I’m currently taking the Software Testing class on Udacity. The instructor spent a couple of videos discussing the pros and cons of leaving software assertions turned on in your production systems. Here is my interpretation:
If you pick two people at random and measure their heights, what can you say about the average height of the population? When dealing with small sample sizes (less than, say, 20) it’s generally not possible to assume that the sample variance is a good approximation of the population variance. There simply isn’t enough data, […]
RESTful Web Services by Leonard Richardson My rating: 5 of 5 stars I began reading “Restful web services” while researching technical solutions for Neurobat Online, the web service version of our intelligent heating controller. Prior to this, most (all?) web service projects I had been involved in were based on SOAP. REST is a heavily […]
For the past three years I’ve taught a freshman-level programming course at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. Students are asked to form groups of 2 and to work on a semester project, consisting in the development of a simple library of numeric routines (e.g. square root function, integrals, etc). I then submit […]
From Neurobat’s website it is now possible to download a brochure with the 2012-2013 test results. It summarises the findings we published at the CISBAT 2013 conference, describing the energy savings that we have achieved on four experimental test sites. Of these four, one is an administrative office. Another included the (domestic) hot water in […]
I was happy to learn a few days ago that the Climate Charts & Graphs blog is being reactivated by its author. I used to subscribe to it back in the Google Reader days. In the current climate change conversation we need more blogs like CCG, where arguments can be conclusively settled with (preferably graphical) […]
The Thoughtworks Anthology: Essays on Software Technology and Innovation by ThoughtWorks Inc.<br/> My rating: 3 of 5 stars I read this first volume after reading its successor. Compared with the latter, I found the first volume to be slightly disappointing. Like its successor, it’s a series of essays from Thoughtworks employees, including Martin Fowler. Whereas […]
Linkers and Loaders by John R. Levine My rating: 4 of 5 stars You may have written hundreds, maybe thousands of programs, but if you are like most programmers then everything that happens after the compilation is kind of mysterious. Why does the compiler have to create object files? What are they? What is this […]
Applying UML and Patterns: An Introduction to Object-Oriented Analysis and Design and Iterative Development by Craig Larman<br/> My rating: 5 of 5 stars Easily one of the best books on object-oriented design I’ve ever read. Through two case studies (a point-of-sale terminal application and a Monopoly game) the author goes through the entire process of […]
Switzerland is a small country in the middle of Europe, wedged between France, Germany, Austria and Italy (see below). In a previous post I have documented the above-average rise of air temperatures in this country for the past 50 years, leading to a significant increase of extreme weather events. Being a small country, our climate […]