Posts tagged programming

I have been looking for a command-line programmers’ calculator for a while. I needed it to do the usual things like base number conversion, bit shifting and masking, and so on.

I searched for quite a while and couldn’t find anything. Almost all were GUI, which I didn’t want, or were some ridiculous price, which I couldn’t justify being a programmer myself.

Anyway, I think I’ve found a good one, calcc. It comes with GPL’ed source plus pre-built binaries for unix and MS Windows. Theoretically, the unix version should work on a Mac with OS X, but I haven’t tested it.

I have written up a fairly comprehensive blog post on my other blog. Check it out.

(Why command line? If I am in the middle of a typing frenzy, the last thing I want is to have to move my hands away from the home keys to use the mouse to hover over a graphical keypad and click. I much prefer to Tab over to another window and keep using the keyboard.)

Spent the last day or two doing Michael Hartl’s excellent Ruby on Rails tutorial.

I had a vague idea I wanted to learn Ruby, but once I googled for tutorials it became pretty clear that Rails was the way to go for web-based apps. Michael’s tutorial got lots of recommendations, so I jumped right in.

It is very good. I’m an experienced programmer, so the basics of setting up the environment weren’t much different from Python’s virtualenv and quite straightforward. Michael covers it in enough detail for even the beginning programmer.

The basics of database and HTTP were also covered and Rails makes it very easy, excitingly so as you don’t have to deal with any of the numbing complexity.

I’m about half-way through and enjoying it a lot. Recommended for beginners and pros alike.