To be able to quickly start visualizing some of the tests that can be written with ScalaTest, we can take advantage of the test-patterns-scala template from the Typesafe Activator. It consists of a number of examples that essentially target the ScalaTest framework. The easiest way to get the code is to download the template bundle for test-patterns-scala. An archive contains a bootstrap script that can simplify our life's by starting Activator automatically.

Setting up the test-patterns-scala activator project only requires you to go to the directory where you installed the Typesafe Activator and then, either start the GUI through the > activator ui command, or type > activator new to create a new project and select the appropriate template when prompted.

Read more →

As a designer you are probably keenly aware that more often than not, your dream font is not available on every device and every browser. Whether this knowledge is founded in the experience of designing and developing a site yourself, or from a horrifying experience such as your developer showing you the implementation of your design and feeling the special tug on your soul as part of you dies when viewing your original font choice rendered down into an abomination that makes comic-sans look vaguely desirable.

Previously you may have even decided to give up the fight of using the perfect font for the entire site and opted to use it only on special portions of the design as an image. This, you tell yourself, will help you sleep at night and fix all the problems in the world as they can see the effort you have put into product names, hero images, and various call-to-action buttons.Unfortunately, due to the increased pixel ratio of devices, the regular text on your site now appears crisp and sharp while your sacrificial “stylized” renderings now offer the user no quarter as they content with blurred lettering, rough edges, and pixelation worthy of an 8-bit video game.

Read more →

I have recently read an article about computations on C++ templates. One of the comments to the article was a sort of a challenge for me.

The number of methods to rack your brains with the help of C++ is increasing with every new release.

Especially when the approach to playing field implementation isn’t changed and all the computations are carried out on types rather than constants.

But would it be that difficult to write a multipurpose computer on types, which would be handier for programming rather than a cellular automaton? As it turned out, it’s not difficult. I spent 30 times more hours to write this article than to write and debug the code itself.

Read more →

Introduction

This post implies a good intro into N2O.

In order to learn about Erlang/OTP Web Framework N2O main features you should visit the github page or the official SynRC website. You will find there all the charts and presentations which you like so much.

In this article I will cover the principles of framework operation.
Version under consideration: N2O: 1.1.0.

Read more →

As tasks share time on one processor kernel, I had to deal with multitasking management. Or rather pseudo-multitasking as tasks share time at one processor kernel. At first I’ll try to tell about the types of multitasking (cooperative and preemptive). Then I’ll move on to scheduling principles for the preemptive multitasking. The article is optimized for first-readers who want to understand how multitasking operates at the kernel level. But as everything will be accompanied with examples which can be compiled and run, it may interest the ones who are familiar with the theory, but have never “tasted” the scheduler.

Introduction

To begin with, let’s define what “multitasking” means. Here’s the definition from the Wikipedia:

Read more →

Lock-free data structures are based on two things – atomic operations and methods of memory access regulation. In this article I will refer to atomicity and atomic primitives.

To begin with, I would like to thank you for a warm welcome of Lock-free Data Structures. 1 — Introduction. I can see that lock-free topic is interesting and it makes me glad. I planned to build a series according to academic concept, flowing from basics to algorithms, at the same time illustrating the text with the code from libcds. But part of the readers wants me to show them, without any delays and rambling on, how to use the library. I agree that there is some reason in it. After all, it’s not interesting for me either to know what is inside the boost, — and how to apply it! So I will divide my epic series into three parts: Basics, Inside and From Outside. Each article of the epic will refer to one of the parts. In the Basics I will tell about the low-level things, even about modern CPUs build. This part is for the whyers like me. In the Inside part I will cover interesting algorithms and methods of the lock-free world – it’s more likely a theory about how to implement a lock-free data structure. Libcds will be an endless source of the C++ code. From Outside will contain articles on libcds implementation practice, — programming solutions, advice and FAQ. From Outside is fed by the readers’ questions, comment, offers.

Read more →

Naptha — is a very useful Chrome extension. It automatically recognizes text of all the images that are downloaded by the browser. With the help of this extension you can edit images text, select, copy and translate it. This extension is indispensable for copying the text from the document scans, photographs, posters, diagrams, charts, screenshots and even memes.

The idea to create this extension was born on the basis of xkcd meme. It showed the websites, which didn’t allow selecting the text at their web-pages.

Read more →

The first version of LibreS3 project has been announced. LibreS3 is a robust open source implementation of the Amazon S3 service, supporting a subset of the S3 REST API. It's compatible with Amazon S3 client libraries and built on their basis tools, such as python-boto, s3cmd and DragonDisk. The source codes of LibreS3 are written in С and OCaml languages, the code is allocated under the GPLv2 license (libraries under LGPL). The platform can be used in Linux, OS X and different BSD-systems.

It’s worth noting that the project is being developed by the design team which had left ClamAV project in order to develop their new ideas. You can come across the name of Tomasz Kojm among the developers, he’s the founder of the free antivirus package ClamAV; and three more developers standing at the origins of the project.

Read more →

When designing a mobile version of the site, the core question is still what resolution to choose and which ones are the most popular.

By reference to statistics we will consider five the most popular resolutions of mobile screens resolutions.

Read more →

I hope that this article will give a good start for a series of notes about lock-free data structures. I would like to share my experience with community, monitoring and thoughts about what lock-free structures are, how to implement them and whether the concepts of Standard Template Library (STL) containers are suitable for the lock-free containers, and when its worth to apply lock-free data structures.

Read more →