertise. I am interested to see how the screencasts compare to his soon to be released book.

Orbitz detects known customers and increases their prices

Someone told me a few months ago that Orbitz will detect and raise prices for some customers. It didn’t occur to me to check this until last night. I found a good deal on Orbitz for a hotel+car package, but looked around the web for better deals. After a few minutes, I reran the search on Orbitz and the same deal came up $200 more expensive. I fired up IE’s InPrivate browser and tried again. Now the original, cheaper price showed up. I reran the search in a previous browser and still got the $200 extra charge. Because I lack an MBA, I don’t understand how screwing your frequent customers is a good business tactic. I’ll be searching Orbitz and other travel sites using InPrivate or InFilter mode from now on because I don’t trust their prices anymore. If more people find out about this, people will lose trust in Orbitz and use it less frequently. I suggest people use a different browser or computer to verify that you aren’t getting screwed on prices, particularly package deals.

— Pinku
(via pinku)

A presentation on Scheme in relation to Lisp

Here is a recording of an informal presentation I gave to the Twin Cities Lisp User group on Scheme in relation to Lisp. Schemers wouldn’t learn anything new here; but perhaps if you are a Lisper you might find it informative (I didn’t get booed off stage by the 40 or so Lispers in attendance, if that is any measure of its value, as surely my good looks and charm wasn’t keeping them around).
The coffee shop where it was held was excellent. There were probably 40 people crammed into the presentation space; and everyone was still happy and having a great time. This is a very cool group composed of very cool people, it would do you well to attend and even present with these fine folks.

A presentation on Hygienic Macros in Scheme

Here is a recording of an informal presentation I gave to the Twin Cities Lisp User group on Hygienic Macros. Schemers wouldn’t learn anything new here; but perhaps if you are a Lisper you might find it informative (I didn’t get booed off stage by the 25 or so Lispers in attendance, if that is any measure of its value, as surely my good looks and charm wasn’t keeping them around).
The coffee shop where it was held was excellent. There were probably 25 people happy and sitting comfortably in the presentation space. This is a very cool group composed of very cool people, it would do you well to attend and even present with these fine folks.