Functional programming for commercial software?

4th October at Germany will held a workshop "Commercial Users of Functional Programming", where will discussed applications of functional programming paradigms for the developing a commercial software.
Now, they collects a themes of talks, and prepare a list of participants.

emacs packages, part 2

Only today, i had readed, that was released a new package for Emacs - package.el, that allow installation of emacs packages from external repositories. Already available some packages, including erc.

version control system at home

Slowly had started to move my active projects to use the Mercurial as a version control system. The main argue for selecting of this system was a ability to work under Windows as a native application. So, currently i have a chain of repositories - main repository at home, under linux, cloned repository to usb stick, and from it, repository at work.
Today i had checked, how it works in both directions - today i had some free time and continue to work under article about using Emacs for work with TeX/LaTeX (in Russian), that already available as a beta-version on my site. Today i wrote sections about iTe and WhizzyTeX. So, i need to update a section about AucTeX & Preview-LaTeX, and do some review of minor modes, and article will ready to publish.
After that, i'll start an article about using Emacs for work with XML/SGML/HTML.

More interest in functional programming?

In the F# mailing list was published a message, that in the few days will go out of print first book about this interesting language - most of the book is about core of the language and basic topics. This language is very interesting, that it quite compatible with OCaml, but allow to use many features of the .Net. Besides this, Amazon reported, that in July will released one more book about F#, but dedicated to the more complex topics.
By my opinion, release of these books, could be use as illustration to the increasing of interest to the usage of functional languages not only in academic environment, but also in production environment. And fact, that this language was developed at Microsoft, is also illustration of this thesis.

File formats (excel)

On the work, we got error, that i already had, when i extended xls2csv from the catdoc package. And now i have it on the new job.
Problem arise from way, how strings in excel files are represented. In the begin of every string, exists special structure, that describe this string - will used Asian symbols, will be used markup, etc. But the main problem is, that the first field - length of the string, can be 1 or 2 bytes. So, next fields in this structure, could be shifted, and exists no way to know, how many bytes we should use for extracting length of the string.
I always wanted to know - why this design was selected - they tried to decrease memory & disk usage, or tried to resolve other problems?

Humor about SAP consultants ;-)

Got this text via my friend ;-)

TOP 20 ANSWERS YOU NEED TO KNOW TO BE AN SAP EXPERT CONSULTANT

1. It depends how you configure it.
2. That's not a good translation from German.
3. That's in another module.
4. How did you get there?
5. That's a good question. I'd like to see how that works myself.
6. That will be in the next release. I haven't actually seen it yet.
7. You wouldn't want to do that.
8. Let's try that and see what happens.
9. That's a Basis question.
10. I don't know, the "expert" will be here Monday. Be sure to ask him/her.
11. That's not the way it's supposed to work? what did you do?
12. You'll never need to do that, but if you do, call the hotline.
13. Trust me, I know what I'm talking about.
14. An ABAP/4 report can be written to get that information.
15. I'm sorry I have a plane to catch.
16. It's a bug.
17. Let me call the programmers in Walldorf.
18. OSS is down.
19. It's been fixed in the next release, but you don't want to upgrade at this stage.
20. And the most important answer if you have no idea at all: That's outside the scope of what we are doing.

Germany

I had forgotten, that at Friday was a half year date of my immigration to Germany. During this time happened too many things - i had found work, rent a good house, got a new driving license, got German citizenship. This is too quick for the slow living Germany ;-)

Boost 1.34 officially released!

After long development, yesterday was released a version 1.34 of very popular set of libraries for C++ - Boost. Full list of changes you can find on the site of the project.
After such long development period (more the 1.5 year), developers decides to release more often, and next version (1.35), should be released in 2-3 months, and will include many interesting libraries - asio, interprocess, fusion, and other

Software for education for russian schools

After lawsuit of Ponosov - Director of one of Russian school, that was sued for the usage of non-licensed software, this problem was discussed on the government's level, and ministry of education and informatics prepare a plan for fixing of usage of non-licensed software in education (but this plan has many comments from the ministry of finance).
Today in internet was published two links (in russian) - interview with head of department at ministry of informatics and text of plan for fixing usage of non-licensed software, prepared by ministry of education and informatics. Both links are very interested and show the misunderstood about using information technologies in education process from the side of ministries.
List of software, that is planned to buy for all Russian schools, and other educational organisations is very interesting:

• Microsoft Visual Studio - it seems for the studying of programming. But this is very complex, professional package, that require a lot of time for the studying, and also require an understand of computer architecture. Not every student at university is able to quickly use it.

• Adobe Photoshop & Corel Draw - i can't understand this requirements - why in school should be used professional programs? Users usually use only 5-10% of their functions in ordinary work.

• archivers & file managers - in plan exists a commercial software, although exists a free/open source solutions for these tasks.

• MS Office - i can understand this - standard de facto, but i can't understand - why their should use professional edition.

• and, how to run this without MS Windows? :-)

Questions about approaches to usage of IT in studying already was discussed in many places, and how to mentioned by many peoples, main problem is that children are studied to use concrete software without giving them a knowledge about approaches to task solving.

It's interesting to mention, that in OLPC project planned to use the Squeak development environment, in which children can work with computer using high-level abstractions, not at hardware level. One of my friends studied the children with Squeak, and he mention, that after first lessons, children, that never try to program, could write a simple and interesting for them programs - animations, etc. But this is very important, that the process of studying was interesting for children, and only than it give the maximal effect.

But question about selecting software for Russian schools is still open. Who win - "money-back party" with their list of professional and proprietary products, or "party of rationals" that select the balanced list of software needed for education, that solve the tasks effectively, independent on type of software - proprietary or open-source.

GMail, POP3 & Labels

After reading of help for Gmail, and looking in the results of web search, i had not found any solution how to pass information about labels, that are set on the mail, for mail, that is downloaded via POP3. This is doesn't allow me to setup automatic mail processing in Gnus - i need to keep filters in GMail & Gnus in sync manually.
Why GMail doesn't pass this information via custom X-... header?

New book about functional programming

After long process of writing, Shriram Krishnamurthi had released a final version of book "Programming Languages: Application and Interpretation". Final version available for money in PDF and paperback form. But on the author's site available version of book, that almost identical to final release.
In the book, reader can find information about continuations, types, lazy evaluation, and many other information, mostly about functional programming. Most of examples are in Scheme. Author use PLT Scheme, and create package for it with examples and libraries.
I think, that this is book, that programmer should have on their bookshelf, and read from time to time ;-)

copyrights?

Today i got e-mail from my most liked musical site - Pandora, with information, that due the many restrictions of copyrights, they stop to provide content for many countries (except USA).
I think, that these restrictions will not good for this service, and it die after some time :-(

i got new car driving license

After immigration to Germany i drive the car with my old, Russian car driving license, that was valid to use in Germany until 11th May 2007. For getting a new license (German) i need to take theoretical & practical exams, according the German rules of driving.
Last Wednesday i performed theoretical exam, and today did the practical. And immediately started process of getting a new driving license. Since today, i'll start to drive with new license - German!