I am currently a software engineer at Google, where as a member of the Android platform team I build frameworks and user interfaces.
The blog here at dsandler.org is mostly historical; you can find more recent posts on Google+.
9:21 p.m. — Richard Keil of Bloomberg News leaned across the aisle,
shoved aside his I-Pod headset and grinned as he said: “The President
of the United States is AWOL, and we’re with him. The ultimate road
trip.”
Drudge has the unedited notes of
Washington Post reporter Mike Allen during the recent Presidential
trip to Baghdad. (The Washington Post ran a news
article and a polished, edited “behind-the-scenes” account by Mike Allen.)
As my niece would say, “Windy!
Windy!” There’s a wind advisory in effect until the morning
— at Clover Airfield the winds are N20 gusting to 30 MPH. I had to move my lawn chairs and potted plant to a leeward side of the house!
Via λ the
Ultimate: Why Functional
Programming Matters. A wonderful paper (despite its age) touching on
lazy evaluation, functional programming patterns, and uses as examples
numerical differentiation and alpha-beta pruning. Abstract:
As software becomes more and more complex, it is more and more important
to structure it well. Well-structured software is easy to write, easy to
debug, and provides a collection of modules that can be re-used to
reduce future programming costs. Conventional languages place conceptual
limits on the way problems can be modularised. Functional languages push
those limits back. In this paper we show that two features of functional
languages in particular, higher-order functions and lazy evaluation, can
contribute greatly to modularity. As examples, we manipulate lists and
trees, program several numerical algorithms, and implement the
alpha-beta heuristic (an algorithm from Artificial Intelligence used in
game-playing programs). Since modularity is the key to successful
programming, functional languages are vitally important to the real
world.
Oh, man. I thought that the Turkey-flavored Jones
soda was fictitious.
Well, apparently, it’s
real.
McSweeney’s: Inaugural
Speeches From Our Action Heroes. He-Man, Jem, Lion-O, and Optimus
Prime graciously accept the reins of the country. “Thank you and
God bless. Thundercats Ho!”
“To make a long story short, don’t go to
Fry’s unless you want to spend like five hundred
dollars you don’t actually have.” —Penny-Arcade’s Tycho, who until recently was unacquainted
with Fry’s Electronics.
“Usability without innovation represents failure. Innovation
without usability merely means we aren’t done yet.” [via djslim]