It’s summer in the Northern Hemisphere, and at Mobile Monday Tampere tonight we are launching our Summer Specials 2012 offer for developers: Free one-hour visit to your application project Free half-day introduction to internationalization Get either one or both! See our Summer Specials 2012 page for terms and conditions. For more information, to schedule a time and to secure your seat, contact us. The theme of tonight’s Mobile Monday Tampere is multi-platform development, which is exactly what we do: if your project is based on iOS, Android or Windows Phone, we can advise you on how to make it world-ready.

BusMonTRE on pysäkkiavustinohjelma älypuhelimille. Se on tehty tarjoamaan helppo tapa selvittää milloin kulkee bussi käyttäjää lähellä olevalta pysäkiltä Tampereen joukkoliikenteen toiminta-alueella (johon kuuluu Tampereen lisäksi useita ympäristökuntia). Tähän tarkoitukseen se käyttää Tampereen kaupungin tarjoamaa avointa dataa sekä Tampereen joukkoliikenteen ylläpitämää sinistä virtuaalimonitoria. BusMonTRE on tällä hetkellä saatavana iOS-, Android- ja Windows Phone -älypuhelimille. Tässä kirjoituksessa kerron hieman ohjelman taustoista sekä tulevaisuuden kehitysnäkymistä.

Virtuaalimonitori omaan tarpeeseen

Nettisivupalveluna toimiva sininen virtuaalimonitori on ollut käytössä Tampereella jo pitkään. Tavaratalot ja pienemmät liikkeet ovat käyttäneet sitä tiloissaan esimerkiksi näyttämällä isolla televisioruudulla asiakkailleen lähimmältä pysäkiltä kulkevien bussien tietoja. Kaikiilla Tampereen joukkoliikenteen pysäkeillä on sekä nimi että numerokoodi, ja virtuaalimonitorin saa helposti näyttämään yhtä tai useampaa haluttua pysäkkiä tämän numerokoodin avulla.

Sain ajatuksen BusMonTRE:sta jo vuonna 2011, mutta silloin en vielä ryhtynyt suunnittelemaan sovellusta, vaan käytin omissa laitteissani muutamaa valmiiksi leivottua nettiosoitetta, joilla sain kätevästi haluamani monitorinäytön nettiselaimeen. Osallistuin vuosina 2012-2013 useaan avoimen datan tapahtumaan Tampereella, ollessani muutenkin aktiivisesti mukana Tampereen startup-yhteisössä. Eräässä näistä tapahtumista Tampereen joukkoliikenteen edustaja antoi vahvan signaalin siitä, että heidän intresseissään ei ole kehittää sovelluksia itse, mutta he tarjoavat datan ilmaiseksi sovelluskehittäjien käyttöön.

Tampereen seudun joukkoliikenteessä tehdään mittava uudistus 30.6.2014. Liikennealue jaetaan maksuvyöhykkeisiin, ja linjasto sekä sen numerointi muuttuvat. Tarkempia tietoja uudistuksesta voit lukea joukkoliikennealueella talouksiin jaetusta Sinisten bussien matkassa -lehdestä, uudesta vuoden 2014 kesäaikataulukirjasta sekä Tampereen joukkoliikenteen nettisivuilta. Uudistus vaikuttaa myös BusMonTRE-pysäkkiavustinohjelmaan, joka on saatavana iPhone-, Android- ja Windows Phone -puhelimille. Viimeisimmässä 0.3-versiossa lisättiin tiedot siitä, mitkä linjat kulkevat minkäkin pysäkin kautta. Kuten kaikki BusMonTRE:n käyttämä aineisto, tämäkin tieto perustuu Tampereen joukkoliikenteen avoimena datana julkaisemiin tiedostoihin ja rajapintoihin.

BusMonTRE on helppokäyttöinen pysäkkiavustin Tampereen joukkoliikenteen käyttäjille. Se näyttää sinulle juuri sen tiedon, jonka useimmiten tarvitset kun olet lähdössä jonnekin päin Tamperetta bussilla. BusMonTRE ei ole reittiopas, eikä se näytä liikkuvia palloja kartalla (muun muassa siksi, että bussit eivät ole pallonmuotoisia). Kokeile sitä, ja huomaat, että se on helpompi, fiksumpi ja nopeampi kuin monet bussien liikkumista seurailevat ohjelmat. Ohjelman tehtävä on vastata kysymykseen: “milloin menee seuraava bussi tästä läheltä?” Sen selvittämiseksi BusMonTRE vertaa sijaintiasi Tampereen joukkoliikenteen pysäkkien sijainteihin, ja näyttää sinulle listan sinua lähimpänä olevista pysäkeistä.

Mesdames et messieurs, nous vous présentons: ‎HipStyles en français ! Rechercher vos photos ‎Hipstamatic dans votre téléphone par l’équipement et les partager à ‎Instagram, ‎Twitter ou ‎Facebook. Téléchargez la nouvelle version 1.0.6 maintenant sur l’‎AppStore ! HipStyles 1.0.6 is now available on the App Store. As you may gather from the above, it was localized into French. We also updated the Japanese localization, and made a number of performance enhancements to the matching engine.

HipStyles, the iPhone to app that finds your HipstaPrints photos with ease, has been updated to version 1.0.3, and is available on the App Store. We’ve added the ability to like photos on Instagram straight from inside the app. Just double-tap the photo in the detail screen, or tap once on the cute little heart icon on the right side of the photo (below the tiny Instagram camera logo). Double-tap an Instagram photo to “like” it.

Les Nombres, the little app that wants to teach you elementary French numbers, has been updated to version 1.5, and is now available on the App Store. The update is free to existing customers. You are presented with a randomly chosen French number from zero to 100, in writing, and given three alternatives to choose from. You can listen to the number by tapping the Listen button. To get another number, tap Another.

Dear vintage digital photography enthusiasts, Hipstamatic photographers, Instagram users, we have great news for you. HipStyles for iPhone is available on the App Store! HipStyles is the ultimate companion for any Hipstamatic user. It lets you freely select combinations of Hipstamatic lenses, films and flashes, and search for matching photos on Instagram or inside your own HipstaPrints album in your phone. HipStyles taps into the endless stream of fresh images posted on Instagram by the ever-increasing community of Hipstagraphers.

The little app for learning French numbers, Les Nombres for iPhone, has been updated to version 1.4! This version brings you a revamped user interface, scoring and the possibility to tweet your high score. It looks like this: It still speaks French to you and it still works hard to get those numbers into your head, but in a new, easier to use package. For all the juicy details, head for the Les Nombres for iPhone home page, or go straight to the App Store to get it!

We are happy to announce that Les Nombres for iPhone is again available in the App Store! Version 1.3 of the application now costs US $0.99 (EUR 0.79 or equivalent), but it works the same as the previous version. So, if you already have version 1.2, there is no need to buy this version now. However, if you do buy it now, you will get a free update to the next major release of the application.

On August 15, 2014, HipStyles will be retired from the App Store.

I have decided to end the development of HipStyles, for good. In practice it was on hold for a long time due to other commitments, but after long last, version 2.0 was released in April 2014. Now it’s time to finally close the curtain on this act.

Since November 2012, HipStyles has tracked the new gear in Hipstamatic, and provided an easy way to find shots, or HipstaPrints, taken with a specific combination of lens, film, and flash. Some iPhoneographers have found it useful, since it provides a function Hipstamatic itself doesn’t.

Here’s a summary why I think HipStyles failed to make a dent in the universe:

• Lack of initial validation of the product idea
• Premium pricing probably alienated many potential customers
• The execution failed by some accounts: too many or wrong features, with bugs

Tampereen seudun joukkoliikenteessä tehdään mittava uudistus 30.6.2014. Liikennealue jaetaan maksuvyöhykkeisiin, ja linjasto sekä sen numerointi muuttuvat. Tarkempia tietoja uudistuksesta voit lukea joukkoliikennealueella talouksiin jaetusta Sinisten bussien matkassa -lehdestä, uudesta vuoden 2014 kesäaikataulukirjasta sekä Tampereen joukkoliikenteen nettisivuilta. Uudistus vaikuttaa myös BusMonTRE-pysäkkiavustinohjelmaan, joka on saatavana iPhone-, Android- ja Windows Phone -puhelimille. Viimeisimmässä 0.3-versiossa lisättiin tiedot siitä, mitkä linjat kulkevat minkäkin pysäkin kautta. Kuten kaikki BusMonTRE:n käyttämä aineisto, tämäkin tieto perustuu Tampereen joukkoliikenteen avoimena datana julkaisemiin tiedostoihin ja rajapintoihin.

The little app for learning French numbers, Les Nombres for iPhone, has been updated to version 1.4! This version brings you a revamped user interface, scoring and the possibility to tweet your high score. It looks like this: It still speaks French to you and it still works hard to get those numbers into your head, but in a new, easier to use package. For all the juicy details, head for the Les Nombres for iPhone home page, or go straight to the App Store to get it!

HipStyles was removed from the App Store over a year ago, but from time to time I still think it could be resurrected. However, after taking a long hard look at Apple’s new Photos framework in iOS 9, I think it is just not feasible anymore. HipStyles and the Assets Library Framework HipStyles was a photo finder for Hipstamatic and Oggl photos, looking for snaps taken with some Hipstamatic lens, film or flash of your choosing.

Meeting people is easy, but saving their contact information is hard. Do you want to tap and stare at your phone, entering names, numbers and e-mails, or do you want to keep chatting with someone interesting you just met? Meet a lot of business people? Get a lot of business cards? Like most, you’ll probably put them in a drawer and forget about them. Wouldn’t it be great if you could just grab the information straight into your phone’s address book?

Drones, or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), be they quadcopters or other type of flyer, will become more “intelligent” as themselves or by forming swarms, as this TED Talk by Vijay Kumar at the University of Pennsylvania shows: [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ge3–1hOm1s] My interest in drones lies not in flying them myself live, because I’m a lousy pilot and don’t play games much anyway, but in making them follow a predetermined route and return back to the starting point – for example, surveying an object or estate, or even carrying cargo between waypoints.

HipStyles was removed from the App Store over a year ago, but from time to time I still think it could be resurrected. However, after taking a long hard look at Apple’s new Photos framework in iOS 9, I think it is just not feasible anymore. HipStyles and the Assets Library Framework HipStyles was a photo finder for Hipstamatic and Oggl photos, looking for snaps taken with some Hipstamatic lens, film or flash of your choosing.

Picture this: a friend of yours has bought a nice vintage synth with great sounds, and wouldn’t you like to use those sounds in your own music-making? If only you could sample those sounds, but it seems like too much trouble… You would need to persuade your friend to let you borrow the synth, or you would need to visit them with your music-making setup, which nowadays is basically an iPad and an iOS-compatible audio interface.

Time signals have been broadcast by various radio stations for almost 100 years, usually “every hour, on the hour”, or every 60 minutes. The tradition was started by the BBC, but has been adopted by many national broadcasting companies and other broadcasters as a way of informing their listeners about the passing of time. The history of the Greenwich time signal, or “the BBC pips” is detailed in Mike Todd’s article.

It’s summer in the Northern Hemisphere, and at Mobile Monday Tampere tonight we are launching our Summer Specials 2012 offer for developers: Free one-hour visit to your application project Free half-day introduction to internationalization Get either one or both! See our Summer Specials 2012 page for terms and conditions. For more information, to schedule a time and to secure your seat, contact us. The theme of tonight’s Mobile Monday Tampere is multi-platform development, which is exactly what we do: if your project is based on iOS, Android or Windows Phone, we can advise you on how to make it world-ready.

Drones, or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), be they quadcopters or other type of flyer, will become more “intelligent” as themselves or by forming swarms, as this TED Talk by Vijay Kumar at the University of Pennsylvania shows: [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ge3–1hOm1s] My interest in drones lies not in flying them myself live, because I’m a lousy pilot and don’t play games much anyway, but in making them follow a predetermined route and return back to the starting point – for example, surveying an object or estate, or even carrying cargo between waypoints.

Back in 1998 or so, I wrote a CD player application for Microsoft Windows in Borland Delphi. It was for a magazine tutorial article, and I wanted a cool LCD-like display to show track elapsed and remaining time. There was a good one available for Delphi, called LCDLabel, written by Peter Czidlina (if you’re reading this, thanks once more for your cooperation). I’ve been thinking about doing a modern version of the LCD display component for several times over the years, and I even got pretty far with one for OS X in 2010, but then abandoned it because of other projects.

If you are programming, and you are still not using any form of version control, you really have no excuse. There are many benefits to being able to keep track of your code and try out various branches, even if you are the only programmer in the project. If you are collaborating with someone, it soon becomes nearly impossible (or at least very time-consuming) to deal with various versions and changes.

Of all the version control systems I’ve tried over the years (CVS, Subversion, a little bit of Mercurial, and Git) it seems that Git has “won” in a sense. There is a sizable open-source community born around GitHub (and Bitbucket) for which Git works very well indeed. Also many programming tools have built-in or plug-in support for Git, so you don’t even have to use command-line tools for managing your source code repositories if you don’t want to.

For open-source development, GitHub is the obvious choice. If you’re doing closed source, or you think your code isn’t ready for public scrutiny, Bitbucket gives you unlimited private repositories. I’m currently using GitHub to collaborate on some private repositories, which you can get with a paid plan, and Bitbucket for my closed-source app projects.

In a spirited attempt to really learn to use the tools of my trade, I wanted to take some time to better learn Git for version control (and also dive deeper into Xcode, but that is another story).

Earlier I’ve occasionally been using the fine tome Version Control with Git, 2nd Edition* by Jon Loeliger and Matthew McCullough to learn the basics, but I wanted to really dive in. I’ve already mastered the very basics, and have also used remote repositories with both GitHub and BitBucket, but there is a lot more to learn to be able to really take advantage of Git.

* Disclaimer: I’m an O’Reilly affiliate, and the links above take you to the O’Reilly online bookstore, in the hope that you purchase something, so that I will get a small commission.

Konesoitto on digitaalisen musiikkiteknologian opas netissä, selvällä suomen kielellä. Jos teet musiikkia digitaalisilla välineillä – tietokoneohjelmilla, mobiililaitteilla, syntesoijilla, rumpukoneilla, grooveboxeilla – ja tarvitset johdatusta ykkösten ja nollien muuttamisessa musiikiksi, ‎Konesoitto on sinulle. Löydät Konesoiton nettiosoitteesta http://konesoitto.com, ja Twitteristä nimellä @konesoitto. Siellä sekä Konesoiton Facebook-sivulla voit ehdottaa juttuaiheita ja kertoa mielipiteesi. Konesoiton tuottaa Conifer Productions Oy, ja sen vastaava toimittaja on Jere Käpyaho. Sivusto on Musikhaus Thomannin linkkipartneri.

Konesoitto on digitaalisen musiikkiteknologian opas netissä, selvällä suomen kielellä. Jos teet musiikkia digitaalisilla välineillä – tietokoneohjelmilla, mobiililaitteilla, syntesoijilla, rumpukoneilla, grooveboxeilla – ja tarvitset johdatusta ykkösten ja nollien muuttamisessa musiikiksi, ‎Konesoitto on sinulle. Löydät Konesoiton nettiosoitteesta http://konesoitto.com, ja Twitteristä nimellä @konesoitto. Siellä sekä Konesoiton Facebook-sivulla voit ehdottaa juttuaiheita ja kertoa mielipiteesi. Konesoiton tuottaa Conifer Productions Oy, ja sen vastaava toimittaja on Jere Käpyaho. Sivusto on Musikhaus Thomannin linkkipartneri.

Python is one of the friendliest general-purpose programming languages out there. It is free to use, well supported and used by many big companies. Since its introduction in 1991, it may not have taken the world by storm, but has gained a huge share of programmers’ interest. As of this writing (November 2014), Python is number 8 on the TIOBE Index. Recently I have been studying bioinformatics, and in the course of my studies I have met many people who are learning to program for the first time, and doing it with Python.

If you are programming, and you are still not using any form of version control, you really have no excuse. There are many benefits to being able to keep track of your code and try out various branches, even if you are the only programmer in the project. If you are collaborating with someone, it soon becomes nearly impossible (or at least very time-consuming) to deal with various versions and changes.

Of all the version control systems I’ve tried over the years (CVS, Subversion, a little bit of Mercurial, and Git) it seems that Git has “won” in a sense. There is a sizable open-source community born around GitHub (and Bitbucket) for which Git works very well indeed. Also many programming tools have built-in or plug-in support for Git, so you don’t even have to use command-line tools for managing your source code repositories if you don’t want to.

For open-source development, GitHub is the obvious choice. If you’re doing closed source, or you think your code isn’t ready for public scrutiny, Bitbucket gives you unlimited private repositories. I’m currently using GitHub to collaborate on some private repositories, which you can get with a paid plan, and Bitbucket for my closed-source app projects.

In a spirited attempt to really learn to use the tools of my trade, I wanted to take some time to better learn Git for version control (and also dive deeper into Xcode, but that is another story).

Earlier I’ve occasionally been using the fine tome Version Control with Git, 2nd Edition* by Jon Loeliger and Matthew McCullough to learn the basics, but I wanted to really dive in. I’ve already mastered the very basics, and have also used remote repositories with both GitHub and BitBucket, but there is a lot more to learn to be able to really take advantage of Git.

* Disclaimer: I’m an O’Reilly affiliate, and the links above take you to the O’Reilly online bookstore, in the hope that you purchase something, so that I will get a small commission.

BusMonTRE on pysäkkiavustinohjelma älypuhelimille. Se on tehty tarjoamaan helppo tapa selvittää milloin kulkee bussi käyttäjää lähellä olevalta pysäkiltä Tampereen joukkoliikenteen toiminta-alueella (johon kuuluu Tampereen lisäksi useita ympäristökuntia). Tähän tarkoitukseen se käyttää Tampereen kaupungin tarjoamaa avointa dataa sekä Tampereen joukkoliikenteen ylläpitämää sinistä virtuaalimonitoria. BusMonTRE on tällä hetkellä saatavana iOS-, Android- ja Windows Phone -älypuhelimille. Tässä kirjoituksessa kerron hieman ohjelman taustoista sekä tulevaisuuden kehitysnäkymistä.

Virtuaalimonitori omaan tarpeeseen

Nettisivupalveluna toimiva sininen virtuaalimonitori on ollut käytössä Tampereella jo pitkään. Tavaratalot ja pienemmät liikkeet ovat käyttäneet sitä tiloissaan esimerkiksi näyttämällä isolla televisioruudulla asiakkailleen lähimmältä pysäkiltä kulkevien bussien tietoja. Kaikiilla Tampereen joukkoliikenteen pysäkeillä on sekä nimi että numerokoodi, ja virtuaalimonitorin saa helposti näyttämään yhtä tai useampaa haluttua pysäkkiä tämän numerokoodin avulla.

Sain ajatuksen BusMonTRE:sta jo vuonna 2011, mutta silloin en vielä ryhtynyt suunnittelemaan sovellusta, vaan käytin omissa laitteissani muutamaa valmiiksi leivottua nettiosoitetta, joilla sain kätevästi haluamani monitorinäytön nettiselaimeen. Osallistuin vuosina 2012-2013 useaan avoimen datan tapahtumaan Tampereella, ollessani muutenkin aktiivisesti mukana Tampereen startup-yhteisössä. Eräässä näistä tapahtumista Tampereen joukkoliikenteen edustaja antoi vahvan signaalin siitä, että heidän intresseissään ei ole kehittää sovelluksia itse, mutta he tarjoavat datan ilmaiseksi sovelluskehittäjien käyttöön.

Tampereen seudun joukkoliikenteessä tehdään mittava uudistus 30.6.2014. Liikennealue jaetaan maksuvyöhykkeisiin, ja linjasto sekä sen numerointi muuttuvat. Tarkempia tietoja uudistuksesta voit lukea joukkoliikennealueella talouksiin jaetusta Sinisten bussien matkassa -lehdestä, uudesta vuoden 2014 kesäaikataulukirjasta sekä Tampereen joukkoliikenteen nettisivuilta. Uudistus vaikuttaa myös BusMonTRE-pysäkkiavustinohjelmaan, joka on saatavana iPhone-, Android- ja Windows Phone -puhelimille. Viimeisimmässä 0.3-versiossa lisättiin tiedot siitä, mitkä linjat kulkevat minkäkin pysäkin kautta. Kuten kaikki BusMonTRE:n käyttämä aineisto, tämäkin tieto perustuu Tampereen joukkoliikenteen avoimena datana julkaisemiin tiedostoihin ja rajapintoihin.

BusMonTRE on helppokäyttöinen pysäkkiavustin Tampereen joukkoliikenteen käyttäjille. Se näyttää sinulle juuri sen tiedon, jonka useimmiten tarvitset kun olet lähdössä jonnekin päin Tamperetta bussilla. BusMonTRE ei ole reittiopas, eikä se näytä liikkuvia palloja kartalla (muun muassa siksi, että bussit eivät ole pallonmuotoisia). Kokeile sitä, ja huomaat, että se on helpompi, fiksumpi ja nopeampi kuin monet bussien liikkumista seurailevat ohjelmat. Ohjelman tehtävä on vastata kysymykseen: “milloin menee seuraava bussi tästä läheltä?” Sen selvittämiseksi BusMonTRE vertaa sijaintiasi Tampereen joukkoliikenteen pysäkkien sijainteihin, ja näyttää sinulle listan sinua lähimpänä olevista pysäkeistä.

BusMonTRE on helppokäyttöinen pysäkkiavustin Tampereen joukkoliikenteen käyttäjille. Se näyttää sinulle juuri sen tiedon, jonka useimmiten tarvitset kun olet lähdössä jonnekin päin Tamperetta bussilla. BusMonTRE ei ole reittiopas, eikä se näytä liikkuvia palloja kartalla (muun muassa siksi, että bussit eivät ole pallonmuotoisia). Kokeile sitä, ja huomaat, että se on helpompi, fiksumpi ja nopeampi kuin monet bussien liikkumista seurailevat ohjelmat. Ohjelman tehtävä on vastata kysymykseen: “milloin menee seuraava bussi tästä läheltä?” Sen selvittämiseksi BusMonTRE vertaa sijaintiasi Tampereen joukkoliikenteen pysäkkien sijainteihin, ja näyttää sinulle listan sinua lähimpänä olevista pysäkeistä.

Mono is the open source .NET runtime for Windows, Linux, and OS X. It consists of the Mono runtime environment, libraries, and C# and F# compilers. Recently Mono has gained extra popularity due to Microsoft’s purchase of Xamarin, the makers of a cross-platform toolkit of the same name. If you just want to create command-line .NET applications on the Mac, and don’t need Xamarin.Forms or the mobile tools, you can just install Mono and start hacking away.

Drones, or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), be they quadcopters or other type of flyer, will become more “intelligent” as themselves or by forming swarms, as this TED Talk by Vijay Kumar at the University of Pennsylvania shows: [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ge3–1hOm1s] My interest in drones lies not in flying them myself live, because I’m a lousy pilot and don’t play games much anyway, but in making them follow a predetermined route and return back to the starting point – for example, surveying an object or estate, or even carrying cargo between waypoints.

Meeting people is easy, but saving their contact information is hard. Do you want to tap and stare at your phone, entering names, numbers and e-mails, or do you want to keep chatting with someone interesting you just met? Meet a lot of business people? Get a lot of business cards? Like most, you’ll probably put them in a drawer and forget about them. Wouldn’t it be great if you could just grab the information straight into your phone’s address book?

Sometimes you just need to see what characters are lurking inside a Unicode encoded text file. Your garden variety dump utility (like the venerable od in UNIX systems and the Windows standard hex dump (though I don’t think there is one) only shows you the plain bytes, so you have to head over to unicode.org to find out what they mean. But first you need to decode UTF-8 to get the actual code points, or grok UTF-16 LE or BE, and so on. It’s fun, but it’s not for everyone.

The udump utility shows you a nice list of character names, together with their offsets in the file. Currently it only handles UTF-8, so the offset is calculated based on the UTF-8 length of the character.

About one year ago I wrote a multi-part tutorial on Clojure programming, describing how I wrote a small utility called ucdump (available on GitHub). Here are links to all the parts: Part 1: The Clojure REPL Part 2: Definitions Part 3: Higher-order functions Part 4: Logic Part 5: Project However, Carin Meier’s Living Clojure is excellent in many ways. Get it from O’Reilly (we’re an affiliate): My little tutorial started with part zero, in which I lamented how functional programming is made to appear unlearnable by mere mortals, and it kind of snowballed from there.

In the previous parts of “Functional programming without feeling stupid” we have slowly been building ucdump, a utility program for listing the Unicode codepoints and character names of characters in a string. In actual use, the string will be read from a UTF-8 encoded text file.

We don’t know yet how to read a text file in Clojure (well, you may know, but I only have a foggy idea), so we have been working with a single string. This is what we have so far:

(def test-str 
  "Na\u00EFve r\u00E9sum\u00E9s... for 0 \u20AC? Not bad!")
(def test-ch { :offset 0 :character \u20ac })
(def short-test-str "Na\u00EFve")

(defn character-name [x]
  (java.lang.Character/getName (int x)))

(defn character-line [pair]
  (let [ch (:character pair)]
    (format "%08d: U+%06X %s"
      (:offset pair) (int ch)
      (character-name ch))))
    
(defn character-lines [s]
  (let [offsets (repeat (count s) 0)
        pairs (map #(into {} {:offset %1 :character %2}) 
          offsets s)]
    (map character-line pairs)))

I’ve reformatted the code a bit to keep the lines short. You can copy and paste all of that in the Clojure REPL, and start looking at some strings in a new way:

user=> (character-lines "résumé")
("00000000: U+000072 LATIN SMALL LETTER R" 
"00000000: U+0000E9 LATIN SMALL LETTER E WITH ACUTE" 
"00000000: U+000073 LATIN SMALL LETTER S" 
"00000000: U+000075 LATIN SMALL LETTER U" 
"00000000: U+00006D LATIN SMALL LETTER M" 
"00000000: U+0000E9 LATIN SMALL LETTER E WITH ACUTE")

But we are still missing the actual offsets. Let’s fix that now.

Welcome to the third installment of “Functional programming without feeling stupid”! I originally started to describe my own learnings about FP in general, and Clojure in particular, and soon found myself writing a kind of Clojure tutorial or introduction. It may not be as comprehensive as others out there, and I still don’t think of it as a tutorial — it’s more like a description of a process, and the documented evolution of a tool.

I wanted to use Clojure “in anger”, and found out that I was learning new and interesting stuff quickly. I wanted to share what I’ve learned in the hope that others may find it useful.

Some of the stuff I have done and described here might not be the most optimal, but I see nothing obviously wrong with my approach. Maybe you do; if that is the case, tell me about it in the comments, or contact me otherwise. But please be nice and constructive, because…

…in Part 0 I wrote about how some people may feel put off by the air of “smarter than thou” that sometimes floats around functional programming. I’m hoping to present the subject in a friendly way, because much of the techniques are not obvious to someone (like me) conditioned with a couple of decades of imperative, object-oriented programming. Not nearly as funny as Learn You a Haskell For Great Good, and not as zany as Clojure for the Brave and True — just friendly, and hopefully lucid.

xkcd 1270: Functional. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial License. This is a company blog, so it is kind of commercial by definition. Is that a problem?

In Part 1 we played around with the Clojure REPL, and in Part 2 we started making definitions and actually got some useful results. In this third part we’re going to take a look at Clojure functions and how to use them, and create our own — because that’s what functional programming is all about.

In this installment of “Functional programming without feeling stupid” I would like to show you how to define things in Clojure. Values and function applications are all well and good, but if we can’t give them symbolic names, we need to keep repeating them over and over.

Before we start naming things, let’s have a look at how Clojure integrates with Java. I’m assuming you are still in the REPL, or have started it again with lein repl.

Track 1: “If anyone should ask / We are mated”

As it happens, Clojure’s core library is lean and focused on manipulating the data structures of the language, so many things are deferred to the underlying Java machinery as a rule. For example, mathematical computation is typically done using the static methods in the java.lang.Math class:

user=> (java.lang.Math/sqrt 5.0)
2.23606797749979

As you can see, this is a function application like we have already seen in Part 1, but this time the function we are using is the sqrt static method in the java.lang.Math class.

Java 7 acquired Unicode character names, and they are accessed through

the getName method in the java.lang.Character class. This is no mean feat, since there are over 110,000 characters in the Unicode standard, and each of them has a name (although some of them are algorithmically generated). To find out the canonical character name of a Unicode character, such as the euro currency symbol, you would use the getName static method:

user=> (java.lang.Character/getName \u20ac)
ClassCastException java.lang.Character cannot be cast to java.lang.Number user/eval703 (NO_SOURCE_FILE:1)

Hey, what’s wrong? Well, if you look up the documentation of java.lang.Character.getName, you will find out that it takes an int value as an argument, not a character. You can actually do this check from inside the REPL:

user=> (javadoc java.lang.Character)
true

The REPL doesn’t seem to do much, but you should now have a new web browser window or tab open, with the JavaDoc of the java.lang.Character class loaded up. That’s what the REPL meant when it said

Javadoc: (javadoc java-object-or-class-here)

when it started up. The getName method does need an int value, so let’s try something else:

user=> (java.lang.Character/getName (int \u20ac))
"EURO SIGN"

All right! How about another one:

user=> (java.lang.Character/getName 67)
"LATIN CAPITAL LETTER C"

Well, some say that Clojure is the new C.

In my recent post Functional Programming Without Feeling Stupid I took a quick look at how functional programming can be a little off-putting for the non-initiated. I promised to provide some examples of my own first steps with FP, and now I would like to present some to you.

Advocates of functional programming often refer to increased programmer productivity. At least some of that can be attributed to the REPL, or the Read-Evaluate-Print Loop. We are basically talking about an environment which accepts and parses any code you type in, and gives you a place to experiment and see results quickly. Before interpreted or semi-interpreted languages like Python, Java and JavaScript became mainstream, the typical repeating cycle in software development was Compile-Link-Execute, and debugging meant observing special output on the console. In the 1990s integrated debuggers with watches and breakpoints became the norm, but long before that Lisp-like languages already had a REPL, and Python also acquired one.

If you are thinking about getting intimate with Clojure, you will need to get to know the REPL. It is your playground, and will always be, even if you later start packaging and organizing your code.

Clojure depends on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and is actually distributed as a normal JAR file (Java ARchive), like most Java libraries are. You can start Clojure from the JAR, but you will save yourself some trouble and prepare for the future if you install Leiningen, the dependency management tool for Clojure. It is simple to install and run, and I will assume that you will follow the instructions on the Leiningen web site sooner or later. Now would be a good time.

When you’re done with the installation, you only need to say

lein repl

to start a Clojure REPL. I’m using OS X, so what I describe here was done from Terminal. You don’t need to create a project with Leiningen if you just want to play around in the REPL.

Of course, if you don’t have Java installed, you need to get it first. Refer to the Java web site of Oracle for details as necessary. Furthermore, some of the things I will describe require Java version 7 or later.

If you follow software design trends (yes, they exist), you may have noticed an increasing amount of buzz about functional programming, and particularly the Clojure language. While functional programming is hard to define, almost everyone mentions pure functions, the lack of side effects and state, and easy parallelisation. As for Clojure, it is all about (a kind of) Lisp running on the Java Virtual Machine (and .NET, and transformed to JavaScript).

I’m somewhat convinced that functional programming is at least worth knowing about and trying out, even if you don’t expect to fully convert. It has been said that learning about the functional paradigm makes you a better programmer in your current imperative language. Functional languages reduce accidental complexity, and that helps you focus.

“Whoop de doo, what does it all mean, Basil?”

If you have a background in imperative languages, you will have an interesting time if and when you start digging into functional programming, because whatever else it is, it’s different. And I’m not talking about syntax only, but most of what you do. If you need to add an item to a list, you construct a new list with the new item appended to the previous list (no, it is not as inefficient as it sounds, because there is great stuff under the hood to handle that). This is because immutability is one of the cornerstones of functional programming. If you can’t change something after it is created, there is no state to mess up. You program with values, not stateful objects.

I see I’m getting myself tricked into presenting a definition of functional programming, when that has been done better elsewhere. For pointers, see Michael Fogus’ 10 Technical Papers Every Programmer Should Read (At Least Twice), including the classic “Why Functional Programming Matters” by John Hughes. But I actually wanted to talk about something else.

In the last four installments of Functional programming without feeling stupid I’ve slowly built up a small utility called ucdump with Clojure. Experimentiing and developing with the Clojure REPL is fun, but now it’s time to give some structure to the utility. I’ll package it up as a Leiningen project and create a standalone JAR for executing with the Java runtime.

Creating a new project with Leiningen

You can use Leiningen to create a skeleton project quickly. In my project’s root directory, I’ll say:

lein new app ucdump

Leiningen will respond with:

Generating a project called ucdump based on the 'app' template.

The result is a directory called ucdump, which contains:

.gitignore   README.md    project.clj  src/
LICENSE      doc/         resources/   test/

For now I’m are most interested in the project file, project.clj, which is actually a Clojure source file, and the src directory, which is intended for the app’s actual source files.

Leiningen creates a directory called src/ucdump and seeds it with a core.clj file, but that’s not what actually what I want, for two reasons:

• I want ucdump to be a good Clojure citizen, so I’m going to put it in a namespace

  called com.coniferproductions.ucdump.

• My Git repository for ucdump also contains the original Python version of the application, which is in <project-root>/python, and I want the Clojure version to live in <<em>project-root</em>>/clojure.

Taittuuko ohjelmointi sinulta mennen tullen, mutta osaaminen ei juuri nyt vastaa tämän päivän tarpeisiin? Ohjelmistoalalla teknologiat tulevat ja menevät, mutta aina pääsee kärryille. Anna Conifer Coaching -palvelun oraakkelin kertoa sinulle mikä on nyt hip ja pop, ja millä saa oikeasti aikaan: Web-palveluja Mobiilisovelluksia Serverisoftaa Data-analyysiä Internet of Thingsiä – eli Mitä Softantekijän Kannattaa Opetella Juuri Nyt, Ja Miten! Ei hypeä, vaan vastaamista todellisiin tarpeisiin. Palkattavuutta CV:si ja kiinnostustesi perusteella.

Often it is quicker to take a look at a source code file in Terminal using the cat or less commands, instead of starting up an editor, especially if you don’t need to make changes. However, like myself, most developers are used to syntax highlighting, or presenting source code in various colours. It makes the different elements in the source code stand out, and helps with comprehension. I find that the older I become, the more I need syntax highlighting, and I think back to a time when it was not so common, amazed that I could make sense of anything.

Time signals have been broadcast by various radio stations for almost 100 years, usually “every hour, on the hour”, or every 60 minutes. The tradition was started by the BBC, but has been adopted by many national broadcasting companies and other broadcasters as a way of informing their listeners about the passing of time. The history of the Greenwich time signal, or “the BBC pips” is detailed in Mike Todd’s article.

No matter how handy graphical user interfaces are, the good old command line remains a useful tool for performing various low-level data manipulation and system administration tasks. It is the fallback when you need to do something that has no way of graphical control. Being much more expressive and open-ended than a predefined set of controls, the command shell is the ultimate control environment for your computer. Data science has become one of the most intensely practised computer applications, so it is no wonder that it also benefits greatly from the hands-on control approach of the command line shell.

No matter how handy graphical user interfaces are, the good old command line remains a useful tool for performing various low-level data manipulation and system administration tasks. It is the fallback when you need to do something that has no way of graphical control. Being much more expressive and open-ended than a predefined set of controls, the command shell is the ultimate control environment for your computer. Data science has become one of the most intensely practised computer applications, so it is no wonder that it also benefits greatly from the hands-on control approach of the command line shell.

Back in 1998 or so, I wrote a CD player application for Microsoft Windows in Borland Delphi. It was for a magazine tutorial article, and I wanted a cool LCD-like display to show track elapsed and remaining time. There was a good one available for Delphi, called LCDLabel, written by Peter Czidlina (if you’re reading this, thanks once more for your cooperation). I’ve been thinking about doing a modern version of the LCD display component for several times over the years, and I even got pretty far with one for OS X in 2010, but then abandoned it because of other projects.

Python is one of the friendliest general-purpose programming languages out there. It is free to use, well supported and used by many big companies. Since its introduction in 1991, it may not have taken the world by storm, but has gained a huge share of programmers’ interest. As of this writing (November 2014), Python is number 8 on the TIOBE Index. Recently I have been studying bioinformatics, and in the course of my studies I have met many people who are learning to program for the first time, and doing it with Python.

The vCard format has served us well for encoding and exchanging contact information, but there is a better alternative – jCard. In this post I’ll describe why I think jCard can be better than vCard, and should be adopted by every software vendor who deals with contacts. Both vCard and jCard are text-based formats, but whereas vCard has a unique legacy grammar, jCard is based on JSON. They both represent essentially the same data model that describes contact information: name, phone number, address, e-mail, and so on.

Meeting people is easy, but saving their contact information is hard. Do you want to tap and stare at your phone, entering names, numbers and e-mails, or do you want to keep chatting with someone interesting you just met? Meet a lot of business people? Get a lot of business cards? Like most, you’ll probably put them in a drawer and forget about them. Wouldn’t it be great if you could just grab the information straight into your phone’s address book?

No matter how handy graphical user interfaces are, the good old command line remains a useful tool for performing various low-level data manipulation and system administration tasks. It is the fallback when you need to do something that has no way of graphical control. Being much more expressive and open-ended than a predefined set of controls, the command shell is the ultimate control environment for your computer. Data science has become one of the most intensely practised computer applications, so it is no wonder that it also benefits greatly from the hands-on control approach of the command line shell.

No matter how handy graphical user interfaces are, the good old command line remains a useful tool for performing various low-level data manipulation and system administration tasks. It is the fallback when you need to do something that has no way of graphical control. Being much more expressive and open-ended than a predefined set of controls, the command shell is the ultimate control environment for your computer. Data science has become one of the most intensely practised computer applications, so it is no wonder that it also benefits greatly from the hands-on control approach of the command line shell.

No matter how handy graphical user interfaces are, the good old command line remains a useful tool for performing various low-level data manipulation and system administration tasks. It is the fallback when you need to do something that has no way of graphical control. Being much more expressive and open-ended than a predefined set of controls, the command shell is the ultimate control environment for your computer. Data science has become one of the most intensely practised computer applications, so it is no wonder that it also benefits greatly from the hands-on control approach of the command line shell.

For many of us, dates and times are absolutely essential in our daily lives. We make appointments, set deadlines, celebrate birthdays and anniversaries, and generally mark time using clocks and calendars.

What makes dates and times interesting from a programmer’s perspective is that while there is a standard time (the Coordinated Universal Time or UTC), there are multiple local time zones in use all over the world. A single instance in UTC has many local equivalents, and offsets between time zones and universal time are wild and wonderful.

Not only are time zones a little tricky, but there are also multiple local representations for an instance in local time. A representation in this context means the way it is printed in a daily newspaper, in the calendar, and indeed, on the screen of a computer or a mobile device. In the realm of internationalization (I18N) they are known as date and time formats.

The conventions for showing local time are well established, and the differences between them are significant enough to cause a lot of confusion if care is not taken. While it would be the most logical thing to do (thank you Mr. Spock), it is hardly practical to expect all the world’s population to adopt a single standard date and time format such as the ISO 8601 international standard notation in their daily lives. The national and linguistic conventions are very well established locally.

Just recently, Nokia launched new Windows Phone devices in their Lumia series. The company wanted to build anticipation before the announcement with short teaser videos which all marked the date of the launch: 05.09.2012. If you saw this date advertised early in the year, you might think it could mean either September 5th or May 9th this year. But which is it? 

Taittuuko ohjelmointi sinulta mennen tullen, mutta osaaminen ei juuri nyt vastaa tämän päivän tarpeisiin? Ohjelmistoalalla teknologiat tulevat ja menevät, mutta aina pääsee kärryille. Anna Conifer Coaching -palvelun oraakkelin kertoa sinulle mikä on nyt hip ja pop, ja millä saa oikeasti aikaan: Web-palveluja Mobiilisovelluksia Serverisoftaa Data-analyysiä Internet of Thingsiä – eli Mitä Softantekijän Kannattaa Opetella Juuri Nyt, Ja Miten! Ei hypeä, vaan vastaamista todellisiin tarpeisiin. Palkattavuutta CV:si ja kiinnostustesi perusteella.

Taittuuko ohjelmointi sinulta mennen tullen, mutta osaaminen ei juuri nyt vastaa tämän päivän tarpeisiin? Ohjelmistoalalla teknologiat tulevat ja menevät, mutta aina pääsee kärryille. Anna Conifer Coaching -palvelun oraakkelin kertoa sinulle mikä on nyt hip ja pop, ja millä saa oikeasti aikaan: Web-palveluja Mobiilisovelluksia Serverisoftaa Data-analyysiä Internet of Thingsiä – eli Mitä Softantekijän Kannattaa Opetella Juuri Nyt, Ja Miten! Ei hypeä, vaan vastaamista todellisiin tarpeisiin. Palkattavuutta CV:si ja kiinnostustesi perusteella.

Konesoitto on digitaalisen musiikkiteknologian opas netissä, selvällä suomen kielellä. Jos teet musiikkia digitaalisilla välineillä – tietokoneohjelmilla, mobiililaitteilla, syntesoijilla, rumpukoneilla, grooveboxeilla – ja tarvitset johdatusta ykkösten ja nollien muuttamisessa musiikiksi, ‎Konesoitto on sinulle. Löydät Konesoiton nettiosoitteesta http://konesoitto.com, ja Twitteristä nimellä @konesoitto. Siellä sekä Konesoiton Facebook-sivulla voit ehdottaa juttuaiheita ja kertoa mielipiteesi. Konesoiton tuottaa Conifer Productions Oy, ja sen vastaava toimittaja on Jere Käpyaho. Sivusto on Musikhaus Thomannin linkkipartneri.

Back in 1998 or so, I wrote a CD player application for Microsoft Windows in Borland Delphi. It was for a magazine tutorial article, and I wanted a cool LCD-like display to show track elapsed and remaining time. There was a good one available for Delphi, called LCDLabel, written by Peter Czidlina (if you’re reading this, thanks once more for your cooperation). I’ve been thinking about doing a modern version of the LCD display component for several times over the years, and I even got pretty far with one for OS X in 2010, but then abandoned it because of other projects.

Drones, or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), be they quadcopters or other type of flyer, will become more “intelligent” as themselves or by forming swarms, as this TED Talk by Vijay Kumar at the University of Pennsylvania shows: [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ge3&#8211;1hOm1s] My interest in drones lies not in flying them myself live, because I’m a lousy pilot and don’t play games much anyway, but in making them follow a predetermined route and return back to the starting point – for example, surveying an object or estate, or even carrying cargo between waypoints.

Sometimes you just need to see what characters are lurking inside a Unicode encoded text file. Your garden variety dump utility (like the venerable od in UNIX systems and the Windows standard hex dump (though I don’t think there is one) only shows you the plain bytes, so you have to head over to unicode.org to find out what they mean. But first you need to decode UTF-8 to get the actual code points, or grok UTF-16 LE or BE, and so on. It’s fun, but it’s not for everyone.

The udump utility shows you a nice list of character names, together with their offsets in the file. Currently it only handles UTF-8, so the offset is calculated based on the UTF-8 length of the character.

Python is one of the friendliest general-purpose programming languages out there. It is free to use, well supported and used by many big companies. Since its introduction in 1991, it may not have taken the world by storm, but has gained a huge share of programmers’ interest. As of this writing (November 2014), Python is number 8 on the TIOBE Index. Recently I have been studying bioinformatics, and in the course of my studies I have met many people who are learning to program for the first time, and doing it with Python.

Meeting people is easy, but saving their contact information is hard. Do you want to tap and stare at your phone, entering names, numbers and e-mails, or do you want to keep chatting with someone interesting you just met? Meet a lot of business people? Get a lot of business cards? Like most, you’ll probably put them in a drawer and forget about them. Wouldn’t it be great if you could just grab the information straight into your phone’s address book?

Mono is the open source .NET runtime for Windows, Linux, and OS X. It consists of the Mono runtime environment, libraries, and C# and F# compilers. Recently Mono has gained extra popularity due to Microsoft’s purchase of Xamarin, the makers of a cross-platform toolkit of the same name. If you just want to create command-line .NET applications on the Mac, and don’t need Xamarin.Forms or the mobile tools, you can just install Mono and start hacking away.

Les Nombres, the little app that wants to teach you elementary French numbers, has been updated to version 1.5, and is now available on the App Store. The update is free to existing customers. You are presented with a randomly chosen French number from zero to 100, in writing, and given three alternatives to choose from. You can listen to the number by tapping the Listen button. To get another number, tap Another.

Ohjelmistoyrittäjä, tiedetäänkö sinun yrityksessäsi miten tehdä sovelluksia, jotka on helppo sovittaa eri kielille ja kulttuureille? Lokalisointi on ohjelman käyttöliittymässä esiintyvien tekstien ja kuvien sovittamista eri kielille. Sen tekevät yleensä käännöstoimistot eri toimeksiannosta kun ohjelma alkaa olla valmis julkaisuun. Pelkkä tekstien käännättäminen ei kuitenkaan riitä, vaan ohjelmisto pitäisi laatia alusta pitäen sellaiseksi, että käännösten hallinnointi on luonteva ja toimiva osa ohjelmistoprosessia. Lisäksi ohjelmiston sovittaminen moniin eri kulttuureihin vaatii muutakin kuin sisällön kääntämistä: esimerkiksi päiväykset ja kellonajat sekä luvut ja rahasummat pitää esittää kohdemaan tavalla.

It’s Valentine’s Day, and HipStyles for iPhone is free for today only! HipStyles Valentine’s Day Special To celebrate and spread the love, we have reduced the price for exactly 100 per cent. This is your chance to save big! It’s available on the App Store, so download it and tell your friends and loved ones what we already know, and you soon will: that HipStyles is the ultimate companion app for Hipstamatic users.

Konesoitto on digitaalisen musiikkiteknologian opas netissä, selvällä suomen kielellä. Jos teet musiikkia digitaalisilla välineillä – tietokoneohjelmilla, mobiililaitteilla, syntesoijilla, rumpukoneilla, grooveboxeilla – ja tarvitset johdatusta ykkösten ja nollien muuttamisessa musiikiksi, ‎Konesoitto on sinulle. Löydät Konesoiton nettiosoitteesta http://konesoitto.com, ja Twitteristä nimellä @konesoitto. Siellä sekä Konesoiton Facebook-sivulla voit ehdottaa juttuaiheita ja kertoa mielipiteesi. Konesoiton tuottaa Conifer Productions Oy, ja sen vastaava toimittaja on Jere Käpyaho. Sivusto on Musikhaus Thomannin linkkipartneri.

Drones, or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), be they quadcopters or other type of flyer, will become more “intelligent” as themselves or by forming swarms, as this TED Talk by Vijay Kumar at the University of Pennsylvania shows: [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ge3&#8211;1hOm1s] My interest in drones lies not in flying them myself live, because I’m a lousy pilot and don’t play games much anyway, but in making them follow a predetermined route and return back to the starting point – for example, surveying an object or estate, or even carrying cargo between waypoints.

Back in 1998 or so, I wrote a CD player application for Microsoft Windows in Borland Delphi. It was for a magazine tutorial article, and I wanted a cool LCD-like display to show track elapsed and remaining time. There was a good one available for Delphi, called LCDLabel, written by Peter Czidlina (if you’re reading this, thanks once more for your cooperation). I’ve been thinking about doing a modern version of the LCD display component for several times over the years, and I even got pretty far with one for OS X in 2010, but then abandoned it because of other projects.

At the time of this writing, the FIFA World Cup is almost at its final stage. Throughout the whole month of the tournament I have been amazed to find out that while UEFA has consistently made an effort to have the players’ names written as authentically as possible, FIFA hasn’t. Information conveyed to viewers in televised matches is transliterated, making many players’ names appear irritatingly different than their national, conventional spellings.

The UEFA EURO 2012, or the European football championship, is close to the end of group stage as I write this. (That would be “soccer” to U.S. readers.) As usual, I have been delighted to notice that UEFA has done a great job in getting the names of the various international players presented as accurately as possible, both on the UEFA.com website and in the mobile apps they’ve published.

UEFA’s good track record with names has been going on for a long time; I first noticed this when I started to follow the UEFA Champions League in 2000, when I was already working with software internationalization, and knew enough to pay attention to these things.

In this post I’ll examine what it takes to pull off a task like this – which you may also need to do.

For many of us, dates and times are absolutely essential in our daily lives. We make appointments, set deadlines, celebrate birthdays and anniversaries, and generally mark time using clocks and calendars.

What makes dates and times interesting from a programmer’s perspective is that while there is a standard time (the Coordinated Universal Time or UTC), there are multiple local time zones in use all over the world. A single instance in UTC has many local equivalents, and offsets between time zones and universal time are wild and wonderful.

Not only are time zones a little tricky, but there are also multiple local representations for an instance in local time. A representation in this context means the way it is printed in a daily newspaper, in the calendar, and indeed, on the screen of a computer or a mobile device. In the realm of internationalization (I18N) they are known as date and time formats.

The conventions for showing local time are well established, and the differences between them are significant enough to cause a lot of confusion if care is not taken. While it would be the most logical thing to do (thank you Mr. Spock), it is hardly practical to expect all the world’s population to adopt a single standard date and time format such as the ISO 8601 international standard notation in their daily lives. The national and linguistic conventions are very well established locally.

Just recently, Nokia launched new Windows Phone devices in their Lumia series. The company wanted to build anticipation before the announcement with short teaser videos which all marked the date of the launch: 05.09.2012. If you saw this date advertised early in the year, you might think it could mean either September 5th or May 9th this year. But which is it? 

About one year ago I wrote a multi-part tutorial on Clojure programming, describing how I wrote a small utility called ucdump (available on GitHub). Here are links to all the parts: Part 1: The Clojure REPL Part 2: Definitions Part 3: Higher-order functions Part 4: Logic Part 5: Project However, Carin Meier’s Living Clojure is excellent in many ways. Get it from O’Reilly (we’re an affiliate): My little tutorial started with part zero, in which I lamented how functional programming is made to appear unlearnable by mere mortals, and it kind of snowballed from there.

In the last four installments of Functional programming without feeling stupid I’ve slowly built up a small utility called ucdump with Clojure. Experimentiing and developing with the Clojure REPL is fun, but now it’s time to give some structure to the utility. I’ll package it up as a Leiningen project and create a standalone JAR for executing with the Java runtime.

Creating a new project with Leiningen

You can use Leiningen to create a skeleton project quickly. In my project’s root directory, I’ll say:

lein new app ucdump

Leiningen will respond with:

Generating a project called ucdump based on the 'app' template.

The result is a directory called ucdump, which contains:

.gitignore   README.md    project.clj  src/
LICENSE      doc/         resources/   test/

For now I’m are most interested in the project file, project.clj, which is actually a Clojure source file, and the src directory, which is intended for the app’s actual source files.

Leiningen creates a directory called src/ucdump and seeds it with a core.clj file, but that’s not what actually what I want, for two reasons:

• I want ucdump to be a good Clojure citizen, so I’m going to put it in a namespace

  called com.coniferproductions.ucdump.

• My Git repository for ucdump also contains the original Python version of the application, which is in <project-root>/python, and I want the Clojure version to live in <<em>project-root</em>>/clojure.

In my recent post Functional Programming Without Feeling Stupid I took a quick look at how functional programming can be a little off-putting for the non-initiated. I promised to provide some examples of my own first steps with FP, and now I would like to present some to you.

Advocates of functional programming often refer to increased programmer productivity. At least some of that can be attributed to the REPL, or the Read-Evaluate-Print Loop. We are basically talking about an environment which accepts and parses any code you type in, and gives you a place to experiment and see results quickly. Before interpreted or semi-interpreted languages like Python, Java and JavaScript became mainstream, the typical repeating cycle in software development was Compile-Link-Execute, and debugging meant observing special output on the console. In the 1990s integrated debuggers with watches and breakpoints became the norm, but long before that Lisp-like languages already had a REPL, and Python also acquired one.

If you are thinking about getting intimate with Clojure, you will need to get to know the REPL. It is your playground, and will always be, even if you later start packaging and organizing your code.

Clojure depends on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and is actually distributed as a normal JAR file (Java ARchive), like most Java libraries are. You can start Clojure from the JAR, but you will save yourself some trouble and prepare for the future if you install Leiningen, the dependency management tool for Clojure. It is simple to install and run, and I will assume that you will follow the instructions on the Leiningen web site sooner or later. Now would be a good time.

When you’re done with the installation, you only need to say

lein repl

to start a Clojure REPL. I’m using OS X, so what I describe here was done from Terminal. You don’t need to create a project with Leiningen if you just want to play around in the REPL.

Of course, if you don’t have Java installed, you need to get it first. Refer to the Java web site of Oracle for details as necessary. Furthermore, some of the things I will describe require Java version 7 or later.

If you follow software design trends (yes, they exist), you may have noticed an increasing amount of buzz about functional programming, and particularly the Clojure language. While functional programming is hard to define, almost everyone mentions pure functions, the lack of side effects and state, and easy parallelisation. As for Clojure, it is all about (a kind of) Lisp running on the Java Virtual Machine (and .NET, and transformed to JavaScript).

I’m somewhat convinced that functional programming is at least worth knowing about and trying out, even if you don’t expect to fully convert. It has been said that learning about the functional paradigm makes you a better programmer in your current imperative language. Functional languages reduce accidental complexity, and that helps you focus.

“Whoop de doo, what does it all mean, Basil?”

If you have a background in imperative languages, you will have an interesting time if and when you start digging into functional programming, because whatever else it is, it’s different. And I’m not talking about syntax only, but most of what you do. If you need to add an item to a list, you construct a new list with the new item appended to the previous list (no, it is not as inefficient as it sounds, because there is great stuff under the hood to handle that). This is because immutability is one of the cornerstones of functional programming. If you can’t change something after it is created, there is no state to mess up. You program with values, not stateful objects.

I see I’m getting myself tricked into presenting a definition of functional programming, when that has been done better elsewhere. For pointers, see Michael Fogus’ 10 Technical Papers Every Programmer Should Read (At Least Twice), including the classic “Why Functional Programming Matters” by John Hughes. But I actually wanted to talk about something else.

It’s summer in the Northern Hemisphere, and at Mobile Monday Tampere tonight we are launching our Summer Specials 2012 offer for developers: Free one-hour visit to your application project Free half-day introduction to internationalization Get either one or both! See our Summer Specials 2012 page for terms and conditions. For more information, to schedule a time and to secure your seat, contact us. The theme of tonight’s Mobile Monday Tampere is multi-platform development, which is exactly what we do: if your project is based on iOS, Android or Windows Phone, we can advise you on how to make it world-ready.

Mesdames et messieurs, nous vous présentons: ‎HipStyles en français ! Rechercher vos photos ‎Hipstamatic dans votre téléphone par l’équipement et les partager à ‎Instagram, ‎Twitter ou ‎Facebook. Téléchargez la nouvelle version 1.0.6 maintenant sur l’‎AppStore ! HipStyles 1.0.6 is now available on the App Store. As you may gather from the above, it was localized into French. We also updated the Japanese localization, and made a number of performance enhancements to the matching engine.

Les Nombres, the little app that wants to teach you elementary French numbers, has been updated to version 1.5, and is now available on the App Store. The update is free to existing customers. You are presented with a randomly chosen French number from zero to 100, in writing, and given three alternatives to choose from. You can listen to the number by tapping the Listen button. To get another number, tap Another.

It all started with an idea, something to scratch a personal itch. I was learning elementary French, and realized that there is an algorithmic approach to generating the numbers. Not a very elegant algorithm, but one that could easily be turned into a computer program.

The idea turned into a function, and soon enough it turned into an iPhone app, now called Les Nombres and available from the App Store (and also for Windows Phone). My function takes a nonnegative integer and turns it into a French language string, which is displayed on the screen. It could be fed into a speech synthesizer, but in Les Nombres the numbers are recordings of a native French speaker, which I think is nice. (And I couldn’t use recordings of Apple’s “Virginie” voice from OS X anyway due to its license.)

To keep things simple, Les Nombres only deals with the numbers 0 to 100, even though my function could do up to 1,000 out of the box. It involves some 90 lines of Objective-C code, including two recursive calls. It was fun to write, and I learned something in the process, but ultimately I didn’t have to write it at all.

The little app for learning French numbers, Les Nombres for iPhone, has been updated to version 1.4! This version brings you a revamped user interface, scoring and the possibility to tweet your high score. It looks like this: It still speaks French to you and it still works hard to get those numbers into your head, but in a new, easier to use package. For all the juicy details, head for the Les Nombres for iPhone home page, or go straight to the App Store to get it!

We are happy to announce that Les Nombres for iPhone is again available in the App Store! Version 1.3 of the application now costs US $0.99 (EUR 0.79 or equivalent), but it works the same as the previous version. So, if you already have version 1.2, there is no need to buy this version now. However, if you do buy it now, you will get a free update to the next major release of the application.

Welcome to the third installment of “Functional programming without feeling stupid”! I originally started to describe my own learnings about FP in general, and Clojure in particular, and soon found myself writing a kind of Clojure tutorial or introduction. It may not be as comprehensive as others out there, and I still don’t think of it as a tutorial — it’s more like a description of a process, and the documented evolution of a tool.

I wanted to use Clojure “in anger”, and found out that I was learning new and interesting stuff quickly. I wanted to share what I’ve learned in the hope that others may find it useful.

Some of the stuff I have done and described here might not be the most optimal, but I see nothing obviously wrong with my approach. Maybe you do; if that is the case, tell me about it in the comments, or contact me otherwise. But please be nice and constructive, because…

…in Part 0 I wrote about how some people may feel put off by the air of “smarter than thou” that sometimes floats around functional programming. I’m hoping to present the subject in a friendly way, because much of the techniques are not obvious to someone (like me) conditioned with a couple of decades of imperative, object-oriented programming. Not nearly as funny as Learn You a Haskell For Great Good, and not as zany as Clojure for the Brave and True — just friendly, and hopefully lucid.

xkcd 1270: Functional. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial License. This is a company blog, so it is kind of commercial by definition. Is that a problem?

In Part 1 we played around with the Clojure REPL, and in Part 2 we started making definitions and actually got some useful results. In this third part we’re going to take a look at Clojure functions and how to use them, and create our own — because that’s what functional programming is all about.

In this installment of “Functional programming without feeling stupid” I would like to show you how to define things in Clojure. Values and function applications are all well and good, but if we can’t give them symbolic names, we need to keep repeating them over and over.

Before we start naming things, let’s have a look at how Clojure integrates with Java. I’m assuming you are still in the REPL, or have started it again with lein repl.

Track 1: “If anyone should ask / We are mated”

As it happens, Clojure’s core library is lean and focused on manipulating the data structures of the language, so many things are deferred to the underlying Java machinery as a rule. For example, mathematical computation is typically done using the static methods in the java.lang.Math class:

user=> (java.lang.Math/sqrt 5.0)
2.23606797749979

As you can see, this is a function application like we have already seen in Part 1, but this time the function we are using is the sqrt static method in the java.lang.Math class.

Java 7 acquired Unicode character names, and they are accessed through

the getName method in the java.lang.Character class. This is no mean feat, since there are over 110,000 characters in the Unicode standard, and each of them has a name (although some of them are algorithmically generated). To find out the canonical character name of a Unicode character, such as the euro currency symbol, you would use the getName static method:

user=> (java.lang.Character/getName \u20ac)
ClassCastException java.lang.Character cannot be cast to java.lang.Number user/eval703 (NO_SOURCE_FILE:1)

Hey, what’s wrong? Well, if you look up the documentation of java.lang.Character.getName, you will find out that it takes an int value as an argument, not a character. You can actually do this check from inside the REPL:

user=> (javadoc java.lang.Character)
true

The REPL doesn’t seem to do much, but you should now have a new web browser window or tab open, with the JavaDoc of the java.lang.Character class loaded up. That’s what the REPL meant when it said

Javadoc: (javadoc java-object-or-class-here)

when it started up. The getName method does need an int value, so let’s try something else:

user=> (java.lang.Character/getName (int \u20ac))
"EURO SIGN"

All right! How about another one:

user=> (java.lang.Character/getName 67)
"LATIN CAPITAL LETTER C"

Well, some say that Clojure is the new C.

About one year ago I wrote a multi-part tutorial on Clojure programming, describing how I wrote a small utility called ucdump (available on GitHub). Here are links to all the parts: Part 1: The Clojure REPL Part 2: Definitions Part 3: Higher-order functions Part 4: Logic Part 5: Project However, Carin Meier’s Living Clojure is excellent in many ways. Get it from O’Reilly (we’re an affiliate): My little tutorial started with part zero, in which I lamented how functional programming is made to appear unlearnable by mere mortals, and it kind of snowballed from there.

In the last four installments of Functional programming without feeling stupid I’ve slowly built up a small utility called ucdump with Clojure. Experimentiing and developing with the Clojure REPL is fun, but now it’s time to give some structure to the utility. I’ll package it up as a Leiningen project and create a standalone JAR for executing with the Java runtime.

Creating a new project with Leiningen

You can use Leiningen to create a skeleton project quickly. In my project’s root directory, I’ll say:

lein new app ucdump

Leiningen will respond with:

Generating a project called ucdump based on the 'app' template.

The result is a directory called ucdump, which contains:

.gitignore   README.md    project.clj  src/
LICENSE      doc/         resources/   test/

For now I’m are most interested in the project file, project.clj, which is actually a Clojure source file, and the src directory, which is intended for the app’s actual source files.

Leiningen creates a directory called src/ucdump and seeds it with a core.clj file, but that’s not what actually what I want, for two reasons:

• I want ucdump to be a good Clojure citizen, so I’m going to put it in a namespace

  called com.coniferproductions.ucdump.

• My Git repository for ucdump also contains the original Python version of the application, which is in <project-root>/python, and I want the Clojure version to live in <<em>project-root</em>>/clojure.

In the previous parts of “Functional programming without feeling stupid” we have slowly been building ucdump, a utility program for listing the Unicode codepoints and character names of characters in a string. In actual use, the string will be read from a UTF-8 encoded text file.

We don’t know yet how to read a text file in Clojure (well, you may know, but I only have a foggy idea), so we have been working with a single string. This is what we have so far:

(def test-str 
  "Na\u00EFve r\u00E9sum\u00E9s... for 0 \u20AC? Not bad!")
(def test-ch { :offset 0 :character \u20ac })
(def short-test-str "Na\u00EFve")

(defn character-name [x]
  (java.lang.Character/getName (int x)))

(defn character-line [pair]
  (let [ch (:character pair)]
    (format "%08d: U+%06X %s"
      (:offset pair) (int ch)
      (character-name ch))))
    
(defn character-lines [s]
  (let [offsets (repeat (count s) 0)
        pairs (map #(into {} {:offset %1 :character %2}) 
          offsets s)]
    (map character-line pairs)))

I’ve reformatted the code a bit to keep the lines short. You can copy and paste all of that in the Clojure REPL, and start looking at some strings in a new way:

user=> (character-lines "résumé")
("00000000: U+000072 LATIN SMALL LETTER R" 
"00000000: U+0000E9 LATIN SMALL LETTER E WITH ACUTE" 
"00000000: U+000073 LATIN SMALL LETTER S" 
"00000000: U+000075 LATIN SMALL LETTER U" 
"00000000: U+00006D LATIN SMALL LETTER M" 
"00000000: U+0000E9 LATIN SMALL LETTER E WITH ACUTE")

But we are still missing the actual offsets. Let’s fix that now.

Welcome to the third installment of “Functional programming without feeling stupid”! I originally started to describe my own learnings about FP in general, and Clojure in particular, and soon found myself writing a kind of Clojure tutorial or introduction. It may not be as comprehensive as others out there, and I still don’t think of it as a tutorial — it’s more like a description of a process, and the documented evolution of a tool.

I wanted to use Clojure “in anger”, and found out that I was learning new and interesting stuff quickly. I wanted to share what I’ve learned in the hope that others may find it useful.

Some of the stuff I have done and described here might not be the most optimal, but I see nothing obviously wrong with my approach. Maybe you do; if that is the case, tell me about it in the comments, or contact me otherwise. But please be nice and constructive, because…

…in Part 0 I wrote about how some people may feel put off by the air of “smarter than thou” that sometimes floats around functional programming. I’m hoping to present the subject in a friendly way, because much of the techniques are not obvious to someone (like me) conditioned with a couple of decades of imperative, object-oriented programming. Not nearly as funny as Learn You a Haskell For Great Good, and not as zany as Clojure for the Brave and True — just friendly, and hopefully lucid.

xkcd 1270: Functional. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial License. This is a company blog, so it is kind of commercial by definition. Is that a problem?

In Part 1 we played around with the Clojure REPL, and in Part 2 we started making definitions and actually got some useful results. In this third part we’re going to take a look at Clojure functions and how to use them, and create our own — because that’s what functional programming is all about.

In this installment of “Functional programming without feeling stupid” I would like to show you how to define things in Clojure. Values and function applications are all well and good, but if we can’t give them symbolic names, we need to keep repeating them over and over.

Before we start naming things, let’s have a look at how Clojure integrates with Java. I’m assuming you are still in the REPL, or have started it again with lein repl.

Track 1: “If anyone should ask / We are mated”

As it happens, Clojure’s core library is lean and focused on manipulating the data structures of the language, so many things are deferred to the underlying Java machinery as a rule. For example, mathematical computation is typically done using the static methods in the java.lang.Math class:

user=> (java.lang.Math/sqrt 5.0)
2.23606797749979

As you can see, this is a function application like we have already seen in Part 1, but this time the function we are using is the sqrt static method in the java.lang.Math class.

Java 7 acquired Unicode character names, and they are accessed through

the getName method in the java.lang.Character class. This is no mean feat, since there are over 110,000 characters in the Unicode standard, and each of them has a name (although some of them are algorithmically generated). To find out the canonical character name of a Unicode character, such as the euro currency symbol, you would use the getName static method:

user=> (java.lang.Character/getName \u20ac)
ClassCastException java.lang.Character cannot be cast to java.lang.Number user/eval703 (NO_SOURCE_FILE:1)

Hey, what’s wrong? Well, if you look up the documentation of java.lang.Character.getName, you will find out that it takes an int value as an argument, not a character. You can actually do this check from inside the REPL:

user=> (javadoc java.lang.Character)
true

The REPL doesn’t seem to do much, but you should now have a new web browser window or tab open, with the JavaDoc of the java.lang.Character class loaded up. That’s what the REPL meant when it said

Javadoc: (javadoc java-object-or-class-here)

when it started up. The getName method does need an int value, so let’s try something else:

user=> (java.lang.Character/getName (int \u20ac))
"EURO SIGN"

All right! How about another one:

user=> (java.lang.Character/getName 67)
"LATIN CAPITAL LETTER C"

Well, some say that Clojure is the new C.

In my recent post Functional Programming Without Feeling Stupid I took a quick look at how functional programming can be a little off-putting for the non-initiated. I promised to provide some examples of my own first steps with FP, and now I would like to present some to you.

Advocates of functional programming often refer to increased programmer productivity. At least some of that can be attributed to the REPL, or the Read-Evaluate-Print Loop. We are basically talking about an environment which accepts and parses any code you type in, and gives you a place to experiment and see results quickly. Before interpreted or semi-interpreted languages like Python, Java and JavaScript became mainstream, the typical repeating cycle in software development was Compile-Link-Execute, and debugging meant observing special output on the console. In the 1990s integrated debuggers with watches and breakpoints became the norm, but long before that Lisp-like languages already had a REPL, and Python also acquired one.

If you are thinking about getting intimate with Clojure, you will need to get to know the REPL. It is your playground, and will always be, even if you later start packaging and organizing your code.

Clojure depends on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and is actually distributed as a normal JAR file (Java ARchive), like most Java libraries are. You can start Clojure from the JAR, but you will save yourself some trouble and prepare for the future if you install Leiningen, the dependency management tool for Clojure. It is simple to install and run, and I will assume that you will follow the instructions on the Leiningen web site sooner or later. Now would be a good time.

When you’re done with the installation, you only need to say

lein repl

to start a Clojure REPL. I’m using OS X, so what I describe here was done from Terminal. You don’t need to create a project with Leiningen if you just want to play around in the REPL.

Of course, if you don’t have Java installed, you need to get it first. Refer to the Java web site of Oracle for details as necessary. Furthermore, some of the things I will describe require Java version 7 or later.

If you follow software design trends (yes, they exist), you may have noticed an increasing amount of buzz about functional programming, and particularly the Clojure language. While functional programming is hard to define, almost everyone mentions pure functions, the lack of side effects and state, and easy parallelisation. As for Clojure, it is all about (a kind of) Lisp running on the Java Virtual Machine (and .NET, and transformed to JavaScript).

I’m somewhat convinced that functional programming is at least worth knowing about and trying out, even if you don’t expect to fully convert. It has been said that learning about the functional paradigm makes you a better programmer in your current imperative language. Functional languages reduce accidental complexity, and that helps you focus.

“Whoop de doo, what does it all mean, Basil?”

If you have a background in imperative languages, you will have an interesting time if and when you start digging into functional programming, because whatever else it is, it’s different. And I’m not talking about syntax only, but most of what you do. If you need to add an item to a list, you construct a new list with the new item appended to the previous list (no, it is not as inefficient as it sounds, because there is great stuff under the hood to handle that). This is because immutability is one of the cornerstones of functional programming. If you can’t change something after it is created, there is no state to mess up. You program with values, not stateful objects.

I see I’m getting myself tricked into presenting a definition of functional programming, when that has been done better elsewhere. For pointers, see Michael Fogus’ 10 Technical Papers Every Programmer Should Read (At Least Twice), including the classic “Why Functional Programming Matters” by John Hughes. But I actually wanted to talk about something else.

If you are programming, and you are still not using any form of version control, you really have no excuse. There are many benefits to being able to keep track of your code and try out various branches, even if you are the only programmer in the project. If you are collaborating with someone, it soon becomes nearly impossible (or at least very time-consuming) to deal with various versions and changes.

Of all the version control systems I’ve tried over the years (CVS, Subversion, a little bit of Mercurial, and Git) it seems that Git has “won” in a sense. There is a sizable open-source community born around GitHub (and Bitbucket) for which Git works very well indeed. Also many programming tools have built-in or plug-in support for Git, so you don’t even have to use command-line tools for managing your source code repositories if you don’t want to.

For open-source development, GitHub is the obvious choice. If you’re doing closed source, or you think your code isn’t ready for public scrutiny, Bitbucket gives you unlimited private repositories. I’m currently using GitHub to collaborate on some private repositories, which you can get with a paid plan, and Bitbucket for my closed-source app projects.

In a spirited attempt to really learn to use the tools of my trade, I wanted to take some time to better learn Git for version control (and also dive deeper into Xcode, but that is another story).

Earlier I’ve occasionally been using the fine tome Version Control with Git, 2nd Edition* by Jon Loeliger and Matthew McCullough to learn the basics, but I wanted to really dive in. I’ve already mastered the very basics, and have also used remote repositories with both GitHub and BitBucket, but there is a lot more to learn to be able to really take advantage of Git.

* Disclaimer: I’m an O’Reilly affiliate, and the links above take you to the O’Reilly online bookstore, in the hope that you purchase something, so that I will get a small commission.

If you are programming, and you are still not using any form of version control, you really have no excuse. There are many benefits to being able to keep track of your code and try out various branches, even if you are the only programmer in the project. If you are collaborating with someone, it soon becomes nearly impossible (or at least very time-consuming) to deal with various versions and changes.

Of all the version control systems I’ve tried over the years (CVS, Subversion, a little bit of Mercurial, and Git) it seems that Git has “won” in a sense. There is a sizable open-source community born around GitHub (and Bitbucket) for which Git works very well indeed. Also many programming tools have built-in or plug-in support for Git, so you don’t even have to use command-line tools for managing your source code repositories if you don’t want to.

For open-source development, GitHub is the obvious choice. If you’re doing closed source, or you think your code isn’t ready for public scrutiny, Bitbucket gives you unlimited private repositories. I’m currently using GitHub to collaborate on some private repositories, which you can get with a paid plan, and Bitbucket for my closed-source app projects.

In a spirited attempt to really learn to use the tools of my trade, I wanted to take some time to better learn Git for version control (and also dive deeper into Xcode, but that is another story).

Earlier I’ve occasionally been using the fine tome Version Control with Git, 2nd Edition* by Jon Loeliger and Matthew McCullough to learn the basics, but I wanted to really dive in. I’ve already mastered the very basics, and have also used remote repositories with both GitHub and BitBucket, but there is a lot more to learn to be able to really take advantage of Git.

* Disclaimer: I’m an O’Reilly affiliate, and the links above take you to the O’Reilly online bookstore, in the hope that you purchase something, so that I will get a small commission.

Sometimes you just need to see what characters are lurking inside a Unicode encoded text file. Your garden variety dump utility (like the venerable od in UNIX systems and the Windows standard hex dump (though I don’t think there is one) only shows you the plain bytes, so you have to head over to unicode.org to find out what they mean. But first you need to decode UTF-8 to get the actual code points, or grok UTF-16 LE or BE, and so on. It’s fun, but it’s not for everyone.

The udump utility shows you a nice list of character names, together with their offsets in the file. Currently it only handles UTF-8, so the offset is calculated based on the UTF-8 length of the character.

It’s Valentine’s Day, and HipStyles for iPhone is free for today only! HipStyles Valentine’s Day Special To celebrate and spread the love, we have reduced the price for exactly 100 per cent. This is your chance to save big! It’s available on the App Store, so download it and tell your friends and loved ones what we already know, and you soon will: that HipStyles is the ultimate companion app for Hipstamatic users.

HipStyles was removed from the App Store over a year ago, but from time to time I still think it could be resurrected. However, after taking a long hard look at Apple’s new Photos framework in iOS 9, I think it is just not feasible anymore. HipStyles and the Assets Library Framework HipStyles was a photo finder for Hipstamatic and Oggl photos, looking for snaps taken with some Hipstamatic lens, film or flash of your choosing.

On August 15, 2014, HipStyles will be retired from the App Store.

I have decided to end the development of HipStyles, for good. In practice it was on hold for a long time due to other commitments, but after long last, version 2.0 was released in April 2014. Now it’s time to finally close the curtain on this act.

Since November 2012, HipStyles has tracked the new gear in Hipstamatic, and provided an easy way to find shots, or HipstaPrints, taken with a specific combination of lens, film, and flash. Some iPhoneographers have found it useful, since it provides a function Hipstamatic itself doesn’t.

Here’s a summary why I think HipStyles failed to make a dent in the universe:

• Lack of initial validation of the product idea
• Premium pricing probably alienated many potential customers
• The execution failed by some accounts: too many or wrong features, with bugs

We have skipped a few point releases of HipStyles in announcements, so here’s an update. HipStyles 1.0.9 is available on the App Store. It supports all the latest HipstaPaks as of October 2013. The development of HipStyles has taken a backseat recently since we have focused on introni. However, there have been some experiments with proper iOS 7 support and improvements to the photo matching, so maybe later this year something will surface.

Mesdames et messieurs, nous vous présentons: ‎HipStyles en français ! Rechercher vos photos ‎Hipstamatic dans votre téléphone par l’équipement et les partager à ‎Instagram, ‎Twitter ou ‎Facebook. Téléchargez la nouvelle version 1.0.6 maintenant sur l’‎AppStore ! HipStyles 1.0.6 is now available on the App Store. As you may gather from the above, it was localized into French. We also updated the Japanese localization, and made a number of performance enhancements to the matching engine.

HipStyles for iPhone, the friendly photo finder assistant for Hipstamatic enthusiasts, was recently updated to version 1.0.5, and is now available on the App Store. Since the recent launch of Hipstamatic Oggl we have been busy bringing HipStyles up to date in finding also the great shots you took with Oggl that end up in your iPhone’s camera roll. The recently released São Paulo HipstaPak was also quickly examined, and HipStyles was updated to find photos that use the new Madalena lens and Robusta film.

It’s Valentine’s Day, and HipStyles for iPhone is free for today only! HipStyles Valentine’s Day Special To celebrate and spread the love, we have reduced the price for exactly 100 per cent. This is your chance to save big! It’s available on the App Store, so download it and tell your friends and loved ones what we already know, and you soon will: that HipStyles is the ultimate companion app for Hipstamatic users.

We are pleased to announce that HipStyles version 1.0.2 is now available on the App Store! The update is free to existing customers.

Hipstamatic is the ultimate companion to Hipstamatic and iPhoneography enthusiasts. It searches your phone’s HipstaPrints photo library for shots taken with the lens / film / flash combo you select. It also fetches you fresh samples of others’ work from Instagram, so that you can get an idea of what your shots would look like with the given combo.

Dear vintage digital photography enthusiasts, Hipstamatic photographers, Instagram users, we have great news for you. HipStyles for iPhone is available on the App Store! HipStyles is the ultimate companion for any Hipstamatic user. It lets you freely select combinations of Hipstamatic lenses, films and flashes, and search for matching photos on Instagram or inside your own HipstaPrints album in your phone. HipStyles taps into the endless stream of fresh images posted on Instagram by the ever-increasing community of Hipstagraphers.

On August 15, 2014, HipStyles will be retired from the App Store.

I have decided to end the development of HipStyles, for good. In practice it was on hold for a long time due to other commitments, but after long last, version 2.0 was released in April 2014. Now it’s time to finally close the curtain on this act.

Since November 2012, HipStyles has tracked the new gear in Hipstamatic, and provided an easy way to find shots, or HipstaPrints, taken with a specific combination of lens, film, and flash. Some iPhoneographers have found it useful, since it provides a function Hipstamatic itself doesn’t.

Here’s a summary why I think HipStyles failed to make a dent in the universe:

• Lack of initial validation of the product idea
• Premium pricing probably alienated many potential customers
• The execution failed by some accounts: too many or wrong features, with bugs

We have skipped a few point releases of HipStyles in announcements, so here’s an update. HipStyles 1.0.9 is available on the App Store. It supports all the latest HipstaPaks as of October 2013. The development of HipStyles has taken a backseat recently since we have focused on introni. However, there have been some experiments with proper iOS 7 support and improvements to the photo matching, so maybe later this year something will surface.

We are pleased to announce that HipStyles version 1.0.2 is now available on the App Store! The update is free to existing customers.

Hipstamatic is the ultimate companion to Hipstamatic and iPhoneography enthusiasts. It searches your phone’s HipstaPrints photo library for shots taken with the lens / film / flash combo you select. It also fetches you fresh samples of others’ work from Instagram, so that you can get an idea of what your shots would look like with the given combo.

HipStyles was removed from the App Store over a year ago, but from time to time I still think it could be resurrected. However, after taking a long hard look at Apple’s new Photos framework in iOS 9, I think it is just not feasible anymore. HipStyles and the Assets Library Framework HipStyles was a photo finder for Hipstamatic and Oggl photos, looking for snaps taken with some Hipstamatic lens, film or flash of your choosing.

On August 15, 2014, HipStyles will be retired from the App Store.

I have decided to end the development of HipStyles, for good. In practice it was on hold for a long time due to other commitments, but after long last, version 2.0 was released in April 2014. Now it’s time to finally close the curtain on this act.

Since November 2012, HipStyles has tracked the new gear in Hipstamatic, and provided an easy way to find shots, or HipstaPrints, taken with a specific combination of lens, film, and flash. Some iPhoneographers have found it useful, since it provides a function Hipstamatic itself doesn’t.

Here’s a summary why I think HipStyles failed to make a dent in the universe:

• Lack of initial validation of the product idea
• Premium pricing probably alienated many potential customers
• The execution failed by some accounts: too many or wrong features, with bugs

We have skipped a few point releases of HipStyles in announcements, so here’s an update. HipStyles 1.0.9 is available on the App Store. It supports all the latest HipstaPaks as of October 2013. The development of HipStyles has taken a backseat recently since we have focused on introni. However, there have been some experiments with proper iOS 7 support and improvements to the photo matching, so maybe later this year something will surface.

Mesdames et messieurs, nous vous présentons: ‎HipStyles en français ! Rechercher vos photos ‎Hipstamatic dans votre téléphone par l’équipement et les partager à ‎Instagram, ‎Twitter ou ‎Facebook. Téléchargez la nouvelle version 1.0.6 maintenant sur l’‎AppStore ! HipStyles 1.0.6 is now available on the App Store. As you may gather from the above, it was localized into French. We also updated the Japanese localization, and made a number of performance enhancements to the matching engine.

HipStyles for iPhone, the friendly photo finder assistant for Hipstamatic enthusiasts, was recently updated to version 1.0.5, and is now available on the App Store. Since the recent launch of Hipstamatic Oggl we have been busy bringing HipStyles up to date in finding also the great shots you took with Oggl that end up in your iPhone’s camera roll. The recently released São Paulo HipstaPak was also quickly examined, and HipStyles was updated to find photos that use the new Madalena lens and Robusta film.

It’s Valentine’s Day, and HipStyles for iPhone is free for today only! HipStyles Valentine’s Day Special To celebrate and spread the love, we have reduced the price for exactly 100 per cent. This is your chance to save big! It’s available on the App Store, so download it and tell your friends and loved ones what we already know, and you soon will: that HipStyles is the ultimate companion app for Hipstamatic users.

HipStyles, the iPhone to app that finds your HipstaPrints photos with ease, has been updated to version 1.0.3, and is available on the App Store. We’ve added the ability to like photos on Instagram straight from inside the app. Just double-tap the photo in the detail screen, or tap once on the cute little heart icon on the right side of the photo (below the tiny Instagram camera logo). Double-tap an Instagram photo to “like” it.

We are pleased to announce that HipStyles version 1.0.2 is now available on the App Store! The update is free to existing customers.

Hipstamatic is the ultimate companion to Hipstamatic and iPhoneography enthusiasts. It searches your phone’s HipstaPrints photo library for shots taken with the lens / film / flash combo you select. It also fetches you fresh samples of others’ work from Instagram, so that you can get an idea of what your shots would look like with the given combo.

Dear vintage digital photography enthusiasts, Hipstamatic photographers, Instagram users, we have great news for you. HipStyles for iPhone is available on the App Store! HipStyles is the ultimate companion for any Hipstamatic user. It lets you freely select combinations of Hipstamatic lenses, films and flashes, and search for matching photos on Instagram or inside your own HipstaPrints album in your phone. HipStyles taps into the endless stream of fresh images posted on Instagram by the ever-increasing community of Hipstagraphers.

If you are programming, and you are still not using any form of version control, you really have no excuse. There are many benefits to being able to keep track of your code and try out various branches, even if you are the only programmer in the project. If you are collaborating with someone, it soon becomes nearly impossible (or at least very time-consuming) to deal with various versions and changes.

Of all the version control systems I’ve tried over the years (CVS, Subversion, a little bit of Mercurial, and Git) it seems that Git has “won” in a sense. There is a sizable open-source community born around GitHub (and Bitbucket) for which Git works very well indeed. Also many programming tools have built-in or plug-in support for Git, so you don’t even have to use command-line tools for managing your source code repositories if you don’t want to.

For open-source development, GitHub is the obvious choice. If you’re doing closed source, or you think your code isn’t ready for public scrutiny, Bitbucket gives you unlimited private repositories. I’m currently using GitHub to collaborate on some private repositories, which you can get with a paid plan, and Bitbucket for my closed-source app projects.

In a spirited attempt to really learn to use the tools of my trade, I wanted to take some time to better learn Git for version control (and also dive deeper into Xcode, but that is another story).

Earlier I’ve occasionally been using the fine tome Version Control with Git, 2nd Edition* by Jon Loeliger and Matthew McCullough to learn the basics, but I wanted to really dive in. I’ve already mastered the very basics, and have also used remote repositories with both GitHub and BitBucket, but there is a lot more to learn to be able to really take advantage of Git.

* Disclaimer: I’m an O’Reilly affiliate, and the links above take you to the O’Reilly online bookstore, in the hope that you purchase something, so that I will get a small commission.

It all started with an idea, something to scratch a personal itch. I was learning elementary French, and realized that there is an algorithmic approach to generating the numbers. Not a very elegant algorithm, but one that could easily be turned into a computer program.

The idea turned into a function, and soon enough it turned into an iPhone app, now called Les Nombres and available from the App Store (and also for Windows Phone). My function takes a nonnegative integer and turns it into a French language string, which is displayed on the screen. It could be fed into a speech synthesizer, but in Les Nombres the numbers are recordings of a native French speaker, which I think is nice. (And I couldn’t use recordings of Apple’s “Virginie” voice from OS X anyway due to its license.)

To keep things simple, Les Nombres only deals with the numbers 0 to 100, even though my function could do up to 1,000 out of the box. It involves some 90 lines of Objective-C code, including two recursive calls. It was fun to write, and I learned something in the process, but ultimately I didn’t have to write it at all.

If this blog entry was written 10–15 years ago, the title would have been “Unicode is in Your Future“. Luckily, the Unicode standard has been widely adopted during the last decade, so much so that it has almost become a part of the process and not something that you need to expend very much extra effort on. It is here Now, and has been for some time now.

However, Unicode still isn’t quite as widely understood as it needs to be, and it is often adopted as a black box that nobody can really fix when something goes wrong. Therefore it is not at all bad to try and bring it into perspective.

You need to understand at least why Unicode should be used, and how not to make it more complicated than it is (even though it can still be quite complicated). So keep reading.

Apart from hard-coding “Hello, world!”, another bad habit you may have picked up when you learned programming is constructing user-visible messages from parts: strings, numbers and other data, concatenated together.

For example, say that you had to show the user how many unread messages there are in a given mailbox. Let’s assume that mailboxName contains the name of the mailbox, and messageCount holds the number of unread messages. In Java, you might be tempted to whip up a user-visible message like this:

String message = "There are " + messageCount + " unread messages in mailbox '" + mailboxName + "'";

This is not the way to do it in an international application. Let’s find out why, and have a look at a better and much more future-proof way of doing it.

For many of us, dates and times are absolutely essential in our daily lives. We make appointments, set deadlines, celebrate birthdays and anniversaries, and generally mark time using clocks and calendars.

What makes dates and times interesting from a programmer’s perspective is that while there is a standard time (the Coordinated Universal Time or UTC), there are multiple local time zones in use all over the world. A single instance in UTC has many local equivalents, and offsets between time zones and universal time are wild and wonderful.

Not only are time zones a little tricky, but there are also multiple local representations for an instance in local time. A representation in this context means the way it is printed in a daily newspaper, in the calendar, and indeed, on the screen of a computer or a mobile device. In the realm of internationalization (I18N) they are known as date and time formats.

The conventions for showing local time are well established, and the differences between them are significant enough to cause a lot of confusion if care is not taken. While it would be the most logical thing to do (thank you Mr. Spock), it is hardly practical to expect all the world’s population to adopt a single standard date and time format such as the ISO 8601 international standard notation in their daily lives. The national and linguistic conventions are very well established locally.

Just recently, Nokia launched new Windows Phone devices in their Lumia series. The company wanted to build anticipation before the announcement with short teaser videos which all marked the date of the launch: 05.09.2012. If you saw this date advertised early in the year, you might think it could mean either September 5th or May 9th this year. But which is it? 

The UEFA EURO 2012, or the European football championship, is close to the end of group stage as I write this. (That would be “soccer” to U.S. readers.) As usual, I have been delighted to notice that UEFA has done a great job in getting the names of the various international players presented as accurately as possible, both on the UEFA.com website and in the mobile apps they’ve published.

UEFA’s good track record with names has been going on for a long time; I first noticed this when I started to follow the UEFA Champions League in 2000, when I was already working with software internationalization, and knew enough to pay attention to these things.

In this post I’ll examine what it takes to pull off a task like this – which you may also need to do.

It’s summer in the Northern Hemisphere, and at Mobile Monday Tampere tonight we are launching our Summer Specials 2012 offer for developers: Free one-hour visit to your application project Free half-day introduction to internationalization Get either one or both! See our Summer Specials 2012 page for terms and conditions. For more information, to schedule a time and to secure your seat, contact us. The theme of tonight’s Mobile Monday Tampere is multi-platform development, which is exactly what we do: if your project is based on iOS, Android or Windows Phone, we can advise you on how to make it world-ready.

Many introductory programming courses start with a very simple first program, the traditional “hello world”. It is intended to teach how to edit, compile and run a program in a new programming environment using a simplified context, and it serves its purpose quite well. Unfortunately, the simple practice used in storing and displaying the text is quite contrary to a basic principle of software internationalization.

HipStyles was removed from the App Store over a year ago, but from time to time I still think it could be resurrected. However, after taking a long hard look at Apple’s new Photos framework in iOS 9, I think it is just not feasible anymore. HipStyles and the Assets Library Framework HipStyles was a photo finder for Hipstamatic and Oggl photos, looking for snaps taken with some Hipstamatic lens, film or flash of your choosing.

HipStyles for iPhone, the friendly photo finder assistant for Hipstamatic enthusiasts, was recently updated to version 1.0.5, and is now available on the App Store. Since the recent launch of Hipstamatic Oggl we have been busy bringing HipStyles up to date in finding also the great shots you took with Oggl that end up in your iPhone’s camera roll. The recently released São Paulo HipstaPak was also quickly examined, and HipStyles was updated to find photos that use the new Madalena lens and Robusta film.

It’s Valentine’s Day, and HipStyles for iPhone is free for today only! HipStyles Valentine’s Day Special To celebrate and spread the love, we have reduced the price for exactly 100 per cent. This is your chance to save big! It’s available on the App Store, so download it and tell your friends and loved ones what we already know, and you soon will: that HipStyles is the ultimate companion app for Hipstamatic users.

We are pleased to announce that HipStyles version 1.0.2 is now available on the App Store! The update is free to existing customers.

Hipstamatic is the ultimate companion to Hipstamatic and iPhoneography enthusiasts. It searches your phone’s HipstaPrints photo library for shots taken with the lens / film / flash combo you select. It also fetches you fresh samples of others’ work from Instagram, so that you can get an idea of what your shots would look like with the given combo.

Dear vintage digital photography enthusiasts, Hipstamatic photographers, Instagram users, we have great news for you. HipStyles for iPhone is available on the App Store! HipStyles is the ultimate companion for any Hipstamatic user. It lets you freely select combinations of Hipstamatic lenses, films and flashes, and search for matching photos on Instagram or inside your own HipstaPrints album in your phone. HipStyles taps into the endless stream of fresh images posted on Instagram by the ever-increasing community of Hipstagraphers.

Ohjelmistoyrittäjä, tiedetäänkö sinun yrityksessäsi miten tehdä sovelluksia, jotka on helppo sovittaa eri kielille ja kulttuureille? Lokalisointi on ohjelman käyttöliittymässä esiintyvien tekstien ja kuvien sovittamista eri kielille. Sen tekevät yleensä käännöstoimistot eri toimeksiannosta kun ohjelma alkaa olla valmis julkaisuun. Pelkkä tekstien käännättäminen ei kuitenkaan riitä, vaan ohjelmisto pitäisi laatia alusta pitäen sellaiseksi, että käännösten hallinnointi on luonteva ja toimiva osa ohjelmistoprosessia. Lisäksi ohjelmiston sovittaminen moniin eri kulttuureihin vaatii muutakin kuin sisällön kääntämistä: esimerkiksi päiväykset ja kellonajat sekä luvut ja rahasummat pitää esittää kohdemaan tavalla.

The vCard format has served us well for encoding and exchanging contact information, but there is a better alternative – jCard. In this post I’ll describe why I think jCard can be better than vCard, and should be adopted by every software vendor who deals with contacts. Both vCard and jCard are text-based formats, but whereas vCard has a unique legacy grammar, jCard is based on JSON. They both represent essentially the same data model that describes contact information: name, phone number, address, e-mail, and so on.

At the time of this writing, the FIFA World Cup is almost at its final stage. Throughout the whole month of the tournament I have been amazed to find out that while UEFA has consistently made an effort to have the players’ names written as authentically as possible, FIFA hasn’t. Information conveyed to viewers in televised matches is transliterated, making many players’ names appear irritatingly different than their national, conventional spellings.

Meeting people is easy, but saving their contact information is hard. Do you want to tap and stare at your phone, entering names, numbers and e-mails, or do you want to keep chatting with someone interesting you just met? Meet a lot of business people? Get a lot of business cards? Like most, you’ll probably put them in a drawer and forget about them. Wouldn’t it be great if you could just grab the information straight into your phone’s address book?

Picture this: a friend of yours has bought a nice vintage synth with great sounds, and wouldn’t you like to use those sounds in your own music-making? If only you could sample those sounds, but it seems like too much trouble… You would need to persuade your friend to let you borrow the synth, or you would need to visit them with your music-making setup, which nowadays is basically an iPad and an iOS-compatible audio interface.

The vCard format has served us well for encoding and exchanging contact information, but there is a better alternative – jCard. In this post I’ll describe why I think jCard can be better than vCard, and should be adopted by every software vendor who deals with contacts. Both vCard and jCard are text-based formats, but whereas vCard has a unique legacy grammar, jCard is based on JSON. They both represent essentially the same data model that describes contact information: name, phone number, address, e-mail, and so on.

HipStyles was removed from the App Store over a year ago, but from time to time I still think it could be resurrected. However, after taking a long hard look at Apple’s new Photos framework in iOS 9, I think it is just not feasible anymore. HipStyles and the Assets Library Framework HipStyles was a photo finder for Hipstamatic and Oggl photos, looking for snaps taken with some Hipstamatic lens, film or flash of your choosing.

On August 15, 2014, HipStyles will be retired from the App Store.

I have decided to end the development of HipStyles, for good. In practice it was on hold for a long time due to other commitments, but after long last, version 2.0 was released in April 2014. Now it’s time to finally close the curtain on this act.

Since November 2012, HipStyles has tracked the new gear in Hipstamatic, and provided an easy way to find shots, or HipstaPrints, taken with a specific combination of lens, film, and flash. Some iPhoneographers have found it useful, since it provides a function Hipstamatic itself doesn’t.

Here’s a summary why I think HipStyles failed to make a dent in the universe:

• Lack of initial validation of the product idea
• Premium pricing probably alienated many potential customers
• The execution failed by some accounts: too many or wrong features, with bugs

Picture this: a friend of yours has bought a nice vintage synth with great sounds, and wouldn’t you like to use those sounds in your own music-making? If only you could sample those sounds, but it seems like too much trouble… You would need to persuade your friend to let you borrow the synth, or you would need to visit them with your music-making setup, which nowadays is basically an iPad and an iOS-compatible audio interface.

Picture this: a friend of yours has bought a nice vintage synth with great sounds, and wouldn’t you like to use those sounds in your own music-making? If only you could sample those sounds, but it seems like too much trouble… You would need to persuade your friend to let you borrow the synth, or you would need to visit them with your music-making setup, which nowadays is basically an iPad and an iOS-compatible audio interface.

BusMonTRE on pysäkkiavustinohjelma älypuhelimille. Se on tehty tarjoamaan helppo tapa selvittää milloin kulkee bussi käyttäjää lähellä olevalta pysäkiltä Tampereen joukkoliikenteen toiminta-alueella (johon kuuluu Tampereen lisäksi useita ympäristökuntia). Tähän tarkoitukseen se käyttää Tampereen kaupungin tarjoamaa avointa dataa sekä Tampereen joukkoliikenteen ylläpitämää sinistä virtuaalimonitoria. BusMonTRE on tällä hetkellä saatavana iOS-, Android- ja Windows Phone -älypuhelimille. Tässä kirjoituksessa kerron hieman ohjelman taustoista sekä tulevaisuuden kehitysnäkymistä.

Virtuaalimonitori omaan tarpeeseen

Nettisivupalveluna toimiva sininen virtuaalimonitori on ollut käytössä Tampereella jo pitkään. Tavaratalot ja pienemmät liikkeet ovat käyttäneet sitä tiloissaan esimerkiksi näyttämällä isolla televisioruudulla asiakkailleen lähimmältä pysäkiltä kulkevien bussien tietoja. Kaikiilla Tampereen joukkoliikenteen pysäkeillä on sekä nimi että numerokoodi, ja virtuaalimonitorin saa helposti näyttämään yhtä tai useampaa haluttua pysäkkiä tämän numerokoodin avulla.

Sain ajatuksen BusMonTRE:sta jo vuonna 2011, mutta silloin en vielä ryhtynyt suunnittelemaan sovellusta, vaan käytin omissa laitteissani muutamaa valmiiksi leivottua nettiosoitetta, joilla sain kätevästi haluamani monitorinäytön nettiselaimeen. Osallistuin vuosina 2012-2013 useaan avoimen datan tapahtumaan Tampereella, ollessani muutenkin aktiivisesti mukana Tampereen startup-yhteisössä. Eräässä näistä tapahtumista Tampereen joukkoliikenteen edustaja antoi vahvan signaalin siitä, että heidän intresseissään ei ole kehittää sovelluksia itse, mutta he tarjoavat datan ilmaiseksi sovelluskehittäjien käyttöön.

On August 15, 2014, HipStyles will be retired from the App Store.

I have decided to end the development of HipStyles, for good. In practice it was on hold for a long time due to other commitments, but after long last, version 2.0 was released in April 2014. Now it’s time to finally close the curtain on this act.

Since November 2012, HipStyles has tracked the new gear in Hipstamatic, and provided an easy way to find shots, or HipstaPrints, taken with a specific combination of lens, film, and flash. Some iPhoneographers have found it useful, since it provides a function Hipstamatic itself doesn’t.

Here’s a summary why I think HipStyles failed to make a dent in the universe:

• Lack of initial validation of the product idea
• Premium pricing probably alienated many potential customers
• The execution failed by some accounts: too many or wrong features, with bugs

Tampereen seudun joukkoliikenteessä tehdään mittava uudistus 30.6.2014. Liikennealue jaetaan maksuvyöhykkeisiin, ja linjasto sekä sen numerointi muuttuvat. Tarkempia tietoja uudistuksesta voit lukea joukkoliikennealueella talouksiin jaetusta Sinisten bussien matkassa -lehdestä, uudesta vuoden 2014 kesäaikataulukirjasta sekä Tampereen joukkoliikenteen nettisivuilta. Uudistus vaikuttaa myös BusMonTRE-pysäkkiavustinohjelmaan, joka on saatavana iPhone-, Android- ja Windows Phone -puhelimille. Viimeisimmässä 0.3-versiossa lisättiin tiedot siitä, mitkä linjat kulkevat minkäkin pysäkin kautta. Kuten kaikki BusMonTRE:n käyttämä aineisto, tämäkin tieto perustuu Tampereen joukkoliikenteen avoimena datana julkaisemiin tiedostoihin ja rajapintoihin.

BusMonTRE on helppokäyttöinen pysäkkiavustin Tampereen joukkoliikenteen käyttäjille. Se näyttää sinulle juuri sen tiedon, jonka useimmiten tarvitset kun olet lähdössä jonnekin päin Tamperetta bussilla. BusMonTRE ei ole reittiopas, eikä se näytä liikkuvia palloja kartalla (muun muassa siksi, että bussit eivät ole pallonmuotoisia). Kokeile sitä, ja huomaat, että se on helpompi, fiksumpi ja nopeampi kuin monet bussien liikkumista seurailevat ohjelmat. Ohjelman tehtävä on vastata kysymykseen: “milloin menee seuraava bussi tästä läheltä?” Sen selvittämiseksi BusMonTRE vertaa sijaintiasi Tampereen joukkoliikenteen pysäkkien sijainteihin, ja näyttää sinulle listan sinua lähimpänä olevista pysäkeistä.

Meeting people is easy, but saving their contact information is hard. Do you want to tap and stare at your phone, entering names, numbers and e-mails, or do you want to keep chatting with someone interesting you just met? Meet a lot of business people? Get a lot of business cards? Like most, you’ll probably put them in a drawer and forget about them. Wouldn’t it be great if you could just grab the information straight into your phone’s address book?

We have skipped a few point releases of HipStyles in announcements, so here’s an update. HipStyles 1.0.9 is available on the App Store. It supports all the latest HipstaPaks as of October 2013. The development of HipStyles has taken a backseat recently since we have focused on introni. However, there have been some experiments with proper iOS 7 support and improvements to the photo matching, so maybe later this year something will surface.

HipStyles for iPhone, the friendly photo finder assistant for Hipstamatic enthusiasts, was recently updated to version 1.0.5, and is now available on the App Store. Since the recent launch of Hipstamatic Oggl we have been busy bringing HipStyles up to date in finding also the great shots you took with Oggl that end up in your iPhone’s camera roll. The recently released São Paulo HipstaPak was also quickly examined, and HipStyles was updated to find photos that use the new Madalena lens and Robusta film.

It’s Valentine’s Day, and HipStyles for iPhone is free for today only! HipStyles Valentine’s Day Special To celebrate and spread the love, we have reduced the price for exactly 100 per cent. This is your chance to save big! It’s available on the App Store, so download it and tell your friends and loved ones what we already know, and you soon will: that HipStyles is the ultimate companion app for Hipstamatic users.

HipStyles, the iPhone to app that finds your HipstaPrints photos with ease, has been updated to version 1.0.3, and is available on the App Store. We’ve added the ability to like photos on Instagram straight from inside the app. Just double-tap the photo in the detail screen, or tap once on the cute little heart icon on the right side of the photo (below the tiny Instagram camera logo). Double-tap an Instagram photo to “like” it.

Les Nombres, the little app that wants to teach you elementary French numbers, has been updated to version 1.5, and is now available on the App Store. The update is free to existing customers. You are presented with a randomly chosen French number from zero to 100, in writing, and given three alternatives to choose from. You can listen to the number by tapping the Listen button. To get another number, tap Another.

We are pleased to announce that HipStyles version 1.0.2 is now available on the App Store! The update is free to existing customers.

Hipstamatic is the ultimate companion to Hipstamatic and iPhoneography enthusiasts. It searches your phone’s HipstaPrints photo library for shots taken with the lens / film / flash combo you select. It also fetches you fresh samples of others’ work from Instagram, so that you can get an idea of what your shots would look like with the given combo.

Dear vintage digital photography enthusiasts, Hipstamatic photographers, Instagram users, we have great news for you. HipStyles for iPhone is available on the App Store! HipStyles is the ultimate companion for any Hipstamatic user. It lets you freely select combinations of Hipstamatic lenses, films and flashes, and search for matching photos on Instagram or inside your own HipstaPrints album in your phone. HipStyles taps into the endless stream of fresh images posted on Instagram by the ever-increasing community of Hipstagraphers.

The little app for learning French numbers, Les Nombres for iPhone, has been updated to version 1.4! This version brings you a revamped user interface, scoring and the possibility to tweet your high score. It looks like this: It still speaks French to you and it still works hard to get those numbers into your head, but in a new, easier to use package. For all the juicy details, head for the Les Nombres for iPhone home page, or go straight to the App Store to get it!

We are happy to announce that Les Nombres for iPhone is again available in the App Store! Version 1.3 of the application now costs US $0.99 (EUR 0.79 or equivalent), but it works the same as the previous version. So, if you already have version 1.2, there is no need to buy this version now. However, if you do buy it now, you will get a free update to the next major release of the application.

It’s Valentine’s Day, and HipStyles for iPhone is free for today only! HipStyles Valentine’s Day Special To celebrate and spread the love, we have reduced the price for exactly 100 per cent. This is your chance to save big! It’s available on the App Store, so download it and tell your friends and loved ones what we already know, and you soon will: that HipStyles is the ultimate companion app for Hipstamatic users.

We are pleased to announce that HipStyles version 1.0.2 is now available on the App Store! The update is free to existing customers.

Hipstamatic is the ultimate companion to Hipstamatic and iPhoneography enthusiasts. It searches your phone’s HipstaPrints photo library for shots taken with the lens / film / flash combo you select. It also fetches you fresh samples of others’ work from Instagram, so that you can get an idea of what your shots would look like with the given combo.

Mesdames et messieurs, nous vous présentons: ‎HipStyles en français ! Rechercher vos photos ‎Hipstamatic dans votre téléphone par l’équipement et les partager à ‎Instagram, ‎Twitter ou ‎Facebook. Téléchargez la nouvelle version 1.0.6 maintenant sur l’‎AppStore ! HipStyles 1.0.6 is now available on the App Store. As you may gather from the above, it was localized into French. We also updated the Japanese localization, and made a number of performance enhancements to the matching engine.

We are pleased to announce that HipStyles version 1.0.2 is now available on the App Store! The update is free to existing customers.

Hipstamatic is the ultimate companion to Hipstamatic and iPhoneography enthusiasts. It searches your phone’s HipstaPrints photo library for shots taken with the lens / film / flash combo you select. It also fetches you fresh samples of others’ work from Instagram, so that you can get an idea of what your shots would look like with the given combo.

The vCard format has served us well for encoding and exchanging contact information, but there is a better alternative – jCard. In this post I’ll describe why I think jCard can be better than vCard, and should be adopted by every software vendor who deals with contacts. Both vCard and jCard are text-based formats, but whereas vCard has a unique legacy grammar, jCard is based on JSON. They both represent essentially the same data model that describes contact information: name, phone number, address, e-mail, and so on.

In this installment of “Functional programming without feeling stupid” I would like to show you how to define things in Clojure. Values and function applications are all well and good, but if we can’t give them symbolic names, we need to keep repeating them over and over.

Before we start naming things, let’s have a look at how Clojure integrates with Java. I’m assuming you are still in the REPL, or have started it again with lein repl.

Track 1: “If anyone should ask / We are mated”

As it happens, Clojure’s core library is lean and focused on manipulating the data structures of the language, so many things are deferred to the underlying Java machinery as a rule. For example, mathematical computation is typically done using the static methods in the java.lang.Math class:

user=> (java.lang.Math/sqrt 5.0)
2.23606797749979

As you can see, this is a function application like we have already seen in Part 1, but this time the function we are using is the sqrt static method in the java.lang.Math class.

Java 7 acquired Unicode character names, and they are accessed through

the getName method in the java.lang.Character class. This is no mean feat, since there are over 110,000 characters in the Unicode standard, and each of them has a name (although some of them are algorithmically generated). To find out the canonical character name of a Unicode character, such as the euro currency symbol, you would use the getName static method:

user=> (java.lang.Character/getName \u20ac)
ClassCastException java.lang.Character cannot be cast to java.lang.Number user/eval703 (NO_SOURCE_FILE:1)

Hey, what’s wrong? Well, if you look up the documentation of java.lang.Character.getName, you will find out that it takes an int value as an argument, not a character. You can actually do this check from inside the REPL:

user=> (javadoc java.lang.Character)
true

The REPL doesn’t seem to do much, but you should now have a new web browser window or tab open, with the JavaDoc of the java.lang.Character class loaded up. That’s what the REPL meant when it said

Javadoc: (javadoc java-object-or-class-here)

when it started up. The getName method does need an int value, so let’s try something else:

user=> (java.lang.Character/getName (int \u20ac))
"EURO SIGN"

All right! How about another one:

user=> (java.lang.Character/getName 67)
"LATIN CAPITAL LETTER C"

Well, some say that Clojure is the new C.

In my recent post Functional Programming Without Feeling Stupid I took a quick look at how functional programming can be a little off-putting for the non-initiated. I promised to provide some examples of my own first steps with FP, and now I would like to present some to you.

Advocates of functional programming often refer to increased programmer productivity. At least some of that can be attributed to the REPL, or the Read-Evaluate-Print Loop. We are basically talking about an environment which accepts and parses any code you type in, and gives you a place to experiment and see results quickly. Before interpreted or semi-interpreted languages like Python, Java and JavaScript became mainstream, the typical repeating cycle in software development was Compile-Link-Execute, and debugging meant observing special output on the console. In the 1990s integrated debuggers with watches and breakpoints became the norm, but long before that Lisp-like languages already had a REPL, and Python also acquired one.

If you are thinking about getting intimate with Clojure, you will need to get to know the REPL. It is your playground, and will always be, even if you later start packaging and organizing your code.

Clojure depends on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and is actually distributed as a normal JAR file (Java ARchive), like most Java libraries are. You can start Clojure from the JAR, but you will save yourself some trouble and prepare for the future if you install Leiningen, the dependency management tool for Clojure. It is simple to install and run, and I will assume that you will follow the instructions on the Leiningen web site sooner or later. Now would be a good time.

When you’re done with the installation, you only need to say

lein repl

to start a Clojure REPL. I’m using OS X, so what I describe here was done from Terminal. You don’t need to create a project with Leiningen if you just want to play around in the REPL.

Of course, if you don’t have Java installed, you need to get it first. Refer to the Java web site of Oracle for details as necessary. Furthermore, some of the things I will describe require Java version 7 or later.

Apart from hard-coding “Hello, world!”, another bad habit you may have picked up when you learned programming is constructing user-visible messages from parts: strings, numbers and other data, concatenated together.

For example, say that you had to show the user how many unread messages there are in a given mailbox. Let’s assume that mailboxName contains the name of the mailbox, and messageCount holds the number of unread messages. In Java, you might be tempted to whip up a user-visible message like this:

String message = "There are " + messageCount + " unread messages in mailbox '" + mailboxName + "'";

This is not the way to do it in an international application. Let’s find out why, and have a look at a better and much more future-proof way of doing it.

Many introductory programming courses start with a very simple first program, the traditional “hello world”. It is intended to teach how to edit, compile and run a program in a new programming environment using a simplified context, and it serves its purpose quite well. Unfortunately, the simple practice used in storing and displaying the text is quite contrary to a basic principle of software internationalization.

The vCard format has served us well for encoding and exchanging contact information, but there is a better alternative – jCard. In this post I’ll describe why I think jCard can be better than vCard, and should be adopted by every software vendor who deals with contacts. Both vCard and jCard are text-based formats, but whereas vCard has a unique legacy grammar, jCard is based on JSON. They both represent essentially the same data model that describes contact information: name, phone number, address, e-mail, and so on.

BusMonTRE on pysäkkiavustinohjelma älypuhelimille. Se on tehty tarjoamaan helppo tapa selvittää milloin kulkee bussi käyttäjää lähellä olevalta pysäkiltä Tampereen joukkoliikenteen toiminta-alueella (johon kuuluu Tampereen lisäksi useita ympäristökuntia). Tähän tarkoitukseen se käyttää Tampereen kaupungin tarjoamaa avointa dataa sekä Tampereen joukkoliikenteen ylläpitämää sinistä virtuaalimonitoria. BusMonTRE on tällä hetkellä saatavana iOS-, Android- ja Windows Phone -älypuhelimille. Tässä kirjoituksessa kerron hieman ohjelman taustoista sekä tulevaisuuden kehitysnäkymistä.

Virtuaalimonitori omaan tarpeeseen

Nettisivupalveluna toimiva sininen virtuaalimonitori on ollut käytössä Tampereella jo pitkään. Tavaratalot ja pienemmät liikkeet ovat käyttäneet sitä tiloissaan esimerkiksi näyttämällä isolla televisioruudulla asiakkailleen lähimmältä pysäkiltä kulkevien bussien tietoja. Kaikiilla Tampereen joukkoliikenteen pysäkeillä on sekä nimi että numerokoodi, ja virtuaalimonitorin saa helposti näyttämään yhtä tai useampaa haluttua pysäkkiä tämän numerokoodin avulla.

Sain ajatuksen BusMonTRE:sta jo vuonna 2011, mutta silloin en vielä ryhtynyt suunnittelemaan sovellusta, vaan käytin omissa laitteissani muutamaa valmiiksi leivottua nettiosoitetta, joilla sain kätevästi haluamani monitorinäytön nettiselaimeen. Osallistuin vuosina 2012-2013 useaan avoimen datan tapahtumaan Tampereella, ollessani muutenkin aktiivisesti mukana Tampereen startup-yhteisössä. Eräässä näistä tapahtumista Tampereen joukkoliikenteen edustaja antoi vahvan signaalin siitä, että heidän intresseissään ei ole kehittää sovelluksia itse, mutta he tarjoavat datan ilmaiseksi sovelluskehittäjien käyttöön.

Tampereen seudun joukkoliikenteessä tehdään mittava uudistus 30.6.2014. Liikennealue jaetaan maksuvyöhykkeisiin, ja linjasto sekä sen numerointi muuttuvat. Tarkempia tietoja uudistuksesta voit lukea joukkoliikennealueella talouksiin jaetusta Sinisten bussien matkassa -lehdestä, uudesta vuoden 2014 kesäaikataulukirjasta sekä Tampereen joukkoliikenteen nettisivuilta. Uudistus vaikuttaa myös BusMonTRE-pysäkkiavustinohjelmaan, joka on saatavana iPhone-, Android- ja Windows Phone -puhelimille. Viimeisimmässä 0.3-versiossa lisättiin tiedot siitä, mitkä linjat kulkevat minkäkin pysäkin kautta. Kuten kaikki BusMonTRE:n käyttämä aineisto, tämäkin tieto perustuu Tampereen joukkoliikenteen avoimena datana julkaisemiin tiedostoihin ja rajapintoihin.

BusMonTRE on helppokäyttöinen pysäkkiavustin Tampereen joukkoliikenteen käyttäjille. Se näyttää sinulle juuri sen tiedon, jonka useimmiten tarvitset kun olet lähdössä jonnekin päin Tamperetta bussilla. BusMonTRE ei ole reittiopas, eikä se näytä liikkuvia palloja kartalla (muun muassa siksi, että bussit eivät ole pallonmuotoisia). Kokeile sitä, ja huomaat, että se on helpompi, fiksumpi ja nopeampi kuin monet bussien liikkumista seurailevat ohjelmat. Ohjelman tehtävä on vastata kysymykseen: “milloin menee seuraava bussi tästä läheltä?” Sen selvittämiseksi BusMonTRE vertaa sijaintiasi Tampereen joukkoliikenteen pysäkkien sijainteihin, ja näyttää sinulle listan sinua lähimpänä olevista pysäkeistä.

Back in 1998 or so, I wrote a CD player application for Microsoft Windows in Borland Delphi. It was for a magazine tutorial article, and I wanted a cool LCD-like display to show track elapsed and remaining time. There was a good one available for Delphi, called LCDLabel, written by Peter Czidlina (if you’re reading this, thanks once more for your cooperation). I’ve been thinking about doing a modern version of the LCD display component for several times over the years, and I even got pretty far with one for OS X in 2010, but then abandoned it because of other projects.

Ohjelmistoyrittäjä, tiedetäänkö sinun yrityksessäsi miten tehdä sovelluksia, jotka on helppo sovittaa eri kielille ja kulttuureille? Lokalisointi on ohjelman käyttöliittymässä esiintyvien tekstien ja kuvien sovittamista eri kielille. Sen tekevät yleensä käännöstoimistot eri toimeksiannosta kun ohjelma alkaa olla valmis julkaisuun. Pelkkä tekstien käännättäminen ei kuitenkaan riitä, vaan ohjelmisto pitäisi laatia alusta pitäen sellaiseksi, että käännösten hallinnointi on luonteva ja toimiva osa ohjelmistoprosessia. Lisäksi ohjelmiston sovittaminen moniin eri kulttuureihin vaatii muutakin kuin sisällön kääntämistä: esimerkiksi päiväykset ja kellonajat sekä luvut ja rahasummat pitää esittää kohdemaan tavalla.

Taittuuko ohjelmointi sinulta mennen tullen, mutta osaaminen ei juuri nyt vastaa tämän päivän tarpeisiin? Ohjelmistoalalla teknologiat tulevat ja menevät, mutta aina pääsee kärryille. Anna Conifer Coaching -palvelun oraakkelin kertoa sinulle mikä on nyt hip ja pop, ja millä saa oikeasti aikaan: Web-palveluja Mobiilisovelluksia Serverisoftaa Data-analyysiä Internet of Thingsiä – eli Mitä Softantekijän Kannattaa Opetella Juuri Nyt, Ja Miten! Ei hypeä, vaan vastaamista todellisiin tarpeisiin. Palkattavuutta CV:si ja kiinnostustesi perusteella.

Konesoitto on digitaalisen musiikkiteknologian opas netissä, selvällä suomen kielellä. Jos teet musiikkia digitaalisilla välineillä – tietokoneohjelmilla, mobiililaitteilla, syntesoijilla, rumpukoneilla, grooveboxeilla – ja tarvitset johdatusta ykkösten ja nollien muuttamisessa musiikiksi, ‎Konesoitto on sinulle. Löydät Konesoiton nettiosoitteesta http://konesoitto.com, ja Twitteristä nimellä @konesoitto. Siellä sekä Konesoiton Facebook-sivulla voit ehdottaa juttuaiheita ja kertoa mielipiteesi. Konesoiton tuottaa Conifer Productions Oy, ja sen vastaava toimittaja on Jere Käpyaho. Sivusto on Musikhaus Thomannin linkkipartneri.

Taittuuko ohjelmointi sinulta mennen tullen, mutta osaaminen ei juuri nyt vastaa tämän päivän tarpeisiin? Ohjelmistoalalla teknologiat tulevat ja menevät, mutta aina pääsee kärryille. Anna Conifer Coaching -palvelun oraakkelin kertoa sinulle mikä on nyt hip ja pop, ja millä saa oikeasti aikaan: Web-palveluja Mobiilisovelluksia Serverisoftaa Data-analyysiä Internet of Thingsiä – eli Mitä Softantekijän Kannattaa Opetella Juuri Nyt, Ja Miten! Ei hypeä, vaan vastaamista todellisiin tarpeisiin. Palkattavuutta CV:si ja kiinnostustesi perusteella.

Back in 1998 or so, I wrote a CD player application for Microsoft Windows in Borland Delphi. It was for a magazine tutorial article, and I wanted a cool LCD-like display to show track elapsed and remaining time. There was a good one available for Delphi, called LCDLabel, written by Peter Czidlina (if you’re reading this, thanks once more for your cooperation). I’ve been thinking about doing a modern version of the LCD display component for several times over the years, and I even got pretty far with one for OS X in 2010, but then abandoned it because of other projects.

Les Nombres, the little app that wants to teach you elementary French numbers, has been updated to version 1.5, and is now available on the App Store. The update is free to existing customers. You are presented with a randomly chosen French number from zero to 100, in writing, and given three alternatives to choose from. You can listen to the number by tapping the Listen button. To get another number, tap Another.

About one year ago I wrote a multi-part tutorial on Clojure programming, describing how I wrote a small utility called ucdump (available on GitHub). Here are links to all the parts: Part 1: The Clojure REPL Part 2: Definitions Part 3: Higher-order functions Part 4: Logic Part 5: Project However, Carin Meier’s Living Clojure is excellent in many ways. Get it from O’Reilly (we’re an affiliate): My little tutorial started with part zero, in which I lamented how functional programming is made to appear unlearnable by mere mortals, and it kind of snowballed from there.

Welcome to the third installment of “Functional programming without feeling stupid”! I originally started to describe my own learnings about FP in general, and Clojure in particular, and soon found myself writing a kind of Clojure tutorial or introduction. It may not be as comprehensive as others out there, and I still don’t think of it as a tutorial — it’s more like a description of a process, and the documented evolution of a tool.

I wanted to use Clojure “in anger”, and found out that I was learning new and interesting stuff quickly. I wanted to share what I’ve learned in the hope that others may find it useful.

Some of the stuff I have done and described here might not be the most optimal, but I see nothing obviously wrong with my approach. Maybe you do; if that is the case, tell me about it in the comments, or contact me otherwise. But please be nice and constructive, because…

…in Part 0 I wrote about how some people may feel put off by the air of “smarter than thou” that sometimes floats around functional programming. I’m hoping to present the subject in a friendly way, because much of the techniques are not obvious to someone (like me) conditioned with a couple of decades of imperative, object-oriented programming. Not nearly as funny as Learn You a Haskell For Great Good, and not as zany as Clojure for the Brave and True — just friendly, and hopefully lucid.

xkcd 1270: Functional. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial License. This is a company blog, so it is kind of commercial by definition. Is that a problem?

In Part 1 we played around with the Clojure REPL, and in Part 2 we started making definitions and actually got some useful results. In this third part we’re going to take a look at Clojure functions and how to use them, and create our own — because that’s what functional programming is all about.

In this installment of “Functional programming without feeling stupid” I would like to show you how to define things in Clojure. Values and function applications are all well and good, but if we can’t give them symbolic names, we need to keep repeating them over and over.

Before we start naming things, let’s have a look at how Clojure integrates with Java. I’m assuming you are still in the REPL, or have started it again with lein repl.

Track 1: “If anyone should ask / We are mated”

As it happens, Clojure’s core library is lean and focused on manipulating the data structures of the language, so many things are deferred to the underlying Java machinery as a rule. For example, mathematical computation is typically done using the static methods in the java.lang.Math class:

user=> (java.lang.Math/sqrt 5.0)
2.23606797749979

As you can see, this is a function application like we have already seen in Part 1, but this time the function we are using is the sqrt static method in the java.lang.Math class.

Java 7 acquired Unicode character names, and they are accessed through

the getName method in the java.lang.Character class. This is no mean feat, since there are over 110,000 characters in the Unicode standard, and each of them has a name (although some of them are algorithmically generated). To find out the canonical character name of a Unicode character, such as the euro currency symbol, you would use the getName static method:

user=> (java.lang.Character/getName \u20ac)
ClassCastException java.lang.Character cannot be cast to java.lang.Number user/eval703 (NO_SOURCE_FILE:1)

Hey, what’s wrong? Well, if you look up the documentation of java.lang.Character.getName, you will find out that it takes an int value as an argument, not a character. You can actually do this check from inside the REPL:

user=> (javadoc java.lang.Character)
true

The REPL doesn’t seem to do much, but you should now have a new web browser window or tab open, with the JavaDoc of the java.lang.Character class loaded up. That’s what the REPL meant when it said

Javadoc: (javadoc java-object-or-class-here)

when it started up. The getName method does need an int value, so let’s try something else:

user=> (java.lang.Character/getName (int \u20ac))
"EURO SIGN"

All right! How about another one:

user=> (java.lang.Character/getName 67)
"LATIN CAPITAL LETTER C"

Well, some say that Clojure is the new C.

In my recent post Functional Programming Without Feeling Stupid I took a quick look at how functional programming can be a little off-putting for the non-initiated. I promised to provide some examples of my own first steps with FP, and now I would like to present some to you.

Advocates of functional programming often refer to increased programmer productivity. At least some of that can be attributed to the REPL, or the Read-Evaluate-Print Loop. We are basically talking about an environment which accepts and parses any code you type in, and gives you a place to experiment and see results quickly. Before interpreted or semi-interpreted languages like Python, Java and JavaScript became mainstream, the typical repeating cycle in software development was Compile-Link-Execute, and debugging meant observing special output on the console. In the 1990s integrated debuggers with watches and breakpoints became the norm, but long before that Lisp-like languages already had a REPL, and Python also acquired one.

If you are thinking about getting intimate with Clojure, you will need to get to know the REPL. It is your playground, and will always be, even if you later start packaging and organizing your code.

Clojure depends on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and is actually distributed as a normal JAR file (Java ARchive), like most Java libraries are. You can start Clojure from the JAR, but you will save yourself some trouble and prepare for the future if you install Leiningen, the dependency management tool for Clojure. It is simple to install and run, and I will assume that you will follow the instructions on the Leiningen web site sooner or later. Now would be a good time.

When you’re done with the installation, you only need to say

lein repl

to start a Clojure REPL. I’m using OS X, so what I describe here was done from Terminal. You don’t need to create a project with Leiningen if you just want to play around in the REPL.

Of course, if you don’t have Java installed, you need to get it first. Refer to the Java web site of Oracle for details as necessary. Furthermore, some of the things I will describe require Java version 7 or later.

If you follow software design trends (yes, they exist), you may have noticed an increasing amount of buzz about functional programming, and particularly the Clojure language. While functional programming is hard to define, almost everyone mentions pure functions, the lack of side effects and state, and easy parallelisation. As for Clojure, it is all about (a kind of) Lisp running on the Java Virtual Machine (and .NET, and transformed to JavaScript).

I’m somewhat convinced that functional programming is at least worth knowing about and trying out, even if you don’t expect to fully convert. It has been said that learning about the functional paradigm makes you a better programmer in your current imperative language. Functional languages reduce accidental complexity, and that helps you focus.

“Whoop de doo, what does it all mean, Basil?”

If you have a background in imperative languages, you will have an interesting time if and when you start digging into functional programming, because whatever else it is, it’s different. And I’m not talking about syntax only, but most of what you do. If you need to add an item to a list, you construct a new list with the new item appended to the previous list (no, it is not as inefficient as it sounds, because there is great stuff under the hood to handle that). This is because immutability is one of the cornerstones of functional programming. If you can’t change something after it is created, there is no state to mess up. You program with values, not stateful objects.

I see I’m getting myself tricked into presenting a definition of functional programming, when that has been done better elsewhere. For pointers, see Michael Fogus’ 10 Technical Papers Every Programmer Should Read (At Least Twice), including the classic “Why Functional Programming Matters” by John Hughes. But I actually wanted to talk about something else.

Python is one of the friendliest general-purpose programming languages out there. It is free to use, well supported and used by many big companies. Since its introduction in 1991, it may not have taken the world by storm, but has gained a huge share of programmers’ interest. As of this writing (November 2014), Python is number 8 on the TIOBE Index. Recently I have been studying bioinformatics, and in the course of my studies I have met many people who are learning to program for the first time, and doing it with Python.

The little app for learning French numbers, Les Nombres for iPhone, has been updated to version 1.4! This version brings you a revamped user interface, scoring and the possibility to tweet your high score. It looks like this: It still speaks French to you and it still works hard to get those numbers into your head, but in a new, easier to use package. For all the juicy details, head for the Les Nombres for iPhone home page, or go straight to the App Store to get it!

We are happy to announce that Les Nombres for iPhone is again available in the App Store! Version 1.3 of the application now costs US $0.99 (EUR 0.79 or equivalent), but it works the same as the previous version. So, if you already have version 1.2, there is no need to buy this version now. However, if you do buy it now, you will get a free update to the next major release of the application.

In the last four installments of Functional programming without feeling stupid I’ve slowly built up a small utility called ucdump with Clojure. Experimentiing and developing with the Clojure REPL is fun, but now it’s time to give some structure to the utility. I’ll package it up as a Leiningen project and create a standalone JAR for executing with the Java runtime.

Creating a new project with Leiningen

You can use Leiningen to create a skeleton project quickly. In my project’s root directory, I’ll say:

lein new app ucdump

Leiningen will respond with:

Generating a project called ucdump based on the 'app' template.

The result is a directory called ucdump, which contains:

.gitignore   README.md    project.clj  src/
LICENSE      doc/         resources/   test/

For now I’m are most interested in the project file, project.clj, which is actually a Clojure source file, and the src directory, which is intended for the app’s actual source files.

Leiningen creates a directory called src/ucdump and seeds it with a core.clj file, but that’s not what actually what I want, for two reasons:

• I want ucdump to be a good Clojure citizen, so I’m going to put it in a namespace

  called com.coniferproductions.ucdump.

• My Git repository for ucdump also contains the original Python version of the application, which is in <project-root>/python, and I want the Clojure version to live in <<em>project-root</em>>/clojure.

Les Nombres, the little app that wants to teach you elementary French numbers, has been updated to version 1.5, and is now available on the App Store. The update is free to existing customers. You are presented with a randomly chosen French number from zero to 100, in writing, and given three alternatives to choose from. You can listen to the number by tapping the Listen button. To get another number, tap Another.

Tampereen seudun joukkoliikenteessä tehdään mittava uudistus 30.6.2014. Liikennealue jaetaan maksuvyöhykkeisiin, ja linjasto sekä sen numerointi muuttuvat. Tarkempia tietoja uudistuksesta voit lukea joukkoliikennealueella talouksiin jaetusta Sinisten bussien matkassa -lehdestä, uudesta vuoden 2014 kesäaikataulukirjasta sekä Tampereen joukkoliikenteen nettisivuilta. Uudistus vaikuttaa myös BusMonTRE-pysäkkiavustinohjelmaan, joka on saatavana iPhone-, Android- ja Windows Phone -puhelimille. Viimeisimmässä 0.3-versiossa lisättiin tiedot siitä, mitkä linjat kulkevat minkäkin pysäkin kautta. Kuten kaikki BusMonTRE:n käyttämä aineisto, tämäkin tieto perustuu Tampereen joukkoliikenteen avoimena datana julkaisemiin tiedostoihin ja rajapintoihin.

No matter how handy graphical user interfaces are, the good old command line remains a useful tool for performing various low-level data manipulation and system administration tasks. It is the fallback when you need to do something that has no way of graphical control. Being much more expressive and open-ended than a predefined set of controls, the command shell is the ultimate control environment for your computer. Data science has become one of the most intensely practised computer applications, so it is no wonder that it also benefits greatly from the hands-on control approach of the command line shell.

In my recent post Functional Programming Without Feeling Stupid I took a quick look at how functional programming can be a little off-putting for the non-initiated. I promised to provide some examples of my own first steps with FP, and now I would like to present some to you.

Advocates of functional programming often refer to increased programmer productivity. At least some of that can be attributed to the REPL, or the Read-Evaluate-Print Loop. We are basically talking about an environment which accepts and parses any code you type in, and gives you a place to experiment and see results quickly. Before interpreted or semi-interpreted languages like Python, Java and JavaScript became mainstream, the typical repeating cycle in software development was Compile-Link-Execute, and debugging meant observing special output on the console. In the 1990s integrated debuggers with watches and breakpoints became the norm, but long before that Lisp-like languages already had a REPL, and Python also acquired one.

If you are thinking about getting intimate with Clojure, you will need to get to know the REPL. It is your playground, and will always be, even if you later start packaging and organizing your code.

Clojure depends on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and is actually distributed as a normal JAR file (Java ARchive), like most Java libraries are. You can start Clojure from the JAR, but you will save yourself some trouble and prepare for the future if you install Leiningen, the dependency management tool for Clojure. It is simple to install and run, and I will assume that you will follow the instructions on the Leiningen web site sooner or later. Now would be a good time.

When you’re done with the installation, you only need to say

lein repl

to start a Clojure REPL. I’m using OS X, so what I describe here was done from Terminal. You don’t need to create a project with Leiningen if you just want to play around in the REPL.

Of course, if you don’t have Java installed, you need to get it first. Refer to the Java web site of Oracle for details as necessary. Furthermore, some of the things I will describe require Java version 7 or later.

Ohjelmistoyrittäjä, tiedetäänkö sinun yrityksessäsi miten tehdä sovelluksia, jotka on helppo sovittaa eri kielille ja kulttuureille? Lokalisointi on ohjelman käyttöliittymässä esiintyvien tekstien ja kuvien sovittamista eri kielille. Sen tekevät yleensä käännöstoimistot eri toimeksiannosta kun ohjelma alkaa olla valmis julkaisuun. Pelkkä tekstien käännättäminen ei kuitenkaan riitä, vaan ohjelmisto pitäisi laatia alusta pitäen sellaiseksi, että käännösten hallinnointi on luonteva ja toimiva osa ohjelmistoprosessia. Lisäksi ohjelmiston sovittaminen moniin eri kulttuureihin vaatii muutakin kuin sisällön kääntämistä: esimerkiksi päiväykset ja kellonajat sekä luvut ja rahasummat pitää esittää kohdemaan tavalla.

If you are programming, and you are still not using any form of version control, you really have no excuse. There are many benefits to being able to keep track of your code and try out various branches, even if you are the only programmer in the project. If you are collaborating with someone, it soon becomes nearly impossible (or at least very time-consuming) to deal with various versions and changes.

Of all the version control systems I’ve tried over the years (CVS, Subversion, a little bit of Mercurial, and Git) it seems that Git has “won” in a sense. There is a sizable open-source community born around GitHub (and Bitbucket) for which Git works very well indeed. Also many programming tools have built-in or plug-in support for Git, so you don’t even have to use command-line tools for managing your source code repositories if you don’t want to.

For open-source development, GitHub is the obvious choice. If you’re doing closed source, or you think your code isn’t ready for public scrutiny, Bitbucket gives you unlimited private repositories. I’m currently using GitHub to collaborate on some private repositories, which you can get with a paid plan, and Bitbucket for my closed-source app projects.

In a spirited attempt to really learn to use the tools of my trade, I wanted to take some time to better learn Git for version control (and also dive deeper into Xcode, but that is another story).

Earlier I’ve occasionally been using the fine tome Version Control with Git, 2nd Edition* by Jon Loeliger and Matthew McCullough to learn the basics, but I wanted to really dive in. I’ve already mastered the very basics, and have also used remote repositories with both GitHub and BitBucket, but there is a lot more to learn to be able to really take advantage of Git.

* Disclaimer: I’m an O’Reilly affiliate, and the links above take you to the O’Reilly online bookstore, in the hope that you purchase something, so that I will get a small commission.

No matter how handy graphical user interfaces are, the good old command line remains a useful tool for performing various low-level data manipulation and system administration tasks. It is the fallback when you need to do something that has no way of graphical control. Being much more expressive and open-ended than a predefined set of controls, the command shell is the ultimate control environment for your computer. Data science has become one of the most intensely practised computer applications, so it is no wonder that it also benefits greatly from the hands-on control approach of the command line shell.

Back in 1998 or so, I wrote a CD player application for Microsoft Windows in Borland Delphi. It was for a magazine tutorial article, and I wanted a cool LCD-like display to show track elapsed and remaining time. There was a good one available for Delphi, called LCDLabel, written by Peter Czidlina (if you’re reading this, thanks once more for your cooperation). I’ve been thinking about doing a modern version of the LCD display component for several times over the years, and I even got pretty far with one for OS X in 2010, but then abandoned it because of other projects.

Apart from hard-coding “Hello, world!”, another bad habit you may have picked up when you learned programming is constructing user-visible messages from parts: strings, numbers and other data, concatenated together.

For example, say that you had to show the user how many unread messages there are in a given mailbox. Let’s assume that mailboxName contains the name of the mailbox, and messageCount holds the number of unread messages. In Java, you might be tempted to whip up a user-visible message like this:

String message = "There are " + messageCount + " unread messages in mailbox '" + mailboxName + "'";

This is not the way to do it in an international application. Let’s find out why, and have a look at a better and much more future-proof way of doing it.

HipStyles was removed from the App Store over a year ago, but from time to time I still think it could be resurrected. However, after taking a long hard look at Apple’s new Photos framework in iOS 9, I think it is just not feasible anymore. HipStyles and the Assets Library Framework HipStyles was a photo finder for Hipstamatic and Oggl photos, looking for snaps taken with some Hipstamatic lens, film or flash of your choosing.

Picture this: a friend of yours has bought a nice vintage synth with great sounds, and wouldn’t you like to use those sounds in your own music-making? If only you could sample those sounds, but it seems like too much trouble… You would need to persuade your friend to let you borrow the synth, or you would need to visit them with your music-making setup, which nowadays is basically an iPad and an iOS-compatible audio interface.

Mono is the open source .NET runtime for Windows, Linux, and OS X. It consists of the Mono runtime environment, libraries, and C# and F# compilers. Recently Mono has gained extra popularity due to Microsoft’s purchase of Xamarin, the makers of a cross-platform toolkit of the same name. If you just want to create command-line .NET applications on the Mac, and don’t need Xamarin.Forms or the mobile tools, you can just install Mono and start hacking away.

Konesoitto on digitaalisen musiikkiteknologian opas netissä, selvällä suomen kielellä. Jos teet musiikkia digitaalisilla välineillä – tietokoneohjelmilla, mobiililaitteilla, syntesoijilla, rumpukoneilla, grooveboxeilla – ja tarvitset johdatusta ykkösten ja nollien muuttamisessa musiikiksi, ‎Konesoitto on sinulle. Löydät Konesoiton nettiosoitteesta http://konesoitto.com, ja Twitteristä nimellä @konesoitto. Siellä sekä Konesoiton Facebook-sivulla voit ehdottaa juttuaiheita ja kertoa mielipiteesi. Konesoiton tuottaa Conifer Productions Oy, ja sen vastaava toimittaja on Jere Käpyaho. Sivusto on Musikhaus Thomannin linkkipartneri.

Taittuuko ohjelmointi sinulta mennen tullen, mutta osaaminen ei juuri nyt vastaa tämän päivän tarpeisiin? Ohjelmistoalalla teknologiat tulevat ja menevät, mutta aina pääsee kärryille. Anna Conifer Coaching -palvelun oraakkelin kertoa sinulle mikä on nyt hip ja pop, ja millä saa oikeasti aikaan: Web-palveluja Mobiilisovelluksia Serverisoftaa Data-analyysiä Internet of Thingsiä – eli Mitä Softantekijän Kannattaa Opetella Juuri Nyt, Ja Miten! Ei hypeä, vaan vastaamista todellisiin tarpeisiin. Palkattavuutta CV:si ja kiinnostustesi perusteella.

The UEFA EURO 2012, or the European football championship, is close to the end of group stage as I write this. (That would be “soccer” to U.S. readers.) As usual, I have been delighted to notice that UEFA has done a great job in getting the names of the various international players presented as accurately as possible, both on the UEFA.com website and in the mobile apps they’ve published.

UEFA’s good track record with names has been going on for a long time; I first noticed this when I started to follow the UEFA Champions League in 2000, when I was already working with software internationalization, and knew enough to pay attention to these things.

In this post I’ll examine what it takes to pull off a task like this – which you may also need to do.

Taittuuko ohjelmointi sinulta mennen tullen, mutta osaaminen ei juuri nyt vastaa tämän päivän tarpeisiin? Ohjelmistoalalla teknologiat tulevat ja menevät, mutta aina pääsee kärryille. Anna Conifer Coaching -palvelun oraakkelin kertoa sinulle mikä on nyt hip ja pop, ja millä saa oikeasti aikaan: Web-palveluja Mobiilisovelluksia Serverisoftaa Data-analyysiä Internet of Thingsiä – eli Mitä Softantekijän Kannattaa Opetella Juuri Nyt, Ja Miten! Ei hypeä, vaan vastaamista todellisiin tarpeisiin. Palkattavuutta CV:si ja kiinnostustesi perusteella.

Drones, or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), be they quadcopters or other type of flyer, will become more “intelligent” as themselves or by forming swarms, as this TED Talk by Vijay Kumar at the University of Pennsylvania shows: [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ge3&#8211;1hOm1s] My interest in drones lies not in flying them myself live, because I’m a lousy pilot and don’t play games much anyway, but in making them follow a predetermined route and return back to the starting point – for example, surveying an object or estate, or even carrying cargo between waypoints.

For many of us, dates and times are absolutely essential in our daily lives. We make appointments, set deadlines, celebrate birthdays and anniversaries, and generally mark time using clocks and calendars.

What makes dates and times interesting from a programmer’s perspective is that while there is a standard time (the Coordinated Universal Time or UTC), there are multiple local time zones in use all over the world. A single instance in UTC has many local equivalents, and offsets between time zones and universal time are wild and wonderful.

Not only are time zones a little tricky, but there are also multiple local representations for an instance in local time. A representation in this context means the way it is printed in a daily newspaper, in the calendar, and indeed, on the screen of a computer or a mobile device. In the realm of internationalization (I18N) they are known as date and time formats.

The conventions for showing local time are well established, and the differences between them are significant enough to cause a lot of confusion if care is not taken. While it would be the most logical thing to do (thank you Mr. Spock), it is hardly practical to expect all the world’s population to adopt a single standard date and time format such as the ISO 8601 international standard notation in their daily lives. The national and linguistic conventions are very well established locally.

Just recently, Nokia launched new Windows Phone devices in their Lumia series. The company wanted to build anticipation before the announcement with short teaser videos which all marked the date of the launch: 05.09.2012. If you saw this date advertised early in the year, you might think it could mean either September 5th or May 9th this year. But which is it? 

Les Nombres, the little app that wants to teach you elementary French numbers, has been updated to version 1.5, and is now available on the App Store. The update is free to existing customers. You are presented with a randomly chosen French number from zero to 100, in writing, and given three alternatives to choose from. You can listen to the number by tapping the Listen button. To get another number, tap Another.

We are happy to announce that Les Nombres for iPhone is again available in the App Store! Version 1.3 of the application now costs US $0.99 (EUR 0.79 or equivalent), but it works the same as the previous version. So, if you already have version 1.2, there is no need to buy this version now. However, if you do buy it now, you will get a free update to the next major release of the application.

It all started with an idea, something to scratch a personal itch. I was learning elementary French, and realized that there is an algorithmic approach to generating the numbers. Not a very elegant algorithm, but one that could easily be turned into a computer program.

The idea turned into a function, and soon enough it turned into an iPhone app, now called Les Nombres and available from the App Store (and also for Windows Phone). My function takes a nonnegative integer and turns it into a French language string, which is displayed on the screen. It could be fed into a speech synthesizer, but in Les Nombres the numbers are recordings of a native French speaker, which I think is nice. (And I couldn’t use recordings of Apple’s “Virginie” voice from OS X anyway due to its license.)

To keep things simple, Les Nombres only deals with the numbers 0 to 100, even though my function could do up to 1,000 out of the box. It involves some 90 lines of Objective-C code, including two recursive calls. It was fun to write, and I learned something in the process, but ultimately I didn’t have to write it at all.

HipStyles was removed from the App Store over a year ago, but from time to time I still think it could be resurrected. However, after taking a long hard look at Apple’s new Photos framework in iOS 9, I think it is just not feasible anymore. HipStyles and the Assets Library Framework HipStyles was a photo finder for Hipstamatic and Oggl photos, looking for snaps taken with some Hipstamatic lens, film or flash of your choosing.

It’s Valentine’s Day, and HipStyles for iPhone is free for today only! HipStyles Valentine’s Day Special To celebrate and spread the love, we have reduced the price for exactly 100 per cent. This is your chance to save big! It’s available on the App Store, so download it and tell your friends and loved ones what we already know, and you soon will: that HipStyles is the ultimate companion app for Hipstamatic users.

It’s summer in the Northern Hemisphere, and at Mobile Monday Tampere tonight we are launching our Summer Specials 2012 offer for developers: Free one-hour visit to your application project Free half-day introduction to internationalization Get either one or both! See our Summer Specials 2012 page for terms and conditions. For more information, to schedule a time and to secure your seat, contact us. The theme of tonight’s Mobile Monday Tampere is multi-platform development, which is exactly what we do: if your project is based on iOS, Android or Windows Phone, we can advise you on how to make it world-ready.

HipStyles was removed from the App Store over a year ago, but from time to time I still think it could be resurrected. However, after taking a long hard look at Apple’s new Photos framework in iOS 9, I think it is just not feasible anymore. HipStyles and the Assets Library Framework HipStyles was a photo finder for Hipstamatic and Oggl photos, looking for snaps taken with some Hipstamatic lens, film or flash of your choosing.

HipStyles for iPhone, the friendly photo finder assistant for Hipstamatic enthusiasts, was recently updated to version 1.0.5, and is now available on the App Store. Since the recent launch of Hipstamatic Oggl we have been busy bringing HipStyles up to date in finding also the great shots you took with Oggl that end up in your iPhone’s camera roll. The recently released São Paulo HipstaPak was also quickly examined, and HipStyles was updated to find photos that use the new Madalena lens and Robusta film.

BusMonTRE on pysäkkiavustinohjelma älypuhelimille. Se on tehty tarjoamaan helppo tapa selvittää milloin kulkee bussi käyttäjää lähellä olevalta pysäkiltä Tampereen joukkoliikenteen toiminta-alueella (johon kuuluu Tampereen lisäksi useita ympäristökuntia). Tähän tarkoitukseen se käyttää Tampereen kaupungin tarjoamaa avointa dataa sekä Tampereen joukkoliikenteen ylläpitämää sinistä virtuaalimonitoria. BusMonTRE on tällä hetkellä saatavana iOS-, Android- ja Windows Phone -älypuhelimille. Tässä kirjoituksessa kerron hieman ohjelman taustoista sekä tulevaisuuden kehitysnäkymistä.

Virtuaalimonitori omaan tarpeeseen

Nettisivupalveluna toimiva sininen virtuaalimonitori on ollut käytössä Tampereella jo pitkään. Tavaratalot ja pienemmät liikkeet ovat käyttäneet sitä tiloissaan esimerkiksi näyttämällä isolla televisioruudulla asiakkailleen lähimmältä pysäkiltä kulkevien bussien tietoja. Kaikiilla Tampereen joukkoliikenteen pysäkeillä on sekä nimi että numerokoodi, ja virtuaalimonitorin saa helposti näyttämään yhtä tai useampaa haluttua pysäkkiä tämän numerokoodin avulla.

Sain ajatuksen BusMonTRE:sta jo vuonna 2011, mutta silloin en vielä ryhtynyt suunnittelemaan sovellusta, vaan käytin omissa laitteissani muutamaa valmiiksi leivottua nettiosoitetta, joilla sain kätevästi haluamani monitorinäytön nettiselaimeen. Osallistuin vuosina 2012-2013 useaan avoimen datan tapahtumaan Tampereella, ollessani muutenkin aktiivisesti mukana Tampereen startup-yhteisössä. Eräässä näistä tapahtumista Tampereen joukkoliikenteen edustaja antoi vahvan signaalin siitä, että heidän intresseissään ei ole kehittää sovelluksia itse, mutta he tarjoavat datan ilmaiseksi sovelluskehittäjien käyttöön.

Ohjelmistoyrittäjä, tiedetäänkö sinun yrityksessäsi miten tehdä sovelluksia, jotka on helppo sovittaa eri kielille ja kulttuureille? Lokalisointi on ohjelman käyttöliittymässä esiintyvien tekstien ja kuvien sovittamista eri kielille. Sen tekevät yleensä käännöstoimistot eri toimeksiannosta kun ohjelma alkaa olla valmis julkaisuun. Pelkkä tekstien käännättäminen ei kuitenkaan riitä, vaan ohjelmisto pitäisi laatia alusta pitäen sellaiseksi, että käännösten hallinnointi on luonteva ja toimiva osa ohjelmistoprosessia. Lisäksi ohjelmiston sovittaminen moniin eri kulttuureihin vaatii muutakin kuin sisällön kääntämistä: esimerkiksi päiväykset ja kellonajat sekä luvut ja rahasummat pitää esittää kohdemaan tavalla.

Taittuuko ohjelmointi sinulta mennen tullen, mutta osaaminen ei juuri nyt vastaa tämän päivän tarpeisiin? Ohjelmistoalalla teknologiat tulevat ja menevät, mutta aina pääsee kärryille. Anna Conifer Coaching -palvelun oraakkelin kertoa sinulle mikä on nyt hip ja pop, ja millä saa oikeasti aikaan: Web-palveluja Mobiilisovelluksia Serverisoftaa Data-analyysiä Internet of Thingsiä – eli Mitä Softantekijän Kannattaa Opetella Juuri Nyt, Ja Miten! Ei hypeä, vaan vastaamista todellisiin tarpeisiin. Palkattavuutta CV:si ja kiinnostustesi perusteella.

Drones, or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), be they quadcopters or other type of flyer, will become more “intelligent” as themselves or by forming swarms, as this TED Talk by Vijay Kumar at the University of Pennsylvania shows: [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ge3&#8211;1hOm1s] My interest in drones lies not in flying them myself live, because I’m a lousy pilot and don’t play games much anyway, but in making them follow a predetermined route and return back to the starting point – for example, surveying an object or estate, or even carrying cargo between waypoints.

Python is one of the friendliest general-purpose programming languages out there. It is free to use, well supported and used by many big companies. Since its introduction in 1991, it may not have taken the world by storm, but has gained a huge share of programmers’ interest. As of this writing (November 2014), Python is number 8 on the TIOBE Index. Recently I have been studying bioinformatics, and in the course of my studies I have met many people who are learning to program for the first time, and doing it with Python.

If you are programming, and you are still not using any form of version control, you really have no excuse. There are many benefits to being able to keep track of your code and try out various branches, even if you are the only programmer in the project. If you are collaborating with someone, it soon becomes nearly impossible (or at least very time-consuming) to deal with various versions and changes.

Of all the version control systems I’ve tried over the years (CVS, Subversion, a little bit of Mercurial, and Git) it seems that Git has “won” in a sense. There is a sizable open-source community born around GitHub (and Bitbucket) for which Git works very well indeed. Also many programming tools have built-in or plug-in support for Git, so you don’t even have to use command-line tools for managing your source code repositories if you don’t want to.

For open-source development, GitHub is the obvious choice. If you’re doing closed source, or you think your code isn’t ready for public scrutiny, Bitbucket gives you unlimited private repositories. I’m currently using GitHub to collaborate on some private repositories, which you can get with a paid plan, and Bitbucket for my closed-source app projects.

In a spirited attempt to really learn to use the tools of my trade, I wanted to take some time to better learn Git for version control (and also dive deeper into Xcode, but that is another story).

Earlier I’ve occasionally been using the fine tome Version Control with Git, 2nd Edition* by Jon Loeliger and Matthew McCullough to learn the basics, but I wanted to really dive in. I’ve already mastered the very basics, and have also used remote repositories with both GitHub and BitBucket, but there is a lot more to learn to be able to really take advantage of Git.

* Disclaimer: I’m an O’Reilly affiliate, and the links above take you to the O’Reilly online bookstore, in the hope that you purchase something, so that I will get a small commission.

Mono is the open source .NET runtime for Windows, Linux, and OS X. It consists of the Mono runtime environment, libraries, and C# and F# compilers. Recently Mono has gained extra popularity due to Microsoft’s purchase of Xamarin, the makers of a cross-platform toolkit of the same name. If you just want to create command-line .NET applications on the Mac, and don’t need Xamarin.Forms or the mobile tools, you can just install Mono and start hacking away.

If you are programming, and you are still not using any form of version control, you really have no excuse. There are many benefits to being able to keep track of your code and try out various branches, even if you are the only programmer in the project. If you are collaborating with someone, it soon becomes nearly impossible (or at least very time-consuming) to deal with various versions and changes.

Of all the version control systems I’ve tried over the years (CVS, Subversion, a little bit of Mercurial, and Git) it seems that Git has “won” in a sense. There is a sizable open-source community born around GitHub (and Bitbucket) for which Git works very well indeed. Also many programming tools have built-in or plug-in support for Git, so you don’t even have to use command-line tools for managing your source code repositories if you don’t want to.

For open-source development, GitHub is the obvious choice. If you’re doing closed source, or you think your code isn’t ready for public scrutiny, Bitbucket gives you unlimited private repositories. I’m currently using GitHub to collaborate on some private repositories, which you can get with a paid plan, and Bitbucket for my closed-source app projects.

In a spirited attempt to really learn to use the tools of my trade, I wanted to take some time to better learn Git for version control (and also dive deeper into Xcode, but that is another story).

Earlier I’ve occasionally been using the fine tome Version Control with Git, 2nd Edition* by Jon Loeliger and Matthew McCullough to learn the basics, but I wanted to really dive in. I’ve already mastered the very basics, and have also used remote repositories with both GitHub and BitBucket, but there is a lot more to learn to be able to really take advantage of Git.

* Disclaimer: I’m an O’Reilly affiliate, and the links above take you to the O’Reilly online bookstore, in the hope that you purchase something, so that I will get a small commission.

Drones, or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), be they quadcopters or other type of flyer, will become more “intelligent” as themselves or by forming swarms, as this TED Talk by Vijay Kumar at the University of Pennsylvania shows: [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ge3&#8211;1hOm1s] My interest in drones lies not in flying them myself live, because I’m a lousy pilot and don’t play games much anyway, but in making them follow a predetermined route and return back to the starting point – for example, surveying an object or estate, or even carrying cargo between waypoints.

Dear vintage digital photography enthusiasts, Hipstamatic photographers, Instagram users, we have great news for you. HipStyles for iPhone is available on the App Store! HipStyles is the ultimate companion for any Hipstamatic user. It lets you freely select combinations of Hipstamatic lenses, films and flashes, and search for matching photos on Instagram or inside your own HipstaPrints album in your phone. HipStyles taps into the endless stream of fresh images posted on Instagram by the ever-increasing community of Hipstagraphers.

HipStyles was removed from the App Store over a year ago, but from time to time I still think it could be resurrected. However, after taking a long hard look at Apple’s new Photos framework in iOS 9, I think it is just not feasible anymore. HipStyles and the Assets Library Framework HipStyles was a photo finder for Hipstamatic and Oggl photos, looking for snaps taken with some Hipstamatic lens, film or flash of your choosing.

We have skipped a few point releases of HipStyles in announcements, so here’s an update. HipStyles 1.0.9 is available on the App Store. It supports all the latest HipstaPaks as of October 2013. The development of HipStyles has taken a backseat recently since we have focused on introni. However, there have been some experiments with proper iOS 7 support and improvements to the photo matching, so maybe later this year something will surface.

No matter how handy graphical user interfaces are, the good old command line remains a useful tool for performing various low-level data manipulation and system administration tasks. It is the fallback when you need to do something that has no way of graphical control. Being much more expressive and open-ended than a predefined set of controls, the command shell is the ultimate control environment for your computer. Data science has become one of the most intensely practised computer applications, so it is no wonder that it also benefits greatly from the hands-on control approach of the command line shell.

Python is one of the friendliest general-purpose programming languages out there. It is free to use, well supported and used by many big companies. Since its introduction in 1991, it may not have taken the world by storm, but has gained a huge share of programmers’ interest. As of this writing (November 2014), Python is number 8 on the TIOBE Index. Recently I have been studying bioinformatics, and in the course of my studies I have met many people who are learning to program for the first time, and doing it with Python.

The vCard format has served us well for encoding and exchanging contact information, but there is a better alternative – jCard. In this post I’ll describe why I think jCard can be better than vCard, and should be adopted by every software vendor who deals with contacts. Both vCard and jCard are text-based formats, but whereas vCard has a unique legacy grammar, jCard is based on JSON. They both represent essentially the same data model that describes contact information: name, phone number, address, e-mail, and so on.

Drones, or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), be they quadcopters or other type of flyer, will become more “intelligent” as themselves or by forming swarms, as this TED Talk by Vijay Kumar at the University of Pennsylvania shows: [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ge3&#8211;1hOm1s] My interest in drones lies not in flying them myself live, because I’m a lousy pilot and don’t play games much anyway, but in making them follow a predetermined route and return back to the starting point – for example, surveying an object or estate, or even carrying cargo between waypoints.

HipStyles was removed from the App Store over a year ago, but from time to time I still think it could be resurrected. However, after taking a long hard look at Apple’s new Photos framework in iOS 9, I think it is just not feasible anymore. HipStyles and the Assets Library Framework HipStyles was a photo finder for Hipstamatic and Oggl photos, looking for snaps taken with some Hipstamatic lens, film or flash of your choosing.

About one year ago I wrote a multi-part tutorial on Clojure programming, describing how I wrote a small utility called ucdump (available on GitHub). Here are links to all the parts: Part 1: The Clojure REPL Part 2: Definitions Part 3: Higher-order functions Part 4: Logic Part 5: Project However, Carin Meier’s Living Clojure is excellent in many ways. Get it from O’Reilly (we’re an affiliate): My little tutorial started with part zero, in which I lamented how functional programming is made to appear unlearnable by mere mortals, and it kind of snowballed from there.

In the last four installments of Functional programming without feeling stupid I’ve slowly built up a small utility called ucdump with Clojure. Experimentiing and developing with the Clojure REPL is fun, but now it’s time to give some structure to the utility. I’ll package it up as a Leiningen project and create a standalone JAR for executing with the Java runtime.

Creating a new project with Leiningen

You can use Leiningen to create a skeleton project quickly. In my project’s root directory, I’ll say:

lein new app ucdump

Leiningen will respond with:

Generating a project called ucdump based on the 'app' template.

The result is a directory called ucdump, which contains:

.gitignore   README.md    project.clj  src/
LICENSE      doc/         resources/   test/

For now I’m are most interested in the project file, project.clj, which is actually a Clojure source file, and the src directory, which is intended for the app’s actual source files.

Leiningen creates a directory called src/ucdump and seeds it with a core.clj file, but that’s not what actually what I want, for two reasons:

• I want ucdump to be a good Clojure citizen, so I’m going to put it in a namespace

  called com.coniferproductions.ucdump.

• My Git repository for ucdump also contains the original Python version of the application, which is in <project-root>/python, and I want the Clojure version to live in <<em>project-root</em>>/clojure.

In the previous parts of “Functional programming without feeling stupid” we have slowly been building ucdump, a utility program for listing the Unicode codepoints and character names of characters in a string. In actual use, the string will be read from a UTF-8 encoded text file.

We don’t know yet how to read a text file in Clojure (well, you may know, but I only have a foggy idea), so we have been working with a single string. This is what we have so far:

(def test-str 
  "Na\u00EFve r\u00E9sum\u00E9s... for 0 \u20AC? Not bad!")
(def test-ch { :offset 0 :character \u20ac })
(def short-test-str "Na\u00EFve")

(defn character-name [x]
  (java.lang.Character/getName (int x)))

(defn character-line [pair]
  (let [ch (:character pair)]
    (format "%08d: U+%06X %s"
      (:offset pair) (int ch)
      (character-name ch))))
    
(defn character-lines [s]
  (let [offsets (repeat (count s) 0)
        pairs (map #(into {} {:offset %1 :character %2}) 
          offsets s)]
    (map character-line pairs)))

I’ve reformatted the code a bit to keep the lines short. You can copy and paste all of that in the Clojure REPL, and start looking at some strings in a new way:

user=> (character-lines "résumé")
("00000000: U+000072 LATIN SMALL LETTER R" 
"00000000: U+0000E9 LATIN SMALL LETTER E WITH ACUTE" 
"00000000: U+000073 LATIN SMALL LETTER S" 
"00000000: U+000075 LATIN SMALL LETTER U" 
"00000000: U+00006D LATIN SMALL LETTER M" 
"00000000: U+0000E9 LATIN SMALL LETTER E WITH ACUTE")

But we are still missing the actual offsets. Let’s fix that now.

Welcome to the third installment of “Functional programming without feeling stupid”! I originally started to describe my own learnings about FP in general, and Clojure in particular, and soon found myself writing a kind of Clojure tutorial or introduction. It may not be as comprehensive as others out there, and I still don’t think of it as a tutorial — it’s more like a description of a process, and the documented evolution of a tool.

I wanted to use Clojure “in anger”, and found out that I was learning new and interesting stuff quickly. I wanted to share what I’ve learned in the hope that others may find it useful.

Some of the stuff I have done and described here might not be the most optimal, but I see nothing obviously wrong with my approach. Maybe you do; if that is the case, tell me about it in the comments, or contact me otherwise. But please be nice and constructive, because…

…in Part 0 I wrote about how some people may feel put off by the air of “smarter than thou” that sometimes floats around functional programming. I’m hoping to present the subject in a friendly way, because much of the techniques are not obvious to someone (like me) conditioned with a couple of decades of imperative, object-oriented programming. Not nearly as funny as Learn You a Haskell For Great Good, and not as zany as Clojure for the Brave and True — just friendly, and hopefully lucid.

xkcd 1270: Functional. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial License. This is a company blog, so it is kind of commercial by definition. Is that a problem?

In Part 1 we played around with the Clojure REPL, and in Part 2 we started making definitions and actually got some useful results. In this third part we’re going to take a look at Clojure functions and how to use them, and create our own — because that’s what functional programming is all about.

In this installment of “Functional programming without feeling stupid” I would like to show you how to define things in Clojure. Values and function applications are all well and good, but if we can’t give them symbolic names, we need to keep repeating them over and over.

Before we start naming things, let’s have a look at how Clojure integrates with Java. I’m assuming you are still in the REPL, or have started it again with lein repl.

Track 1: “If anyone should ask / We are mated”

As it happens, Clojure’s core library is lean and focused on manipulating the data structures of the language, so many things are deferred to the underlying Java machinery as a rule. For example, mathematical computation is typically done using the static methods in the java.lang.Math class:

user=> (java.lang.Math/sqrt 5.0)
2.23606797749979

As you can see, this is a function application like we have already seen in Part 1, but this time the function we are using is the sqrt static method in the java.lang.Math class.

Java 7 acquired Unicode character names, and they are accessed through

the getName method in the java.lang.Character class. This is no mean feat, since there are over 110,000 characters in the Unicode standard, and each of them has a name (although some of them are algorithmically generated). To find out the canonical character name of a Unicode character, such as the euro currency symbol, you would use the getName static method:

user=> (java.lang.Character/getName \u20ac)
ClassCastException java.lang.Character cannot be cast to java.lang.Number user/eval703 (NO_SOURCE_FILE:1)

Hey, what’s wrong? Well, if you look up the documentation of java.lang.Character.getName, you will find out that it takes an int value as an argument, not a character. You can actually do this check from inside the REPL:

user=> (javadoc java.lang.Character)
true

The REPL doesn’t seem to do much, but you should now have a new web browser window or tab open, with the JavaDoc of the java.lang.Character class loaded up. That’s what the REPL meant when it said

Javadoc: (javadoc java-object-or-class-here)

when it started up. The getName method does need an int value, so let’s try something else:

user=> (java.lang.Character/getName (int \u20ac))
"EURO SIGN"

All right! How about another one:

user=> (java.lang.Character/getName 67)
"LATIN CAPITAL LETTER C"

Well, some say that Clojure is the new C.

In my recent post Functional Programming Without Feeling Stupid I took a quick look at how functional programming can be a little off-putting for the non-initiated. I promised to provide some examples of my own first steps with FP, and now I would like to present some to you.

Advocates of functional programming often refer to increased programmer productivity. At least some of that can be attributed to the REPL, or the Read-Evaluate-Print Loop. We are basically talking about an environment which accepts and parses any code you type in, and gives you a place to experiment and see results quickly. Before interpreted or semi-interpreted languages like Python, Java and JavaScript became mainstream, the typical repeating cycle in software development was Compile-Link-Execute, and debugging meant observing special output on the console. In the 1990s integrated debuggers with watches and breakpoints became the norm, but long before that Lisp-like languages already had a REPL, and Python also acquired one.

If you are thinking about getting intimate with Clojure, you will need to get to know the REPL. It is your playground, and will always be, even if you later start packaging and organizing your code.

Clojure depends on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and is actually distributed as a normal JAR file (Java ARchive), like most Java libraries are. You can start Clojure from the JAR, but you will save yourself some trouble and prepare for the future if you install Leiningen, the dependency management tool for Clojure. It is simple to install and run, and I will assume that you will follow the instructions on the Leiningen web site sooner or later. Now would be a good time.

When you’re done with the installation, you only need to say

lein repl

to start a Clojure REPL. I’m using OS X, so what I describe here was done from Terminal. You don’t need to create a project with Leiningen if you just want to play around in the REPL.

Of course, if you don’t have Java installed, you need to get it first. Refer to the Java web site of Oracle for details as necessary. Furthermore, some of the things I will describe require Java version 7 or later.

If you follow software design trends (yes, they exist), you may have noticed an increasing amount of buzz about functional programming, and particularly the Clojure language. While functional programming is hard to define, almost everyone mentions pure functions, the lack of side effects and state, and easy parallelisation. As for Clojure, it is all about (a kind of) Lisp running on the Java Virtual Machine (and .NET, and transformed to JavaScript).

I’m somewhat convinced that functional programming is at least worth knowing about and trying out, even if you don’t expect to fully convert. It has been said that learning about the functional paradigm makes you a better programmer in your current imperative language. Functional languages reduce accidental complexity, and that helps you focus.

“Whoop de doo, what does it all mean, Basil?”

If you have a background in imperative languages, you will have an interesting time if and when you start digging into functional programming, because whatever else it is, it’s different. And I’m not talking about syntax only, but most of what you do. If you need to add an item to a list, you construct a new list with the new item appended to the previous list (no, it is not as inefficient as it sounds, because there is great stuff under the hood to handle that). This is because immutability is one of the cornerstones of functional programming. If you can’t change something after it is created, there is no state to mess up. You program with values, not stateful objects.

I see I’m getting myself tricked into presenting a definition of functional programming, when that has been done better elsewhere. For pointers, see Michael Fogus’ 10 Technical Papers Every Programmer Should Read (At Least Twice), including the classic “Why Functional Programming Matters” by John Hughes. But I actually wanted to talk about something else.

Python is one of the friendliest general-purpose programming languages out there. It is free to use, well supported and used by many big companies. Since its introduction in 1991, it may not have taken the world by storm, but has gained a huge share of programmers’ interest. As of this writing (November 2014), Python is number 8 on the TIOBE Index. Recently I have been studying bioinformatics, and in the course of my studies I have met many people who are learning to program for the first time, and doing it with Python.

If you are programming, and you are still not using any form of version control, you really have no excuse. There are many benefits to being able to keep track of your code and try out various branches, even if you are the only programmer in the project. If you are collaborating with someone, it soon becomes nearly impossible (or at least very time-consuming) to deal with various versions and changes.

Of all the version control systems I’ve tried over the years (CVS, Subversion, a little bit of Mercurial, and Git) it seems that Git has “won” in a sense. There is a sizable open-source community born around GitHub (and Bitbucket) for which Git works very well indeed. Also many programming tools have built-in or plug-in support for Git, so you don’t even have to use command-line tools for managing your source code repositories if you don’t want to.

For open-source development, GitHub is the obvious choice. If you’re doing closed source, or you think your code isn’t ready for public scrutiny, Bitbucket gives you unlimited private repositories. I’m currently using GitHub to collaborate on some private repositories, which you can get with a paid plan, and Bitbucket for my closed-source app projects.

In a spirited attempt to really learn to use the tools of my trade, I wanted to take some time to better learn Git for version control (and also dive deeper into Xcode, but that is another story).

Earlier I’ve occasionally been using the fine tome Version Control with Git, 2nd Edition* by Jon Loeliger and Matthew McCullough to learn the basics, but I wanted to really dive in. I’ve already mastered the very basics, and have also used remote repositories with both GitHub and BitBucket, but there is a lot more to learn to be able to really take advantage of Git.

* Disclaimer: I’m an O’Reilly affiliate, and the links above take you to the O’Reilly online bookstore, in the hope that you purchase something, so that I will get a small commission.

It all started with an idea, something to scratch a personal itch. I was learning elementary French, and realized that there is an algorithmic approach to generating the numbers. Not a very elegant algorithm, but one that could easily be turned into a computer program.

The idea turned into a function, and soon enough it turned into an iPhone app, now called Les Nombres and available from the App Store (and also for Windows Phone). My function takes a nonnegative integer and turns it into a French language string, which is displayed on the screen. It could be fed into a speech synthesizer, but in Les Nombres the numbers are recordings of a native French speaker, which I think is nice. (And I couldn’t use recordings of Apple’s “Virginie” voice from OS X anyway due to its license.)

To keep things simple, Les Nombres only deals with the numbers 0 to 100, even though my function could do up to 1,000 out of the box. It involves some 90 lines of Objective-C code, including two recursive calls. It was fun to write, and I learned something in the process, but ultimately I didn’t have to write it at all.

Apart from hard-coding “Hello, world!”, another bad habit you may have picked up when you learned programming is constructing user-visible messages from parts: strings, numbers and other data, concatenated together.

For example, say that you had to show the user how many unread messages there are in a given mailbox. Let’s assume that mailboxName contains the name of the mailbox, and messageCount holds the number of unread messages. In Java, you might be tempted to whip up a user-visible message like this:

String message = "There are " + messageCount + " unread messages in mailbox '" + mailboxName + "'";

This is not the way to do it in an international application. Let’s find out why, and have a look at a better and much more future-proof way of doing it.

Many introductory programming courses start with a very simple first program, the traditional “hello world”. It is intended to teach how to edit, compile and run a program in a new programming environment using a simplified context, and it serves its purpose quite well. Unfortunately, the simple practice used in storing and displaying the text is quite contrary to a basic principle of software internationalization.

Often it is quicker to take a look at a source code file in Terminal using the cat or less commands, instead of starting up an editor, especially if you don’t need to make changes. However, like myself, most developers are used to syntax highlighting, or presenting source code in various colours. It makes the different elements in the source code stand out, and helps with comprehension. I find that the older I become, the more I need syntax highlighting, and I think back to a time when it was not so common, amazed that I could make sense of anything.

BusMonTRE on pysäkkiavustinohjelma älypuhelimille. Se on tehty tarjoamaan helppo tapa selvittää milloin kulkee bussi käyttäjää lähellä olevalta pysäkiltä Tampereen joukkoliikenteen toiminta-alueella (johon kuuluu Tampereen lisäksi useita ympäristökuntia). Tähän tarkoitukseen se käyttää Tampereen kaupungin tarjoamaa avointa dataa sekä Tampereen joukkoliikenteen ylläpitämää sinistä virtuaalimonitoria. BusMonTRE on tällä hetkellä saatavana iOS-, Android- ja Windows Phone -älypuhelimille. Tässä kirjoituksessa kerron hieman ohjelman taustoista sekä tulevaisuuden kehitysnäkymistä.

Virtuaalimonitori omaan tarpeeseen

Nettisivupalveluna toimiva sininen virtuaalimonitori on ollut käytössä Tampereella jo pitkään. Tavaratalot ja pienemmät liikkeet ovat käyttäneet sitä tiloissaan esimerkiksi näyttämällä isolla televisioruudulla asiakkailleen lähimmältä pysäkiltä kulkevien bussien tietoja. Kaikiilla Tampereen joukkoliikenteen pysäkeillä on sekä nimi että numerokoodi, ja virtuaalimonitorin saa helposti näyttämään yhtä tai useampaa haluttua pysäkkiä tämän numerokoodin avulla.

Sain ajatuksen BusMonTRE:sta jo vuonna 2011, mutta silloin en vielä ryhtynyt suunnittelemaan sovellusta, vaan käytin omissa laitteissani muutamaa valmiiksi leivottua nettiosoitetta, joilla sain kätevästi haluamani monitorinäytön nettiselaimeen. Osallistuin vuosina 2012-2013 useaan avoimen datan tapahtumaan Tampereella, ollessani muutenkin aktiivisesti mukana Tampereen startup-yhteisössä. Eräässä näistä tapahtumista Tampereen joukkoliikenteen edustaja antoi vahvan signaalin siitä, että heidän intresseissään ei ole kehittää sovelluksia itse, mutta he tarjoavat datan ilmaiseksi sovelluskehittäjien käyttöön.

Tampereen seudun joukkoliikenteessä tehdään mittava uudistus 30.6.2014. Liikennealue jaetaan maksuvyöhykkeisiin, ja linjasto sekä sen numerointi muuttuvat. Tarkempia tietoja uudistuksesta voit lukea joukkoliikennealueella talouksiin jaetusta Sinisten bussien matkassa -lehdestä, uudesta vuoden 2014 kesäaikataulukirjasta sekä Tampereen joukkoliikenteen nettisivuilta. Uudistus vaikuttaa myös BusMonTRE-pysäkkiavustinohjelmaan, joka on saatavana iPhone-, Android- ja Windows Phone -puhelimille. Viimeisimmässä 0.3-versiossa lisättiin tiedot siitä, mitkä linjat kulkevat minkäkin pysäkin kautta. Kuten kaikki BusMonTRE:n käyttämä aineisto, tämäkin tieto perustuu Tampereen joukkoliikenteen avoimena datana julkaisemiin tiedostoihin ja rajapintoihin.

BusMonTRE on helppokäyttöinen pysäkkiavustin Tampereen joukkoliikenteen käyttäjille. Se näyttää sinulle juuri sen tiedon, jonka useimmiten tarvitset kun olet lähdössä jonnekin päin Tamperetta bussilla. BusMonTRE ei ole reittiopas, eikä se näytä liikkuvia palloja kartalla (muun muassa siksi, että bussit eivät ole pallonmuotoisia). Kokeile sitä, ja huomaat, että se on helpompi, fiksumpi ja nopeampi kuin monet bussien liikkumista seurailevat ohjelmat. Ohjelman tehtävä on vastata kysymykseen: “milloin menee seuraava bussi tästä läheltä?” Sen selvittämiseksi BusMonTRE vertaa sijaintiasi Tampereen joukkoliikenteen pysäkkien sijainteihin, ja näyttää sinulle listan sinua lähimpänä olevista pysäkeistä.

Often it is quicker to take a look at a source code file in Terminal using the cat or less commands, instead of starting up an editor, especially if you don’t need to make changes. However, like myself, most developers are used to syntax highlighting, or presenting source code in various colours. It makes the different elements in the source code stand out, and helps with comprehension. I find that the older I become, the more I need syntax highlighting, and I think back to a time when it was not so common, amazed that I could make sense of anything.

No matter how handy graphical user interfaces are, the good old command line remains a useful tool for performing various low-level data manipulation and system administration tasks. It is the fallback when you need to do something that has no way of graphical control. Being much more expressive and open-ended than a predefined set of controls, the command shell is the ultimate control environment for your computer. Data science has become one of the most intensely practised computer applications, so it is no wonder that it also benefits greatly from the hands-on control approach of the command line shell.

Drones, or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), be they quadcopters or other type of flyer, will become more “intelligent” as themselves or by forming swarms, as this TED Talk by Vijay Kumar at the University of Pennsylvania shows: [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ge3&#8211;1hOm1s] My interest in drones lies not in flying them myself live, because I’m a lousy pilot and don’t play games much anyway, but in making them follow a predetermined route and return back to the starting point – for example, surveying an object or estate, or even carrying cargo between waypoints.

Back in 1998 or so, I wrote a CD player application for Microsoft Windows in Borland Delphi. It was for a magazine tutorial article, and I wanted a cool LCD-like display to show track elapsed and remaining time. There was a good one available for Delphi, called LCDLabel, written by Peter Czidlina (if you’re reading this, thanks once more for your cooperation). I’ve been thinking about doing a modern version of the LCD display component for several times over the years, and I even got pretty far with one for OS X in 2010, but then abandoned it because of other projects.

If you follow software design trends (yes, they exist), you may have noticed an increasing amount of buzz about functional programming, and particularly the Clojure language. While functional programming is hard to define, almost everyone mentions pure functions, the lack of side effects and state, and easy parallelisation. As for Clojure, it is all about (a kind of) Lisp running on the Java Virtual Machine (and .NET, and transformed to JavaScript).

I’m somewhat convinced that functional programming is at least worth knowing about and trying out, even if you don’t expect to fully convert. It has been said that learning about the functional paradigm makes you a better programmer in your current imperative language. Functional languages reduce accidental complexity, and that helps you focus.

“Whoop de doo, what does it all mean, Basil?”

If you have a background in imperative languages, you will have an interesting time if and when you start digging into functional programming, because whatever else it is, it’s different. And I’m not talking about syntax only, but most of what you do. If you need to add an item to a list, you construct a new list with the new item appended to the previous list (no, it is not as inefficient as it sounds, because there is great stuff under the hood to handle that). This is because immutability is one of the cornerstones of functional programming. If you can’t change something after it is created, there is no state to mess up. You program with values, not stateful objects.

I see I’m getting myself tricked into presenting a definition of functional programming, when that has been done better elsewhere. For pointers, see Michael Fogus’ 10 Technical Papers Every Programmer Should Read (At Least Twice), including the classic “Why Functional Programming Matters” by John Hughes. But I actually wanted to talk about something else.

Python is one of the friendliest general-purpose programming languages out there. It is free to use, well supported and used by many big companies. Since its introduction in 1991, it may not have taken the world by storm, but has gained a huge share of programmers’ interest. As of this writing (November 2014), Python is number 8 on the TIOBE Index. Recently I have been studying bioinformatics, and in the course of my studies I have met many people who are learning to program for the first time, and doing it with Python.

Sometimes you just need to see what characters are lurking inside a Unicode encoded text file. Your garden variety dump utility (like the venerable od in UNIX systems and the Windows standard hex dump (though I don’t think there is one) only shows you the plain bytes, so you have to head over to unicode.org to find out what they mean. But first you need to decode UTF-8 to get the actual code points, or grok UTF-16 LE or BE, and so on. It’s fun, but it’s not for everyone.

The udump utility shows you a nice list of character names, together with their offsets in the file. Currently it only handles UTF-8, so the offset is calculated based on the UTF-8 length of the character.

Tampereen seudun joukkoliikenteessä tehdään mittava uudistus 30.6.2014. Liikennealue jaetaan maksuvyöhykkeisiin, ja linjasto sekä sen numerointi muuttuvat. Tarkempia tietoja uudistuksesta voit lukea joukkoliikennealueella talouksiin jaetusta Sinisten bussien matkassa -lehdestä, uudesta vuoden 2014 kesäaikataulukirjasta sekä Tampereen joukkoliikenteen nettisivuilta. Uudistus vaikuttaa myös BusMonTRE-pysäkkiavustinohjelmaan, joka on saatavana iPhone-, Android- ja Windows Phone -puhelimille. Viimeisimmässä 0.3-versiossa lisättiin tiedot siitä, mitkä linjat kulkevat minkäkin pysäkin kautta. Kuten kaikki BusMonTRE:n käyttämä aineisto, tämäkin tieto perustuu Tampereen joukkoliikenteen avoimena datana julkaisemiin tiedostoihin ja rajapintoihin.

Drones, or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), be they quadcopters or other type of flyer, will become more “intelligent” as themselves or by forming swarms, as this TED Talk by Vijay Kumar at the University of Pennsylvania shows: [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ge3&#8211;1hOm1s] My interest in drones lies not in flying them myself live, because I’m a lousy pilot and don’t play games much anyway, but in making them follow a predetermined route and return back to the starting point – for example, surveying an object or estate, or even carrying cargo between waypoints.

No matter how handy graphical user interfaces are, the good old command line remains a useful tool for performing various low-level data manipulation and system administration tasks. It is the fallback when you need to do something that has no way of graphical control. Being much more expressive and open-ended than a predefined set of controls, the command shell is the ultimate control environment for your computer. Data science has become one of the most intensely practised computer applications, so it is no wonder that it also benefits greatly from the hands-on control approach of the command line shell.

Time signals have been broadcast by various radio stations for almost 100 years, usually “every hour, on the hour”, or every 60 minutes. The tradition was started by the BBC, but has been adopted by many national broadcasting companies and other broadcasters as a way of informing their listeners about the passing of time. The history of the Greenwich time signal, or “the BBC pips” is detailed in Mike Todd’s article.

Taittuuko ohjelmointi sinulta mennen tullen, mutta osaaminen ei juuri nyt vastaa tämän päivän tarpeisiin? Ohjelmistoalalla teknologiat tulevat ja menevät, mutta aina pääsee kärryille. Anna Conifer Coaching -palvelun oraakkelin kertoa sinulle mikä on nyt hip ja pop, ja millä saa oikeasti aikaan: Web-palveluja Mobiilisovelluksia Serverisoftaa Data-analyysiä Internet of Thingsiä – eli Mitä Softantekijän Kannattaa Opetella Juuri Nyt, Ja Miten! Ei hypeä, vaan vastaamista todellisiin tarpeisiin. Palkattavuutta CV:si ja kiinnostustesi perusteella.

Meeting people is easy, but saving their contact information is hard. Do you want to tap and stare at your phone, entering names, numbers and e-mails, or do you want to keep chatting with someone interesting you just met? Meet a lot of business people? Get a lot of business cards? Like most, you’ll probably put them in a drawer and forget about them. Wouldn’t it be great if you could just grab the information straight into your phone’s address book?

If you are programming, and you are still not using any form of version control, you really have no excuse. There are many benefits to being able to keep track of your code and try out various branches, even if you are the only programmer in the project. If you are collaborating with someone, it soon becomes nearly impossible (or at least very time-consuming) to deal with various versions and changes.

Of all the version control systems I’ve tried over the years (CVS, Subversion, a little bit of Mercurial, and Git) it seems that Git has “won” in a sense. There is a sizable open-source community born around GitHub (and Bitbucket) for which Git works very well indeed. Also many programming tools have built-in or plug-in support for Git, so you don’t even have to use command-line tools for managing your source code repositories if you don’t want to.

For open-source development, GitHub is the obvious choice. If you’re doing closed source, or you think your code isn’t ready for public scrutiny, Bitbucket gives you unlimited private repositories. I’m currently using GitHub to collaborate on some private repositories, which you can get with a paid plan, and Bitbucket for my closed-source app projects.

In a spirited attempt to really learn to use the tools of my trade, I wanted to take some time to better learn Git for version control (and also dive deeper into Xcode, but that is another story).

Earlier I’ve occasionally been using the fine tome Version Control with Git, 2nd Edition* by Jon Loeliger and Matthew McCullough to learn the basics, but I wanted to really dive in. I’ve already mastered the very basics, and have also used remote repositories with both GitHub and BitBucket, but there is a lot more to learn to be able to really take advantage of Git.

* Disclaimer: I’m an O’Reilly affiliate, and the links above take you to the O’Reilly online bookstore, in the hope that you purchase something, so that I will get a small commission.

In this installment of “Functional programming without feeling stupid” I would like to show you how to define things in Clojure. Values and function applications are all well and good, but if we can’t give them symbolic names, we need to keep repeating them over and over.

Before we start naming things, let’s have a look at how Clojure integrates with Java. I’m assuming you are still in the REPL, or have started it again with lein repl.

Track 1: “If anyone should ask / We are mated”

As it happens, Clojure’s core library is lean and focused on manipulating the data structures of the language, so many things are deferred to the underlying Java machinery as a rule. For example, mathematical computation is typically done using the static methods in the java.lang.Math class:

user=> (java.lang.Math/sqrt 5.0)
2.23606797749979

As you can see, this is a function application like we have already seen in Part 1, but this time the function we are using is the sqrt static method in the java.lang.Math class.

Java 7 acquired Unicode character names, and they are accessed through

the getName method in the java.lang.Character class. This is no mean feat, since there are over 110,000 characters in the Unicode standard, and each of them has a name (although some of them are algorithmically generated). To find out the canonical character name of a Unicode character, such as the euro currency symbol, you would use the getName static method:

user=> (java.lang.Character/getName \u20ac)
ClassCastException java.lang.Character cannot be cast to java.lang.Number user/eval703 (NO_SOURCE_FILE:1)

Hey, what’s wrong? Well, if you look up the documentation of java.lang.Character.getName, you will find out that it takes an int value as an argument, not a character. You can actually do this check from inside the REPL:

user=> (javadoc java.lang.Character)
true

The REPL doesn’t seem to do much, but you should now have a new web browser window or tab open, with the JavaDoc of the java.lang.Character class loaded up. That’s what the REPL meant when it said

Javadoc: (javadoc java-object-or-class-here)

when it started up. The getName method does need an int value, so let’s try something else:

user=> (java.lang.Character/getName (int \u20ac))
"EURO SIGN"

All right! How about another one:

user=> (java.lang.Character/getName 67)
"LATIN CAPITAL LETTER C"

Well, some say that Clojure is the new C.

If you are programming, and you are still not using any form of version control, you really have no excuse. There are many benefits to being able to keep track of your code and try out various branches, even if you are the only programmer in the project. If you are collaborating with someone, it soon becomes nearly impossible (or at least very time-consuming) to deal with various versions and changes.

Of all the version control systems I’ve tried over the years (CVS, Subversion, a little bit of Mercurial, and Git) it seems that Git has “won” in a sense. There is a sizable open-source community born around GitHub (and Bitbucket) for which Git works very well indeed. Also many programming tools have built-in or plug-in support for Git, so you don’t even have to use command-line tools for managing your source code repositories if you don’t want to.

For open-source development, GitHub is the obvious choice. If you’re doing closed source, or you think your code isn’t ready for public scrutiny, Bitbucket gives you unlimited private repositories. I’m currently using GitHub to collaborate on some private repositories, which you can get with a paid plan, and Bitbucket for my closed-source app projects.

In a spirited attempt to really learn to use the tools of my trade, I wanted to take some time to better learn Git for version control (and also dive deeper into Xcode, but that is another story).

Earlier I’ve occasionally been using the fine tome Version Control with Git, 2nd Edition* by Jon Loeliger and Matthew McCullough to learn the basics, but I wanted to really dive in. I’ve already mastered the very basics, and have also used remote repositories with both GitHub and BitBucket, but there is a lot more to learn to be able to really take advantage of Git.

* Disclaimer: I’m an O’Reilly affiliate, and the links above take you to the O’Reilly online bookstore, in the hope that you purchase something, so that I will get a small commission.

Picture this: a friend of yours has bought a nice vintage synth with great sounds, and wouldn’t you like to use those sounds in your own music-making? If only you could sample those sounds, but it seems like too much trouble… You would need to persuade your friend to let you borrow the synth, or you would need to visit them with your music-making setup, which nowadays is basically an iPad and an iOS-compatible audio interface.

Les Nombres, the little app that wants to teach you elementary French numbers, has been updated to version 1.5, and is now available on the App Store. The update is free to existing customers. You are presented with a randomly chosen French number from zero to 100, in writing, and given three alternatives to choose from. You can listen to the number by tapping the Listen button. To get another number, tap Another.

No matter how handy graphical user interfaces are, the good old command line remains a useful tool for performing various low-level data manipulation and system administration tasks. It is the fallback when you need to do something that has no way of graphical control. Being much more expressive and open-ended than a predefined set of controls, the command shell is the ultimate control environment for your computer. Data science has become one of the most intensely practised computer applications, so it is no wonder that it also benefits greatly from the hands-on control approach of the command line shell.

No matter how handy graphical user interfaces are, the good old command line remains a useful tool for performing various low-level data manipulation and system administration tasks. It is the fallback when you need to do something that has no way of graphical control. Being much more expressive and open-ended than a predefined set of controls, the command shell is the ultimate control environment for your computer. Data science has become one of the most intensely practised computer applications, so it is no wonder that it also benefits greatly from the hands-on control approach of the command line shell.

We are pleased to announce that HipStyles version 1.0.2 is now available on the App Store! The update is free to existing customers.

Hipstamatic is the ultimate companion to Hipstamatic and iPhoneography enthusiasts. It searches your phone’s HipstaPrints photo library for shots taken with the lens / film / flash combo you select. It also fetches you fresh samples of others’ work from Instagram, so that you can get an idea of what your shots would look like with the given combo.

Dear vintage digital photography enthusiasts, Hipstamatic photographers, Instagram users, we have great news for you. HipStyles for iPhone is available on the App Store! HipStyles is the ultimate companion for any Hipstamatic user. It lets you freely select combinations of Hipstamatic lenses, films and flashes, and search for matching photos on Instagram or inside your own HipstaPrints album in your phone. HipStyles taps into the endless stream of fresh images posted on Instagram by the ever-increasing community of Hipstagraphers.

Les Nombres, the little app that wants to teach you elementary French numbers, has been updated to version 1.5, and is now available on the App Store. The update is free to existing customers. You are presented with a randomly chosen French number from zero to 100, in writing, and given three alternatives to choose from. You can listen to the number by tapping the Listen button. To get another number, tap Another.

Dear vintage digital photography enthusiasts, Hipstamatic photographers, Instagram users, we have great news for you. HipStyles for iPhone is available on the App Store! HipStyles is the ultimate companion for any Hipstamatic user. It lets you freely select combinations of Hipstamatic lenses, films and flashes, and search for matching photos on Instagram or inside your own HipstaPrints album in your phone. HipStyles taps into the endless stream of fresh images posted on Instagram by the ever-increasing community of Hipstagraphers.

Often it is quicker to take a look at a source code file in Terminal using the cat or less commands, instead of starting up an editor, especially if you don’t need to make changes. However, like myself, most developers are used to syntax highlighting, or presenting source code in various colours. It makes the different elements in the source code stand out, and helps with comprehension. I find that the older I become, the more I need syntax highlighting, and I think back to a time when it was not so common, amazed that I could make sense of anything.

Time signals have been broadcast by various radio stations for almost 100 years, usually “every hour, on the hour”, or every 60 minutes. The tradition was started by the BBC, but has been adopted by many national broadcasting companies and other broadcasters as a way of informing their listeners about the passing of time. The history of the Greenwich time signal, or “the BBC pips” is detailed in Mike Todd’s article.

No matter how handy graphical user interfaces are, the good old command line remains a useful tool for performing various low-level data manipulation and system administration tasks. It is the fallback when you need to do something that has no way of graphical control. Being much more expressive and open-ended than a predefined set of controls, the command shell is the ultimate control environment for your computer. Data science has become one of the most intensely practised computer applications, so it is no wonder that it also benefits greatly from the hands-on control approach of the command line shell.

We are pleased to announce that HipStyles version 1.0.2 is now available on the App Store! The update is free to existing customers.

Hipstamatic is the ultimate companion to Hipstamatic and iPhoneography enthusiasts. It searches your phone’s HipstaPrints photo library for shots taken with the lens / film / flash combo you select. It also fetches you fresh samples of others’ work from Instagram, so that you can get an idea of what your shots would look like with the given combo.

Taittuuko ohjelmointi sinulta mennen tullen, mutta osaaminen ei juuri nyt vastaa tämän päivän tarpeisiin? Ohjelmistoalalla teknologiat tulevat ja menevät, mutta aina pääsee kärryille. Anna Conifer Coaching -palvelun oraakkelin kertoa sinulle mikä on nyt hip ja pop, ja millä saa oikeasti aikaan: Web-palveluja Mobiilisovelluksia Serverisoftaa Data-analyysiä Internet of Thingsiä – eli Mitä Softantekijän Kannattaa Opetella Juuri Nyt, Ja Miten! Ei hypeä, vaan vastaamista todellisiin tarpeisiin. Palkattavuutta CV:si ja kiinnostustesi perusteella.

BusMonTRE on pysäkkiavustinohjelma älypuhelimille. Se on tehty tarjoamaan helppo tapa selvittää milloin kulkee bussi käyttäjää lähellä olevalta pysäkiltä Tampereen joukkoliikenteen toiminta-alueella (johon kuuluu Tampereen lisäksi useita ympäristökuntia). Tähän tarkoitukseen se käyttää Tampereen kaupungin tarjoamaa avointa dataa sekä Tampereen joukkoliikenteen ylläpitämää sinistä virtuaalimonitoria. BusMonTRE on tällä hetkellä saatavana iOS-, Android- ja Windows Phone -älypuhelimille. Tässä kirjoituksessa kerron hieman ohjelman taustoista sekä tulevaisuuden kehitysnäkymistä.

Virtuaalimonitori omaan tarpeeseen

Nettisivupalveluna toimiva sininen virtuaalimonitori on ollut käytössä Tampereella jo pitkään. Tavaratalot ja pienemmät liikkeet ovat käyttäneet sitä tiloissaan esimerkiksi näyttämällä isolla televisioruudulla asiakkailleen lähimmältä pysäkiltä kulkevien bussien tietoja. Kaikiilla Tampereen joukkoliikenteen pysäkeillä on sekä nimi että numerokoodi, ja virtuaalimonitorin saa helposti näyttämään yhtä tai useampaa haluttua pysäkkiä tämän numerokoodin avulla.

Sain ajatuksen BusMonTRE:sta jo vuonna 2011, mutta silloin en vielä ryhtynyt suunnittelemaan sovellusta, vaan käytin omissa laitteissani muutamaa valmiiksi leivottua nettiosoitetta, joilla sain kätevästi haluamani monitorinäytön nettiselaimeen. Osallistuin vuosina 2012-2013 useaan avoimen datan tapahtumaan Tampereella, ollessani muutenkin aktiivisesti mukana Tampereen startup-yhteisössä. Eräässä näistä tapahtumista Tampereen joukkoliikenteen edustaja antoi vahvan signaalin siitä, että heidän intresseissään ei ole kehittää sovelluksia itse, mutta he tarjoavat datan ilmaiseksi sovelluskehittäjien käyttöön.

Time signals have been broadcast by various radio stations for almost 100 years, usually “every hour, on the hour”, or every 60 minutes. The tradition was started by the BBC, but has been adopted by many national broadcasting companies and other broadcasters as a way of informing their listeners about the passing of time. The history of the Greenwich time signal, or “the BBC pips” is detailed in Mike Todd’s article.

If you are programming, and you are still not using any form of version control, you really have no excuse. There are many benefits to being able to keep track of your code and try out various branches, even if you are the only programmer in the project. If you are collaborating with someone, it soon becomes nearly impossible (or at least very time-consuming) to deal with various versions and changes.

Of all the version control systems I’ve tried over the years (CVS, Subversion, a little bit of Mercurial, and Git) it seems that Git has “won” in a sense. There is a sizable open-source community born around GitHub (and Bitbucket) for which Git works very well indeed. Also many programming tools have built-in or plug-in support for Git, so you don’t even have to use command-line tools for managing your source code repositories if you don’t want to.

For open-source development, GitHub is the obvious choice. If you’re doing closed source, or you think your code isn’t ready for public scrutiny, Bitbucket gives you unlimited private repositories. I’m currently using GitHub to collaborate on some private repositories, which you can get with a paid plan, and Bitbucket for my closed-source app projects.

In a spirited attempt to really learn to use the tools of my trade, I wanted to take some time to better learn Git for version control (and also dive deeper into Xcode, but that is another story).

Earlier I’ve occasionally been using the fine tome Version Control with Git, 2nd Edition* by Jon Loeliger and Matthew McCullough to learn the basics, but I wanted to really dive in. I’ve already mastered the very basics, and have also used remote repositories with both GitHub and BitBucket, but there is a lot more to learn to be able to really take advantage of Git.

* Disclaimer: I’m an O’Reilly affiliate, and the links above take you to the O’Reilly online bookstore, in the hope that you purchase something, so that I will get a small commission.

If this blog entry was written 10–15 years ago, the title would have been “Unicode is in Your Future“. Luckily, the Unicode standard has been widely adopted during the last decade, so much so that it has almost become a part of the process and not something that you need to expend very much extra effort on. It is here Now, and has been for some time now.

However, Unicode still isn’t quite as widely understood as it needs to be, and it is often adopted as a black box that nobody can really fix when something goes wrong. Therefore it is not at all bad to try and bring it into perspective.

You need to understand at least why Unicode should be used, and how not to make it more complicated than it is (even though it can still be quite complicated). So keep reading.

It’s summer in the Northern Hemisphere, and at Mobile Monday Tampere tonight we are launching our Summer Specials 2012 offer for developers: Free one-hour visit to your application project Free half-day introduction to internationalization Get either one or both! See our Summer Specials 2012 page for terms and conditions. For more information, to schedule a time and to secure your seat, contact us. The theme of tonight’s Mobile Monday Tampere is multi-platform development, which is exactly what we do: if your project is based on iOS, Android or Windows Phone, we can advise you on how to make it world-ready.

Ohjelmistoyrittäjä, tiedetäänkö sinun yrityksessäsi miten tehdä sovelluksia, jotka on helppo sovittaa eri kielille ja kulttuureille? Lokalisointi on ohjelman käyttöliittymässä esiintyvien tekstien ja kuvien sovittamista eri kielille. Sen tekevät yleensä käännöstoimistot eri toimeksiannosta kun ohjelma alkaa olla valmis julkaisuun. Pelkkä tekstien käännättäminen ei kuitenkaan riitä, vaan ohjelmisto pitäisi laatia alusta pitäen sellaiseksi, että käännösten hallinnointi on luonteva ja toimiva osa ohjelmistoprosessia. Lisäksi ohjelmiston sovittaminen moniin eri kulttuureihin vaatii muutakin kuin sisällön kääntämistä: esimerkiksi päiväykset ja kellonajat sekä luvut ja rahasummat pitää esittää kohdemaan tavalla.

Drones, or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), be they quadcopters or other type of flyer, will become more “intelligent” as themselves or by forming swarms, as this TED Talk by Vijay Kumar at the University of Pennsylvania shows: [youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ge3&#8211;1hOm1s] My interest in drones lies not in flying them myself live, because I’m a lousy pilot and don’t play games much anyway, but in making them follow a predetermined route and return back to the starting point – for example, surveying an object or estate, or even carrying cargo between waypoints.

The vCard format has served us well for encoding and exchanging contact information, but there is a better alternative – jCard. In this post I’ll describe why I think jCard can be better than vCard, and should be adopted by every software vendor who deals with contacts. Both vCard and jCard are text-based formats, but whereas vCard has a unique legacy grammar, jCard is based on JSON. They both represent essentially the same data model that describes contact information: name, phone number, address, e-mail, and so on.

HipStyles was removed from the App Store over a year ago, but from time to time I still think it could be resurrected. However, after taking a long hard look at Apple’s new Photos framework in iOS 9, I think it is just not feasible anymore. HipStyles and the Assets Library Framework HipStyles was a photo finder for Hipstamatic and Oggl photos, looking for snaps taken with some Hipstamatic lens, film or flash of your choosing.

Often it is quicker to take a look at a source code file in Terminal using the cat or less commands, instead of starting up an editor, especially if you don’t need to make changes. However, like myself, most developers are used to syntax highlighting, or presenting source code in various colours. It makes the different elements in the source code stand out, and helps with comprehension. I find that the older I become, the more I need syntax highlighting, and I think back to a time when it was not so common, amazed that I could make sense of anything.

Tampereen seudun joukkoliikenteessä tehdään mittava uudistus 30.6.2014. Liikennealue jaetaan maksuvyöhykkeisiin, ja linjasto sekä sen numerointi muuttuvat. Tarkempia tietoja uudistuksesta voit lukea joukkoliikennealueella talouksiin jaetusta Sinisten bussien matkassa -lehdestä, uudesta vuoden 2014 kesäaikataulukirjasta sekä Tampereen joukkoliikenteen nettisivuilta. Uudistus vaikuttaa myös BusMonTRE-pysäkkiavustinohjelmaan, joka on saatavana iPhone-, Android- ja Windows Phone -puhelimille. Viimeisimmässä 0.3-versiossa lisättiin tiedot siitä, mitkä linjat kulkevat minkäkin pysäkin kautta. Kuten kaikki BusMonTRE:n käyttämä aineisto, tämäkin tieto perustuu Tampereen joukkoliikenteen avoimena datana julkaisemiin tiedostoihin ja rajapintoihin.

BusMonTRE on helppokäyttöinen pysäkkiavustin Tampereen joukkoliikenteen käyttäjille. Se näyttää sinulle juuri sen tiedon, jonka useimmiten tarvitset kun olet lähdössä jonnekin päin Tamperetta bussilla. BusMonTRE ei ole reittiopas, eikä se näytä liikkuvia palloja kartalla (muun muassa siksi, että bussit eivät ole pallonmuotoisia). Kokeile sitä, ja huomaat, että se on helpompi, fiksumpi ja nopeampi kuin monet bussien liikkumista seurailevat ohjelmat. Ohjelman tehtävä on vastata kysymykseen: “milloin menee seuraava bussi tästä läheltä?” Sen selvittämiseksi BusMonTRE vertaa sijaintiasi Tampereen joukkoliikenteen pysäkkien sijainteihin, ja näyttää sinulle listan sinua lähimpänä olevista pysäkeistä.

Often it is quicker to take a look at a source code file in Terminal using the cat or less commands, instead of starting up an editor, especially if you don’t need to make changes. However, like myself, most developers are used to syntax highlighting, or presenting source code in various colours. It makes the different elements in the source code stand out, and helps with comprehension. I find that the older I become, the more I need syntax highlighting, and I think back to a time when it was not so common, amazed that I could make sense of anything.

Sometimes you just need to see what characters are lurking inside a Unicode encoded text file. Your garden variety dump utility (like the venerable od in UNIX systems and the Windows standard hex dump (though I don’t think there is one) only shows you the plain bytes, so you have to head over to unicode.org to find out what they mean. But first you need to decode UTF-8 to get the actual code points, or grok UTF-16 LE or BE, and so on. It’s fun, but it’s not for everyone.

The udump utility shows you a nice list of character names, together with their offsets in the file. Currently it only handles UTF-8, so the offset is calculated based on the UTF-8 length of the character.

For many of us, dates and times are absolutely essential in our daily lives. We make appointments, set deadlines, celebrate birthdays and anniversaries, and generally mark time using clocks and calendars.

What makes dates and times interesting from a programmer’s perspective is that while there is a standard time (the Coordinated Universal Time or UTC), there are multiple local time zones in use all over the world. A single instance in UTC has many local equivalents, and offsets between time zones and universal time are wild and wonderful.

Not only are time zones a little tricky, but there are also multiple local representations for an instance in local time. A representation in this context means the way it is printed in a daily newspaper, in the calendar, and indeed, on the screen of a computer or a mobile device. In the realm of internationalization (I18N) they are known as date and time formats.

The conventions for showing local time are well established, and the differences between them are significant enough to cause a lot of confusion if care is not taken. While it would be the most logical thing to do (thank you Mr. Spock), it is hardly practical to expect all the world’s population to adopt a single standard date and time format such as the ISO 8601 international standard notation in their daily lives. The national and linguistic conventions are very well established locally.

Just recently, Nokia launched new Windows Phone devices in their Lumia series. The company wanted to build anticipation before the announcement with short teaser videos which all marked the date of the launch: 05.09.2012. If you saw this date advertised early in the year, you might think it could mean either September 5th or May 9th this year. But which is it? 

Time signals have been broadcast by various radio stations for almost 100 years, usually “every hour, on the hour”, or every 60 minutes. The tradition was started by the BBC, but has been adopted by many national broadcasting companies and other broadcasters as a way of informing their listeners about the passing of time. The history of the Greenwich time signal, or “the BBC pips” is detailed in Mike Todd’s article.

We are pleased to announce that HipStyles version 1.0.2 is now available on the App Store! The update is free to existing customers.

Hipstamatic is the ultimate companion to Hipstamatic and iPhoneography enthusiasts. It searches your phone’s HipstaPrints photo library for shots taken with the lens / film / flash combo you select. It also fetches you fresh samples of others’ work from Instagram, so that you can get an idea of what your shots would look like with the given combo.

In my recent post Functional Programming Without Feeling Stupid I took a quick look at how functional programming can be a little off-putting for the non-initiated. I promised to provide some examples of my own first steps with FP, and now I would like to present some to you.

Advocates of functional programming often refer to increased programmer productivity. At least some of that can be attributed to the REPL, or the Read-Evaluate-Print Loop. We are basically talking about an environment which accepts and parses any code you type in, and gives you a place to experiment and see results quickly. Before interpreted or semi-interpreted languages like Python, Java and JavaScript became mainstream, the typical repeating cycle in software development was Compile-Link-Execute, and debugging meant observing special output on the console. In the 1990s integrated debuggers with watches and breakpoints became the norm, but long before that Lisp-like languages already had a REPL, and Python also acquired one.

If you are thinking about getting intimate with Clojure, you will need to get to know the REPL. It is your playground, and will always be, even if you later start packaging and organizing your code.

Clojure depends on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and is actually distributed as a normal JAR file (Java ARchive), like most Java libraries are. You can start Clojure from the JAR, but you will save yourself some trouble and prepare for the future if you install Leiningen, the dependency management tool for Clojure. It is simple to install and run, and I will assume that you will follow the instructions on the Leiningen web site sooner or later. Now would be a good time.

When you’re done with the installation, you only need to say

lein repl

to start a Clojure REPL. I’m using OS X, so what I describe here was done from Terminal. You don’t need to create a project with Leiningen if you just want to play around in the REPL.

Of course, if you don’t have Java installed, you need to get it first. Refer to the Java web site of Oracle for details as necessary. Furthermore, some of the things I will describe require Java version 7 or later.

Sometimes you just need to see what characters are lurking inside a Unicode encoded text file. Your garden variety dump utility (like the venerable od in UNIX systems and the Windows standard hex dump (though I don’t think there is one) only shows you the plain bytes, so you have to head over to unicode.org to find out what they mean. But first you need to decode UTF-8 to get the actual code points, or grok UTF-16 LE or BE, and so on. It’s fun, but it’s not for everyone.

The udump utility shows you a nice list of character names, together with their offsets in the file. Currently it only handles UTF-8, so the offset is calculated based on the UTF-8 length of the character.

In the previous parts of “Functional programming without feeling stupid” we have slowly been building ucdump, a utility program for listing the Unicode codepoints and character names of characters in a string. In actual use, the string will be read from a UTF-8 encoded text file.

We don’t know yet how to read a text file in Clojure (well, you may know, but I only have a foggy idea), so we have been working with a single string. This is what we have so far:

(def test-str 
  "Na\u00EFve r\u00E9sum\u00E9s... for 0 \u20AC? Not bad!")
(def test-ch { :offset 0 :character \u20ac })
(def short-test-str "Na\u00EFve")

(defn character-name [x]
  (java.lang.Character/getName (int x)))

(defn character-line [pair]
  (let [ch (:character pair)]
    (format "%08d: U+%06X %s"
      (:offset pair) (int ch)
      (character-name ch))))
    
(defn character-lines [s]
  (let [offsets (repeat (count s) 0)
        pairs (map #(into {} {:offset %1 :character %2}) 
          offsets s)]
    (map character-line pairs)))

I’ve reformatted the code a bit to keep the lines short. You can copy and paste all of that in the Clojure REPL, and start looking at some strings in a new way:

user=> (character-lines "résumé")
("00000000: U+000072 LATIN SMALL LETTER R" 
"00000000: U+0000E9 LATIN SMALL LETTER E WITH ACUTE" 
"00000000: U+000073 LATIN SMALL LETTER S" 
"00000000: U+000075 LATIN SMALL LETTER U" 
"00000000: U+00006D LATIN SMALL LETTER M" 
"00000000: U+0000E9 LATIN SMALL LETTER E WITH ACUTE")

But we are still missing the actual offsets. Let’s fix that now.

Apart from hard-coding “Hello, world!”, another bad habit you may have picked up when you learned programming is constructing user-visible messages from parts: strings, numbers and other data, concatenated together.

For example, say that you had to show the user how many unread messages there are in a given mailbox. Let’s assume that mailboxName contains the name of the mailbox, and messageCount holds the number of unread messages. In Java, you might be tempted to whip up a user-visible message like this:

String message = "There are " + messageCount + " unread messages in mailbox '" + mailboxName + "'";

This is not the way to do it in an international application. Let’s find out why, and have a look at a better and much more future-proof way of doing it.

It’s summer in the Northern Hemisphere, and at Mobile Monday Tampere tonight we are launching our Summer Specials 2012 offer for developers: Free one-hour visit to your application project Free half-day introduction to internationalization Get either one or both! See our Summer Specials 2012 page for terms and conditions. For more information, to schedule a time and to secure your seat, contact us. The theme of tonight’s Mobile Monday Tampere is multi-platform development, which is exactly what we do: if your project is based on iOS, Android or Windows Phone, we can advise you on how to make it world-ready.

Apart from hard-coding “Hello, world!”, another bad habit you may have picked up when you learned programming is constructing user-visible messages from parts: strings, numbers and other data, concatenated together.

For example, say that you had to show the user how many unread messages there are in a given mailbox. Let’s assume that mailboxName contains the name of the mailbox, and messageCount holds the number of unread messages. In Java, you might be tempted to whip up a user-visible message like this:

String message = "There are " + messageCount + " unread messages in mailbox '" + mailboxName + "'";

This is not the way to do it in an international application. Let’s find out why, and have a look at a better and much more future-proof way of doing it.

At the time of this writing, the FIFA World Cup is almost at its final stage. Throughout the whole month of the tournament I have been amazed to find out that while UEFA has consistently made an effort to have the players’ names written as authentically as possible, FIFA hasn’t. Information conveyed to viewers in televised matches is transliterated, making many players’ names appear irritatingly different than their national, conventional spellings.

Les Nombres, the little app that wants to teach you elementary French numbers, has been updated to version 1.5, and is now available on the App Store. The update is free to existing customers. You are presented with a randomly chosen French number from zero to 100, in writing, and given three alternatives to choose from. You can listen to the number by tapping the Listen button. To get another number, tap Another.

About one year ago I wrote a multi-part tutorial on Clojure programming, describing how I wrote a small utility called ucdump (available on GitHub). Here are links to all the parts: Part 1: The Clojure REPL Part 2: Definitions Part 3: Higher-order functions Part 4: Logic Part 5: Project However, Carin Meier’s Living Clojure is excellent in many ways. Get it from O’Reilly (we’re an affiliate): My little tutorial started with part zero, in which I lamented how functional programming is made to appear unlearnable by mere mortals, and it kind of snowballed from there.

In my recent post Functional Programming Without Feeling Stupid I took a quick look at how functional programming can be a little off-putting for the non-initiated. I promised to provide some examples of my own first steps with FP, and now I would like to present some to you.

Advocates of functional programming often refer to increased programmer productivity. At least some of that can be attributed to the REPL, or the Read-Evaluate-Print Loop. We are basically talking about an environment which accepts and parses any code you type in, and gives you a place to experiment and see results quickly. Before interpreted or semi-interpreted languages like Python, Java and JavaScript became mainstream, the typical repeating cycle in software development was Compile-Link-Execute, and debugging meant observing special output on the console. In the 1990s integrated debuggers with watches and breakpoints became the norm, but long before that Lisp-like languages already had a REPL, and Python also acquired one.

If you are thinking about getting intimate with Clojure, you will need to get to know the REPL. It is your playground, and will always be, even if you later start packaging and organizing your code.

Clojure depends on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and is actually distributed as a normal JAR file (Java ARchive), like most Java libraries are. You can start Clojure from the JAR, but you will save yourself some trouble and prepare for the future if you install Leiningen, the dependency management tool for Clojure. It is simple to install and run, and I will assume that you will follow the instructions on the Leiningen web site sooner or later. Now would be a good time.

When you’re done with the installation, you only need to say

lein repl

to start a Clojure REPL. I’m using OS X, so what I describe here was done from Terminal. You don’t need to create a project with Leiningen if you just want to play around in the REPL.

Of course, if you don’t have Java installed, you need to get it first. Refer to the Java web site of Oracle for details as necessary. Furthermore, some of the things I will describe require Java version 7 or later.

About one year ago I wrote a multi-part tutorial on Clojure programming, describing how I wrote a small utility called ucdump (available on GitHub). Here are links to all the parts: Part 1: The Clojure REPL Part 2: Definitions Part 3: Higher-order functions Part 4: Logic Part 5: Project However, Carin Meier’s Living Clojure is excellent in many ways. Get it from O’Reilly (we’re an affiliate): My little tutorial started with part zero, in which I lamented how functional programming is made to appear unlearnable by mere mortals, and it kind of snowballed from there.

In the last four installments of Functional programming without feeling stupid I’ve slowly built up a small utility called ucdump with Clojure. Experimentiing and developing with the Clojure REPL is fun, but now it’s time to give some structure to the utility. I’ll package it up as a Leiningen project and create a standalone JAR for executing with the Java runtime.

Creating a new project with Leiningen

You can use Leiningen to create a skeleton project quickly. In my project’s root directory, I’ll say:

lein new app ucdump

Leiningen will respond with:

Generating a project called ucdump based on the 'app' template.

The result is a directory called ucdump, which contains:

.gitignore   README.md    project.clj  src/
LICENSE      doc/         resources/   test/

For now I’m are most interested in the project file, project.clj, which is actually a Clojure source file, and the src directory, which is intended for the app’s actual source files.

Leiningen creates a directory called src/ucdump and seeds it with a core.clj file, but that’s not what actually what I want, for two reasons:

• I want ucdump to be a good Clojure citizen, so I’m going to put it in a namespace

  called com.coniferproductions.ucdump.

• My Git repository for ucdump also contains the original Python version of the application, which is in <project-root>/python, and I want the Clojure version to live in <<em>project-root</em>>/clojure.

In the previous parts of “Functional programming without feeling stupid” we have slowly been building ucdump, a utility program for listing the Unicode codepoints and character names of characters in a string. In actual use, the string will be read from a UTF-8 encoded text file.

We don’t know yet how to read a text file in Clojure (well, you may know, but I only have a foggy idea), so we have been working with a single string. This is what we have so far:

(def test-str 
  "Na\u00EFve r\u00E9sum\u00E9s... for 0 \u20AC? Not bad!")
(def test-ch { :offset 0 :character \u20ac })
(def short-test-str "Na\u00EFve")

(defn character-name [x]
  (java.lang.Character/getName (int x)))

(defn character-line [pair]
  (let [ch (:character pair)]
    (format "%08d: U+%06X %s"
      (:offset pair) (int ch)
      (character-name ch))))
    
(defn character-lines [s]
  (let [offsets (repeat (count s) 0)
        pairs (map #(into {} {:offset %1 :character %2}) 
          offsets s)]
    (map character-line pairs)))

I’ve reformatted the code a bit to keep the lines short. You can copy and paste all of that in the Clojure REPL, and start looking at some strings in a new way:

user=> (character-lines "résumé")
("00000000: U+000072 LATIN SMALL LETTER R" 
"00000000: U+0000E9 LATIN SMALL LETTER E WITH ACUTE" 
"00000000: U+000073 LATIN SMALL LETTER S" 
"00000000: U+000075 LATIN SMALL LETTER U" 
"00000000: U+00006D LATIN SMALL LETTER M" 
"00000000: U+0000E9 LATIN SMALL LETTER E WITH ACUTE")

But we are still missing the actual offsets. Let’s fix that now.

Welcome to the third installment of “Functional programming without feeling stupid”! I originally started to describe my own learnings about FP in general, and Clojure in particular, and soon found myself writing a kind of Clojure tutorial or introduction. It may not be as comprehensive as others out there, and I still don’t think of it as a tutorial — it’s more like a description of a process, and the documented evolution of a tool.

I wanted to use Clojure “in anger”, and found out that I was learning new and interesting stuff quickly. I wanted to share what I’ve learned in the hope that others may find it useful.

Some of the stuff I have done and described here might not be the most optimal, but I see nothing obviously wrong with my approach. Maybe you do; if that is the case, tell me about it in the comments, or contact me otherwise. But please be nice and constructive, because…

…in Part 0 I wrote about how some people may feel put off by the air of “smarter than thou” that sometimes floats around functional programming. I’m hoping to present the subject in a friendly way, because much of the techniques are not obvious to someone (like me) conditioned with a couple of decades of imperative, object-oriented programming. Not nearly as funny as Learn You a Haskell For Great Good, and not as zany as Clojure for the Brave and True — just friendly, and hopefully lucid.

xkcd 1270: Functional. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial License. This is a company blog, so it is kind of commercial by definition. Is that a problem?

In Part 1 we played around with the Clojure REPL, and in Part 2 we started making definitions and actually got some useful results. In this third part we’re going to take a look at Clojure functions and how to use them, and create our own — because that’s what functional programming is all about.

In this installment of “Functional programming without feeling stupid” I would like to show you how to define things in Clojure. Values and function applications are all well and good, but if we can’t give them symbolic names, we need to keep repeating them over and over.

Before we start naming things, let’s have a look at how Clojure integrates with Java. I’m assuming you are still in the REPL, or have started it again with lein repl.

Track 1: “If anyone should ask / We are mated”

As it happens, Clojure’s core library is lean and focused on manipulating the data structures of the language, so many things are deferred to the underlying Java machinery as a rule. For example, mathematical computation is typically done using the static methods in the java.lang.Math class:

user=> (java.lang.Math/sqrt 5.0)
2.23606797749979

As you can see, this is a function application like we have already seen in Part 1, but this time the function we are using is the sqrt static method in the java.lang.Math class.

Java 7 acquired Unicode character names, and they are accessed through

the getName method in the java.lang.Character class. This is no mean feat, since there are over 110,000 characters in the Unicode standard, and each of them has a name (although some of them are algorithmically generated). To find out the canonical character name of a Unicode character, such as the euro currency symbol, you would use the getName static method:

user=> (java.lang.Character/getName \u20ac)
ClassCastException java.lang.Character cannot be cast to java.lang.Number user/eval703 (NO_SOURCE_FILE:1)

Hey, what’s wrong? Well, if you look up the documentation of java.lang.Character.getName, you will find out that it takes an int value as an argument, not a character. You can actually do this check from inside the REPL:

user=> (javadoc java.lang.Character)
true

The REPL doesn’t seem to do much, but you should now have a new web browser window or tab open, with the JavaDoc of the java.lang.Character class loaded up. That’s what the REPL meant when it said

Javadoc: (javadoc java-object-or-class-here)

when it started up. The getName method does need an int value, so let’s try something else:

user=> (java.lang.Character/getName (int \u20ac))
"EURO SIGN"

All right! How about another one:

user=> (java.lang.Character/getName 67)
"LATIN CAPITAL LETTER C"

Well, some say that Clojure is the new C.

In my recent post Functional Programming Without Feeling Stupid I took a quick look at how functional programming can be a little off-putting for the non-initiated. I promised to provide some examples of my own first steps with FP, and now I would like to present some to you.

Advocates of functional programming often refer to increased programmer productivity. At least some of that can be attributed to the REPL, or the Read-Evaluate-Print Loop. We are basically talking about an environment which accepts and parses any code you type in, and gives you a place to experiment and see results quickly. Before interpreted or semi-interpreted languages like Python, Java and JavaScript became mainstream, the typical repeating cycle in software development was Compile-Link-Execute, and debugging meant observing special output on the console. In the 1990s integrated debuggers with watches and breakpoints became the norm, but long before that Lisp-like languages already had a REPL, and Python also acquired one.

If you are thinking about getting intimate with Clojure, you will need to get to know the REPL. It is your playground, and will always be, even if you later start packaging and organizing your code.

Clojure depends on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and is actually distributed as a normal JAR file (Java ARchive), like most Java libraries are. You can start Clojure from the JAR, but you will save yourself some trouble and prepare for the future if you install Leiningen, the dependency management tool for Clojure. It is simple to install and run, and I will assume that you will follow the instructions on the Leiningen web site sooner or later. Now would be a good time.

When you’re done with the installation, you only need to say

lein repl

to start a Clojure REPL. I’m using OS X, so what I describe here was done from Terminal. You don’t need to create a project with Leiningen if you just want to play around in the REPL.

Of course, if you don’t have Java installed, you need to get it first. Refer to the Java web site of Oracle for details as necessary. Furthermore, some of the things I will describe require Java version 7 or later.

At the time of this writing, the FIFA World Cup is almost at its final stage. Throughout the whole month of the tournament I have been amazed to find out that while UEFA has consistently made an effort to have the players’ names written as authentically as possible, FIFA hasn’t. Information conveyed to viewers in televised matches is transliterated, making many players’ names appear irritatingly different than their national, conventional spellings.

Sometimes you just need to see what characters are lurking inside a Unicode encoded text file. Your garden variety dump utility (like the venerable od in UNIX systems and the Windows standard hex dump (though I don’t think there is one) only shows you the plain bytes, so you have to head over to unicode.org to find out what they mean. But first you need to decode UTF-8 to get the actual code points, or grok UTF-16 LE or BE, and so on. It’s fun, but it’s not for everyone.

The udump utility shows you a nice list of character names, together with their offsets in the file. Currently it only handles UTF-8, so the offset is calculated based on the UTF-8 length of the character.

If this blog entry was written 10–15 years ago, the title would have been “Unicode is in Your Future“. Luckily, the Unicode standard has been widely adopted during the last decade, so much so that it has almost become a part of the process and not something that you need to expend very much extra effort on. It is here Now, and has been for some time now.

However, Unicode still isn’t quite as widely understood as it needs to be, and it is often adopted as a black box that nobody can really fix when something goes wrong. Therefore it is not at all bad to try and bring it into perspective.

You need to understand at least why Unicode should be used, and how not to make it more complicated than it is (even though it can still be quite complicated). So keep reading.

No matter how handy graphical user interfaces are, the good old command line remains a useful tool for performing various low-level data manipulation and system administration tasks. It is the fallback when you need to do something that has no way of graphical control. Being much more expressive and open-ended than a predefined set of controls, the command shell is the ultimate control environment for your computer. Data science has become one of the most intensely practised computer applications, so it is no wonder that it also benefits greatly from the hands-on control approach of the command line shell.

We have skipped a few point releases of HipStyles in announcements, so here’s an update. HipStyles 1.0.9 is available on the App Store. It supports all the latest HipstaPaks as of October 2013. The development of HipStyles has taken a backseat recently since we have focused on introni. However, there have been some experiments with proper iOS 7 support and improvements to the photo matching, so maybe later this year something will surface.

Taittuuko ohjelmointi sinulta mennen tullen, mutta osaaminen ei juuri nyt vastaa tämän päivän tarpeisiin? Ohjelmistoalalla teknologiat tulevat ja menevät, mutta aina pääsee kärryille. Anna Conifer Coaching -palvelun oraakkelin kertoa sinulle mikä on nyt hip ja pop, ja millä saa oikeasti aikaan: Web-palveluja Mobiilisovelluksia Serverisoftaa Data-analyysiä Internet of Thingsiä – eli Mitä Softantekijän Kannattaa Opetella Juuri Nyt, Ja Miten! Ei hypeä, vaan vastaamista todellisiin tarpeisiin. Palkattavuutta CV:si ja kiinnostustesi perusteella.

Taittuuko ohjelmointi sinulta mennen tullen, mutta osaaminen ei juuri nyt vastaa tämän päivän tarpeisiin? Ohjelmistoalalla teknologiat tulevat ja menevät, mutta aina pääsee kärryille. Anna Conifer Coaching -palvelun oraakkelin kertoa sinulle mikä on nyt hip ja pop, ja millä saa oikeasti aikaan: Web-palveluja Mobiilisovelluksia Serverisoftaa Data-analyysiä Internet of Thingsiä – eli Mitä Softantekijän Kannattaa Opetella Juuri Nyt, Ja Miten! Ei hypeä, vaan vastaamista todellisiin tarpeisiin. Palkattavuutta CV:si ja kiinnostustesi perusteella.

The vCard format has served us well for encoding and exchanging contact information, but there is a better alternative – jCard. In this post I’ll describe why I think jCard can be better than vCard, and should be adopted by every software vendor who deals with contacts. Both vCard and jCard are text-based formats, but whereas vCard has a unique legacy grammar, jCard is based on JSON. They both represent essentially the same data model that describes contact information: name, phone number, address, e-mail, and so on.

Sometimes you just need to see what characters are lurking inside a Unicode encoded text file. Your garden variety dump utility (like the venerable od in UNIX systems and the Windows standard hex dump (though I don’t think there is one) only shows you the plain bytes, so you have to head over to unicode.org to find out what they mean. But first you need to decode UTF-8 to get the actual code points, or grok UTF-16 LE or BE, and so on. It’s fun, but it’s not for everyone.

The udump utility shows you a nice list of character names, together with their offsets in the file. Currently it only handles UTF-8, so the offset is calculated based on the UTF-8 length of the character.

If this blog entry was written 10–15 years ago, the title would have been “Unicode is in Your Future“. Luckily, the Unicode standard has been widely adopted during the last decade, so much so that it has almost become a part of the process and not something that you need to expend very much extra effort on. It is here Now, and has been for some time now.

However, Unicode still isn’t quite as widely understood as it needs to be, and it is often adopted as a black box that nobody can really fix when something goes wrong. Therefore it is not at all bad to try and bring it into perspective.

You need to understand at least why Unicode should be used, and how not to make it more complicated than it is (even though it can still be quite complicated). So keep reading.

Back in 1998 or so, I wrote a CD player application for Microsoft Windows in Borland Delphi. It was for a magazine tutorial article, and I wanted a cool LCD-like display to show track elapsed and remaining time. There was a good one available for Delphi, called LCDLabel, written by Peter Czidlina (if you’re reading this, thanks once more for your cooperation). I’ve been thinking about doing a modern version of the LCD display component for several times over the years, and I even got pretty far with one for OS X in 2010, but then abandoned it because of other projects.

About one year ago I wrote a multi-part tutorial on Clojure programming, describing how I wrote a small utility called ucdump (available on GitHub). Here are links to all the parts: Part 1: The Clojure REPL Part 2: Definitions Part 3: Higher-order functions Part 4: Logic Part 5: Project However, Carin Meier’s Living Clojure is excellent in many ways. Get it from O’Reilly (we’re an affiliate): My little tutorial started with part zero, in which I lamented how functional programming is made to appear unlearnable by mere mortals, and it kind of snowballed from there.

In the last four installments of Functional programming without feeling stupid I’ve slowly built up a small utility called ucdump with Clojure. Experimentiing and developing with the Clojure REPL is fun, but now it’s time to give some structure to the utility. I’ll package it up as a Leiningen project and create a standalone JAR for executing with the Java runtime.

Creating a new project with Leiningen

You can use Leiningen to create a skeleton project quickly. In my project’s root directory, I’ll say:

lein new app ucdump

Leiningen will respond with:

Generating a project called ucdump based on the 'app' template.

The result is a directory called ucdump, which contains:

.gitignore   README.md    project.clj  src/
LICENSE      doc/         resources/   test/

For now I’m are most interested in the project file, project.clj, which is actually a Clojure source file, and the src directory, which is intended for the app’s actual source files.

Leiningen creates a directory called src/ucdump and seeds it with a core.clj file, but that’s not what actually what I want, for two reasons:

• I want ucdump to be a good Clojure citizen, so I’m going to put it in a namespace

  called com.coniferproductions.ucdump.

• My Git repository for ucdump also contains the original Python version of the application, which is in <project-root>/python, and I want the Clojure version to live in <<em>project-root</em>>/clojure.

In my recent post Functional Programming Without Feeling Stupid I took a quick look at how functional programming can be a little off-putting for the non-initiated. I promised to provide some examples of my own first steps with FP, and now I would like to present some to you.

Advocates of functional programming often refer to increased programmer productivity. At least some of that can be attributed to the REPL, or the Read-Evaluate-Print Loop. We are basically talking about an environment which accepts and parses any code you type in, and gives you a place to experiment and see results quickly. Before interpreted or semi-interpreted languages like Python, Java and JavaScript became mainstream, the typical repeating cycle in software development was Compile-Link-Execute, and debugging meant observing special output on the console. In the 1990s integrated debuggers with watches and breakpoints became the norm, but long before that Lisp-like languages already had a REPL, and Python also acquired one.

If you are thinking about getting intimate with Clojure, you will need to get to know the REPL. It is your playground, and will always be, even if you later start packaging and organizing your code.

Clojure depends on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and is actually distributed as a normal JAR file (Java ARchive), like most Java libraries are. You can start Clojure from the JAR, but you will save yourself some trouble and prepare for the future if you install Leiningen, the dependency management tool for Clojure. It is simple to install and run, and I will assume that you will follow the instructions on the Leiningen web site sooner or later. Now would be a good time.

When you’re done with the installation, you only need to say

lein repl

to start a Clojure REPL. I’m using OS X, so what I describe here was done from Terminal. You don’t need to create a project with Leiningen if you just want to play around in the REPL.

Of course, if you don’t have Java installed, you need to get it first. Refer to the Java web site of Oracle for details as necessary. Furthermore, some of the things I will describe require Java version 7 or later.

It’s Valentine’s Day, and HipStyles for iPhone is free for today only! HipStyles Valentine’s Day Special To celebrate and spread the love, we have reduced the price for exactly 100 per cent. This is your chance to save big! It’s available on the App Store, so download it and tell your friends and loved ones what we already know, and you soon will: that HipStyles is the ultimate companion app for Hipstamatic users.

Sometimes you just need to see what characters are lurking inside a Unicode encoded text file. Your garden variety dump utility (like the venerable od in UNIX systems and the Windows standard hex dump (though I don’t think there is one) only shows you the plain bytes, so you have to head over to unicode.org to find out what they mean. But first you need to decode UTF-8 to get the actual code points, or grok UTF-16 LE or BE, and so on. It’s fun, but it’s not for everyone.

The udump utility shows you a nice list of character names, together with their offsets in the file. Currently it only handles UTF-8, so the offset is calculated based on the UTF-8 length of the character.

Tampereen seudun joukkoliikenteessä tehdään mittava uudistus 30.6.2014. Liikennealue jaetaan maksuvyöhykkeisiin, ja linjasto sekä sen numerointi muuttuvat. Tarkempia tietoja uudistuksesta voit lukea joukkoliikennealueella talouksiin jaetusta Sinisten bussien matkassa -lehdestä, uudesta vuoden 2014 kesäaikataulukirjasta sekä Tampereen joukkoliikenteen nettisivuilta. Uudistus vaikuttaa myös BusMonTRE-pysäkkiavustinohjelmaan, joka on saatavana iPhone-, Android- ja Windows Phone -puhelimille. Viimeisimmässä 0.3-versiossa lisättiin tiedot siitä, mitkä linjat kulkevat minkäkin pysäkin kautta. Kuten kaikki BusMonTRE:n käyttämä aineisto, tämäkin tieto perustuu Tampereen joukkoliikenteen avoimena datana julkaisemiin tiedostoihin ja rajapintoihin.

It’s Valentine’s Day, and HipStyles for iPhone is free for today only! HipStyles Valentine’s Day Special To celebrate and spread the love, we have reduced the price for exactly 100 per cent. This is your chance to save big! It’s available on the App Store, so download it and tell your friends and loved ones what we already know, and you soon will: that HipStyles is the ultimate companion app for Hipstamatic users.

Taittuuko ohjelmointi sinulta mennen tullen, mutta osaaminen ei juuri nyt vastaa tämän päivän tarpeisiin? Ohjelmistoalalla teknologiat tulevat ja menevät, mutta aina pääsee kärryille. Anna Conifer Coaching -palvelun oraakkelin kertoa sinulle mikä on nyt hip ja pop, ja millä saa oikeasti aikaan: Web-palveluja Mobiilisovelluksia Serverisoftaa Data-analyysiä Internet of Thingsiä – eli Mitä Softantekijän Kannattaa Opetella Juuri Nyt, Ja Miten! Ei hypeä, vaan vastaamista todellisiin tarpeisiin. Palkattavuutta CV:si ja kiinnostustesi perusteella.

The vCard format has served us well for encoding and exchanging contact information, but there is a better alternative – jCard. In this post I’ll describe why I think jCard can be better than vCard, and should be adopted by every software vendor who deals with contacts. Both vCard and jCard are text-based formats, but whereas vCard has a unique legacy grammar, jCard is based on JSON. They both represent essentially the same data model that describes contact information: name, phone number, address, e-mail, and so on.

If you are programming, and you are still not using any form of version control, you really have no excuse. There are many benefits to being able to keep track of your code and try out various branches, even if you are the only programmer in the project. If you are collaborating with someone, it soon becomes nearly impossible (or at least very time-consuming) to deal with various versions and changes.

Of all the version control systems I’ve tried over the years (CVS, Subversion, a little bit of Mercurial, and Git) it seems that Git has “won” in a sense. There is a sizable open-source community born around GitHub (and Bitbucket) for which Git works very well indeed. Also many programming tools have built-in or plug-in support for Git, so you don’t even have to use command-line tools for managing your source code repositories if you don’t want to.

For open-source development, GitHub is the obvious choice. If you’re doing closed source, or you think your code isn’t ready for public scrutiny, Bitbucket gives you unlimited private repositories. I’m currently using GitHub to collaborate on some private repositories, which you can get with a paid plan, and Bitbucket for my closed-source app projects.

In a spirited attempt to really learn to use the tools of my trade, I wanted to take some time to better learn Git for version control (and also dive deeper into Xcode, but that is another story).

Earlier I’ve occasionally been using the fine tome Version Control with Git, 2nd Edition* by Jon Loeliger and Matthew McCullough to learn the basics, but I wanted to really dive in. I’ve already mastered the very basics, and have also used remote repositories with both GitHub and BitBucket, but there is a lot more to learn to be able to really take advantage of Git.

* Disclaimer: I’m an O’Reilly affiliate, and the links above take you to the O’Reilly online bookstore, in the hope that you purchase something, so that I will get a small commission.

Mesdames et messieurs, nous vous présentons: ‎HipStyles en français ! Rechercher vos photos ‎Hipstamatic dans votre téléphone par l’équipement et les partager à ‎Instagram, ‎Twitter ou ‎Facebook. Téléchargez la nouvelle version 1.0.6 maintenant sur l’‎AppStore ! HipStyles 1.0.6 is now available on the App Store. As you may gather from the above, it was localized into French. We also updated the Japanese localization, and made a number of performance enhancements to the matching engine.

If you are programming, and you are still not using any form of version control, you really have no excuse. There are many benefits to being able to keep track of your code and try out various branches, even if you are the only programmer in the project. If you are collaborating with someone, it soon becomes nearly impossible (or at least very time-consuming) to deal with various versions and changes.

Of all the version control systems I’ve tried over the years (CVS, Subversion, a little bit of Mercurial, and Git) it seems that Git has “won” in a sense. There is a sizable open-source community born around GitHub (and Bitbucket) for which Git works very well indeed. Also many programming tools have built-in or plug-in support for Git, so you don’t even have to use command-line tools for managing your source code repositories if you don’t want to.

For open-source development, GitHub is the obvious choice. If you’re doing closed source, or you think your code isn’t ready for public scrutiny, Bitbucket gives you unlimited private repositories. I’m currently using GitHub to collaborate on some private repositories, which you can get with a paid plan, and Bitbucket for my closed-source app projects.

In a spirited attempt to really learn to use the tools of my trade, I wanted to take some time to better learn Git for version control (and also dive deeper into Xcode, but that is another story).

Earlier I’ve occasionally been using the fine tome Version Control with Git, 2nd Edition* by Jon Loeliger and Matthew McCullough to learn the basics, but I wanted to really dive in. I’ve already mastered the very basics, and have also used remote repositories with both GitHub and BitBucket, but there is a lot more to learn to be able to really take advantage of Git.

* Disclaimer: I’m an O’Reilly affiliate, and the links above take you to the O’Reilly online bookstore, in the hope that you purchase something, so that I will get a small commission.

Dear vintage digital photography enthusiasts, Hipstamatic photographers, Instagram users, we have great news for you. HipStyles for iPhone is available on the App Store! HipStyles is the ultimate companion for any Hipstamatic user. It lets you freely select combinations of Hipstamatic lenses, films and flashes, and search for matching photos on Instagram or inside your own HipstaPrints album in your phone. HipStyles taps into the endless stream of fresh images posted on Instagram by the ever-increasing community of Hipstagraphers.

BusMonTRE on helppokäyttöinen pysäkkiavustin Tampereen joukkoliikenteen käyttäjille. Se näyttää sinulle juuri sen tiedon, jonka useimmiten tarvitset kun olet lähdössä jonnekin päin Tamperetta bussilla. BusMonTRE ei ole reittiopas, eikä se näytä liikkuvia palloja kartalla (muun muassa siksi, että bussit eivät ole pallonmuotoisia). Kokeile sitä, ja huomaat, että se on helpompi, fiksumpi ja nopeampi kuin monet bussien liikkumista seurailevat ohjelmat. Ohjelman tehtävä on vastata kysymykseen: “milloin menee seuraava bussi tästä läheltä?” Sen selvittämiseksi BusMonTRE vertaa sijaintiasi Tampereen joukkoliikenteen pysäkkien sijainteihin, ja näyttää sinulle listan sinua lähimpänä olevista pysäkeistä.

No matter how handy graphical user interfaces are, the good old command line remains a useful tool for performing various low-level data manipulation and system administration tasks. It is the fallback when you need to do something that has no way of graphical control. Being much more expressive and open-ended than a predefined set of controls, the command shell is the ultimate control environment for your computer. Data science has become one of the most intensely practised computer applications, so it is no wonder that it also benefits greatly from the hands-on control approach of the command line shell.

Mono is the open source .NET runtime for Windows, Linux, and OS X. It consists of the Mono runtime environment, libraries, and C# and F# compilers. Recently Mono has gained extra popularity due to Microsoft’s purchase of Xamarin, the makers of a cross-platform toolkit of the same name. If you just want to create command-line .NET applications on the Mac, and don’t need Xamarin.Forms or the mobile tools, you can just install Mono and start hacking away.

The UEFA EURO 2012, or the European football championship, is close to the end of group stage as I write this. (That would be “soccer” to U.S. readers.) As usual, I have been delighted to notice that UEFA has done a great job in getting the names of the various international players presented as accurately as possible, both on the UEFA.com website and in the mobile apps they’ve published.

UEFA’s good track record with names has been going on for a long time; I first noticed this when I started to follow the UEFA Champions League in 2000, when I was already working with software internationalization, and knew enough to pay attention to these things.

In this post I’ll examine what it takes to pull off a task like this – which you may also need to do.

BusMonTRE on pysäkkiavustinohjelma älypuhelimille. Se on tehty tarjoamaan helppo tapa selvittää milloin kulkee bussi käyttäjää lähellä olevalta pysäkiltä Tampereen joukkoliikenteen toiminta-alueella (johon kuuluu Tampereen lisäksi useita ympäristökuntia). Tähän tarkoitukseen se käyttää Tampereen kaupungin tarjoamaa avointa dataa sekä Tampereen joukkoliikenteen ylläpitämää sinistä virtuaalimonitoria. BusMonTRE on tällä hetkellä saatavana iOS-, Android- ja Windows Phone -älypuhelimille. Tässä kirjoituksessa kerron hieman ohjelman taustoista sekä tulevaisuuden kehitysnäkymistä.

Virtuaalimonitori omaan tarpeeseen

Nettisivupalveluna toimiva sininen virtuaalimonitori on ollut käytössä Tampereella jo pitkään. Tavaratalot ja pienemmät liikkeet ovat käyttäneet sitä tiloissaan esimerkiksi näyttämällä isolla televisioruudulla asiakkailleen lähimmältä pysäkiltä kulkevien bussien tietoja. Kaikiilla Tampereen joukkoliikenteen pysäkeillä on sekä nimi että numerokoodi, ja virtuaalimonitorin saa helposti näyttämään yhtä tai useampaa haluttua pysäkkiä tämän numerokoodin avulla.

Sain ajatuksen BusMonTRE:sta jo vuonna 2011, mutta silloin en vielä ryhtynyt suunnittelemaan sovellusta, vaan käytin omissa laitteissani muutamaa valmiiksi leivottua nettiosoitetta, joilla sain kätevästi haluamani monitorinäytön nettiselaimeen. Osallistuin vuosina 2012-2013 useaan avoimen datan tapahtumaan Tampereella, ollessani muutenkin aktiivisesti mukana Tampereen startup-yhteisössä. Eräässä näistä tapahtumista Tampereen joukkoliikenteen edustaja antoi vahvan signaalin siitä, että heidän intresseissään ei ole kehittää sovelluksia itse, mutta he tarjoavat datan ilmaiseksi sovelluskehittäjien käyttöön.

Tampereen seudun joukkoliikenteessä tehdään mittava uudistus 30.6.2014. Liikennealue jaetaan maksuvyöhykkeisiin, ja linjasto sekä sen numerointi muuttuvat. Tarkempia tietoja uudistuksesta voit lukea joukkoliikennealueella talouksiin jaetusta Sinisten bussien matkassa -lehdestä, uudesta vuoden 2014 kesäaikataulukirjasta sekä Tampereen joukkoliikenteen nettisivuilta. Uudistus vaikuttaa myös BusMonTRE-pysäkkiavustinohjelmaan, joka on saatavana iPhone-, Android- ja Windows Phone -puhelimille. Viimeisimmässä 0.3-versiossa lisättiin tiedot siitä, mitkä linjat kulkevat minkäkin pysäkin kautta. Kuten kaikki BusMonTRE:n käyttämä aineisto, tämäkin tieto perustuu Tampereen joukkoliikenteen avoimena datana julkaisemiin tiedostoihin ja rajapintoihin.

BusMonTRE on helppokäyttöinen pysäkkiavustin Tampereen joukkoliikenteen käyttäjille. Se näyttää sinulle juuri sen tiedon, jonka useimmiten tarvitset kun olet lähdössä jonnekin päin Tamperetta bussilla. BusMonTRE ei ole reittiopas, eikä se näytä liikkuvia palloja kartalla (muun muassa siksi, että bussit eivät ole pallonmuotoisia). Kokeile sitä, ja huomaat, että se on helpompi, fiksumpi ja nopeampi kuin monet bussien liikkumista seurailevat ohjelmat. Ohjelman tehtävä on vastata kysymykseen: “milloin menee seuraava bussi tästä läheltä?” Sen selvittämiseksi BusMonTRE vertaa sijaintiasi Tampereen joukkoliikenteen pysäkkien sijainteihin, ja näyttää sinulle listan sinua lähimpänä olevista pysäkeistä.

BusMonTRE on pysäkkiavustinohjelma älypuhelimille. Se on tehty tarjoamaan helppo tapa selvittää milloin kulkee bussi käyttäjää lähellä olevalta pysäkiltä Tampereen joukkoliikenteen toiminta-alueella (johon kuuluu Tampereen lisäksi useita ympäristökuntia). Tähän tarkoitukseen se käyttää Tampereen kaupungin tarjoamaa avointa dataa sekä Tampereen joukkoliikenteen ylläpitämää sinistä virtuaalimonitoria. BusMonTRE on tällä hetkellä saatavana iOS-, Android- ja Windows Phone -älypuhelimille. Tässä kirjoituksessa kerron hieman ohjelman taustoista sekä tulevaisuuden kehitysnäkymistä.

Virtuaalimonitori omaan tarpeeseen

Nettisivupalveluna toimiva sininen virtuaalimonitori on ollut käytössä Tampereella jo pitkään. Tavaratalot ja pienemmät liikkeet ovat käyttäneet sitä tiloissaan esimerkiksi näyttämällä isolla televisioruudulla asiakkailleen lähimmältä pysäkiltä kulkevien bussien tietoja. Kaikiilla Tampereen joukkoliikenteen pysäkeillä on sekä nimi että numerokoodi, ja virtuaalimonitorin saa helposti näyttämään yhtä tai useampaa haluttua pysäkkiä tämän numerokoodin avulla.

Sain ajatuksen BusMonTRE:sta jo vuonna 2011, mutta silloin en vielä ryhtynyt suunnittelemaan sovellusta, vaan käytin omissa laitteissani muutamaa valmiiksi leivottua nettiosoitetta, joilla sain kätevästi haluamani monitorinäytön nettiselaimeen. Osallistuin vuosina 2012-2013 useaan avoimen datan tapahtumaan Tampereella, ollessani muutenkin aktiivisesti mukana Tampereen startup-yhteisössä. Eräässä näistä tapahtumista Tampereen joukkoliikenteen edustaja antoi vahvan signaalin siitä, että heidän intresseissään ei ole kehittää sovelluksia itse, mutta he tarjoavat datan ilmaiseksi sovelluskehittäjien käyttöön.

BusMonTRE on helppokäyttöinen pysäkkiavustin Tampereen joukkoliikenteen käyttäjille. Se näyttää sinulle juuri sen tiedon, jonka useimmiten tarvitset kun olet lähdössä jonnekin päin Tamperetta bussilla. BusMonTRE ei ole reittiopas, eikä se näytä liikkuvia palloja kartalla (muun muassa siksi, että bussit eivät ole pallonmuotoisia). Kokeile sitä, ja huomaat, että se on helpompi, fiksumpi ja nopeampi kuin monet bussien liikkumista seurailevat ohjelmat. Ohjelman tehtävä on vastata kysymykseen: “milloin menee seuraava bussi tästä läheltä?” Sen selvittämiseksi BusMonTRE vertaa sijaintiasi Tampereen joukkoliikenteen pysäkkien sijainteihin, ja näyttää sinulle listan sinua lähimpänä olevista pysäkeistä.