Video: Compressor Head

If you are interested in compression algorithms, then the "Compressor Head" short series is a great collection of videos. And, the compression algorithm to beat is the LZ family, which is the backbone of just about all compression that is done. Though, the Markov Chain Compression looks really interesting!

The LZ77 Compression Family
Markov Chain Compression
Burrows-Wheeler Transform

- Danial Goodwin -

Read: Nearly All Binary Searches and Mergesorts are Broken

A great reminder that even the simplest code can have bugs that aren't found for year or even decades in this case!

Remember the integer overflow.

Source: Google Research Blog - Extra, Extra - Read All About It: Nearly All Binary Searches and Mergesorts are Broken (2006-06)

- Danial Goodwin -

Video: A Whole New World

This great talk by Gary Bernhardt will make you think about the legacy systems that you are using everyday and why can't they be better. Hint: They can.

https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/a-whole-new-world

- Danial Goodwin -

Video: The Unpuzzling Kotlin: Bringing Clarity to Your Code

An okay-ish video. I would only recommend it if you would like to learn a little bit about an alternative Java language, Kotlin (by JetBrains). Basically, it fixes many of Java's un-intuitive "features". And, it's usuable for Android.

After the first 10-15 minutes about Kotlin features, there are Java puzzlers for the rest of the video. Code puzzlers are great ways to learn about the edge cases of a language and help you understand better why some easy code isn't working.

Video: The Unpuzzling Kotlin: Bringing Clarity to Your Code

- Danial Goodwin -

Video: Java 8 Language Capabilities - What's in it for you?

After watching this video, I really want to go out of my way to find a Java 8 project to work on. My main Java platform, Android, is still mainly Java 7. Though, I did just find a workaround to get lambdas in using gradle-retrolambda.

The entire video is great, and mainly about lambdas in Java 8. A long time ago I thought lambdas were a complicated topic, but this presentation explains them easily, and with many examples. I really like the examples for the comparisons between Java 8 code and pre-8 code. For example:




Video: Java 8 Language Capabilities - What's in it for you?


- Danial Goodwin -

Long Read: A Conversation with Effective Java Author, Josh Bloch

First of all, I highly recommend the book Effective Java by Joshua Bloch. It is an intermediate level book and I've learned quite a bit in reading it. It boost my learning by getting me into the mind of an expert Java developer.

Today, I've read an interview between Josh Bloch and Bill Venners. It has further helped me understand why certain things in Java were done that way, and how to think about my future program and API designs. Here's two of the best parts of the long read:
- Copy Constructor versus Cloning
- Factory Method versus Constructor

What I really like about Josh Bloch's style is that he explains all the pros and cons between the different ideas.

 - Danial Goodwin -

Video: Objects and Functions, Conflict Without a Cause?

Good dev video about Objects, Object-Oriented Programming (OOP), Functional Programming (FP), and how Scala compares to Java and Haskell. I liked the entire 36 minute video, but if you want to get the most information in the littlest amount of time, then I suggest watching for about 3 minutes starting from about the 20 minute mark. There you will learn a great reason to use Scala over Java.. source code shown!

Then, you can watch the first two minutes to see the speaker's experience to tell if you want to watch anymore or not.

https://parleys.com/play/51704efce4b095cc56d8d4b5/chapter0/about

By the way, if you don't already have a free account with Parleys, then I suggest a painless registering with the site to add to your collection of places to find great videos with slides.

 - Danial Goodwin -