A scenic diversion on the road to understanding JavaScript when you're a C# programmer. […]
READ MORELast time I talked about the lock-free stack and queue, I was more concerned about proving that my code was free from the ABA problem than anything else. In making my argument I naturally glossed over such niceties as the .NET memory model and so assumed (pretty much) a sequential memory model, because, to be honest, that's how we think as programmers. […]
READ MOREGetting on for 4 years ago, I wrote a series of posts on lock-free containers in .NET, like the lock-free stack and the lock-free queue. They were fun to write, mainly because of the difficulty of the topic and trying to rationalize why early versions didn't work, and so on so forth. Along the way I learned about the .NET memory model, volatile, memory fences, and other arcana, but in the end I had something that worked and worked well. Over the years since then I've had many emails from readers about lock-free containers and I've been happy to have been linked from many different places, so much so that currently I'm number 1 for "lock free stack" and queue on Google. […]
I was reading the latest PCPlus issue yesterday evening in bed — well, all right, the latest one (April) that's reached the Wild West in Colorado, which means them what's in England are probably up to June's issue or something — when I came across a paragraph that mentioned me on the PCPlus Feedback page (or if you like, the letters page). A certain Peter Atherton (obviously a man of great taste and discernment) was complimenting the Editors on an article on displaying Mandelbrot sets in Excel when he added this paragraph at the end of his letter: […]
READ MOREI write a monthly column for PCPlus, a computer news-views-n-reviews magazine in the UK (actually there are 13 issues a year — there's an Xmas issue as well — so it's a bit more than monthly). The column is called Theory Workshop and appears in the back of every issue. When I signed up, my editor and the magazine were gracious enough to allow me to reprint the articles here after say a year or so. After all, the PDFs do appear on each issue's DVD after a couple of months. When I buy the current issue, I'll publish the article from the issue a year ago. Since I've just bought the issue for April 2009, here's April 2008's article. […]
READ MOREI admit it, I am a helpless geek: I love collecting old calculators and computing devices. My wife thinks I'm bananas, and she may be right, but there's just something about holding something from the dawn of calculating electronics. […]
READ MOREAnother stop on the long road to JavaScript understanding from a C# developers perspective. […]
READ MOREThe partygoers a couple of weeks ago were sniggering behind my back when they left. It seems that it wasn't Peter Gabriel leaving Genesis that triggered the self-referential name of their next album, but Steve Hackett (thanks to me old mate Larry for pointing it out to me). Man, my memory is surely going. I could have sworn I was right, but Larry and wikipedia have shown me the error of my ways. This week, undeterred, I'm going for broke... […]
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