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PThreads & Java Threads by eldavojohn · 2008-10-07 04:55 · Score: 4, Insightful · on Good Books On Programming With Threads?

However I am looking for a good book on programming threads from an applied point of view. I am looking for one or more texts that provide thorough coverage and provide meaningful exercises. Anyone have any ideas?

I went through grad school not too long ago for Computer Science (disclaimer: it was the kind of computer science degree that doesn't focus on hardware so I might not be the best expert on this). Anyway there were two books for the class.

One dealt with coding regular old C on a plain jain Unix machine and method of (I believe there are others) doing multithreaded in that environment is PThreads (or the super short overview). The book we used is the Addison Wesley book (ISBN 0-201-63392-2). It was informative and comprehensive ... wasn't concentrated specifically on applications like you ask but very good reference. Also, I think there are a lot of good books free online in respect to that topic.

As for Java, there was an O'Reilly book (there's probably a new version out for Java 6) that was pretty good. Not as great of a reference but better on applications of threads in Java. Although, as far as introductory material, I personally learned it all from java.sun.com. Although I can't vouch for whether this is an applied approach or not, I would suggest the concurrency tutorial and a good book on Java Patterns or even a design pattern wiki.

I've never done concurrent programming in C# or Python so I do not know first hand what is best. I do know that erlang has been fun to mess around with in my spare time though!

Recently I have been incorporating them more in my solutions for clients.

Most important rule of thumb of multi-threaded programming is to avoid it if possible. Maybe hardware (multi-core) will change that, maybe you feel the scheduler can't do its job as well as you can and maybe you feel it's more intuitive. But, often is the case, that you're just adding more complexity to your code resulting in more difficult bugs and harder maintenance for others. Keep it simple.

Mine is bigger than yours! by SunFireSpaz · 2008-09-30 12:46 · Score: 1 · on US House Limits Constituent Emails

My e-mail server supports Very Large Mailboxes which provides over 14 messages per US citizen (currently 305,302,563) per folder or 4,294,967,295 messages. How big is yours? (Note that the 2^32 is PER FOLDER...not per account or user.)

Virtual World by Dazza39 · 2008-09-28 10:31 · Score: 1 · on FOSS Multicast Document Sharing?

Why not use something like a Project Wonderland https://lg3d-wonderland.dev.java.net/? It gives you application sharing (VNC on win32 and X on Linux, etc). Also gives you 3D audio, chat, an avatar, a whiteboard and even the ability to phone into the world from a landline (hardware allowing). You can customize the area, add photos using Flickr http://blogs.sun.com/wonderland/entry/flickr_friday. Worth considering IMHO.

And this is news why? by houghi · 2008-09-26 02:19 · Score: 1, Informative · on Web Server On a Business Card

There have been smaller webservers made. Just a few
http://www.webservusb.com/
https://research.sun.com/spotlight/2004-12-20_vgupta.html
http://linuxmafia.com/wearables/
http://d116.com/ace/
http://tzywen.com/photos/smallservers/sfarm2.jpg

This after 3 seconds of typing in the search "smallest web server" in google and waiting for 0.11 seconds. So what does this one make it so special?

Document your code by TheSpoom · 2008-09-25 13:44 · Score: 5, Informative · on What To Do Right As a New Programmer?

Tab out everything in a code block. This should be obvious, but you'd be surprised how bad some stuff is out there. And try not to put in too many one-line ifs without brackets delimiting the code block... you can easily make the mistake of thinking something should be in the if's scope but isn't becuase there are no delimiters.

Comment. Comments are incredibly, incredibly important. They kinda go along with an overarching "don't be a douche" rule; while you may know what's going on in your own code, if it's at all complicated, tell the reader what it's doing. If you don't, someone is going to be very pissed at you later. If you want to go above and beyond, do Javadoc (or other style appropriate to your language) comments where appropriate; a lot of IDEs actually hook into them so you can highlight a method and see what it's doing.

And try looking at / working on some open source stuff as well. The big apps usually have a coding style they follow throughout and aren't that bad for a reference.

Sun has already tried Linux by ratboot · 2008-09-25 13:38 · Score: 1 · on NYT Ponders the Future of Solaris In a Linux/Windows World

"Sun, he declared [Jim Zemlin], should just move over to Linux."

In fact, Sun has already embraced Linux without very much succes, see :

http://www.sun.com/software/linux

Re:How about some technical analysis by synthespian · 2008-09-25 13:28 · Score: 1 · on NYT Ponders the Future of Solaris In a Linux/Windows World

Let me add some more: I can't, for the life of me, imagine Linux running on Computed Tomography scanners.
That would be horrible, that would be criminal...You often see Sun - and I suspect Solaris - on medical hardware. There must be a reason for that...

For instance,

http://www.sun.com/solutions/documents/success-stories/HC_Philips_BB.xml

Re:Actual Information by fm6 · 2008-09-25 08:04 · Score: 1 · on Oracle To Sell Database Hardware

Actually, you can borrow stuff from my datacenter. You just have to promise to consider buying it!

http://www.sun.com/tryandbuy/

Re:A one / two page version of this book? by Anml4ixoye · 2008-09-24 08:12 · Score: 1 · on Clean Code

[I'm the reviewer]

There are several resources out there. For example, here's the code conventions for Java:

http://java.sun.com/docs/codeconv/html/CodeConvTOC.doc.html

The best thing is to simply find out what your team is doing and document it. Then read the book to see if there are ways to improve what you are already doing.

If you'd like to contact me, I'd be happy to talk about what I've done with my teams (foyc at cornet design dot com)

Re:No need by SuperKendall · 2008-09-23 19:46 · Score: 1 · on Google Unveils First Android Phone

I really doubt that your Java JITs are going to be good enough to make things like 3D games perform as well as native on current smartphone processors.

Many cell-phone games these days are programmed in Java (yes, even 3D.

Besides that, as I oddly keep having to repeat to seemingly deaf ears, the phones will all have custom chips to accellerate Java performance - and of course the 3D library used will simply access native libraries to boot.

Re:To help people search for music they might like by troutboy · 2008-09-22 13:27 · Score: 1 · on Using Computers for Sophisticated Music Analysis

I like listening to one genre, and then switch to another genre, and the programs are unable to provide that.

Not so, Arthur Flexer and co. had a great paper at the conference in question on generating playlists with a specified start and end songs. The system attempts to make smooth transitions between songs that take you through N tracks from the track you started with (in one genre) to your end song (potentially in another genre), passing through whatever is in between. I believe its a publicly available on an http://fm4.orf.at/soundpark">Austrian radio site. Paul Lamere at Sun Labs (on the 'Search inside the music project') did something similar with what he called musical journeys. Leave work in a sweat listening to Heavy Metal and arrive home to see your family with a some mellow Jazz Theres talk of evaluating playlist generators at next year's MIREX evaluation. However, I have as yet no idea how we'll evaluate them for performance or compare different ways of 'seeding' a playlist (one track, many tracks, some tags, specified start and end tracks etc.).

Re:To help people search for music they might like by troutboy · 2008-09-22 13:27 · Score: 1 · on Using Computers for Sophisticated Music Analysis

I like listening to one genre, and then switch to another genre, and the programs are unable to provide that.

Not so, Arthur Flexer and co. had a great paper at the conference in question on generating playlists with a specified start and end songs. The system attempts to make smooth transitions between songs that take you through N tracks from the track you started with (in one genre) to your end song (potentially in another genre), passing through whatever is in between. I believe its a publicly available on an http://fm4.orf.at/soundpark">Austrian radio site. Paul Lamere at Sun Labs (on the 'Search inside the music project') did something similar with what he called musical journeys. Leave work in a sweat listening to Heavy Metal and arrive home to see your family with a some mellow Jazz Theres talk of evaluating playlist generators at next year's MIREX evaluation. However, I have as yet no idea how we'll evaluate them for performance or compare different ways of 'seeding' a playlist (one track, many tracks, some tags, specified start and end tracks etc.).

For more reading about ISMIR ... by Paul+Lamere · 2008-09-22 13:13 · Score: 1 · on Using Computers for Sophisticated Music Analysis