Twenty-five years ago, computer programming was big-iron heavy — then the personal computer came along and everything changed. In this special anniversary retrospective, Eugene Kim looks back at what computing was like then, and DDJ's role in that revolution.
Ruby is a freely available pure, untyped, object-oriented language. Dave and Andy show how to use the language, while Yukihiro Matsumoto (Ruby's creator) adds a note on why he developed it.
PHP 4 is a server-side scripting language that runs on almost any OS used for web hosting. It also supports numerous web servers including Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS), Apache, and AOL Server, and it has native support for multiple database engines.
Andrew presents PyDaylight, an object-oriented wrapper for Python that provides the low-level interface to the underlying C libraries.
Contrary to popular belief, it is possible to build GUI applications with Perl. Cameron shows how you can start using Perl to build GUIs, then presents some of the options you have when relying on Perl for GUI development.
Boudewijn examines PyQt, one of the most advanced Python GUI libraries, focusing on the innovative signals-and-slots paradigm it offers you.
David presents his "miniXML" parser for XML that is written in C++ using the Standard Template Library for strings and various containers.
When it comes to forensic computing, data recovery is of interest to anyone who has lost data.
A mixin is a fragment of a class that is intended to be composed with other classes or mixins. Our authors present a solution to the constructor problem in parameterized inheritance-based mixin programming in C++.
DigitaScript is a built-in scripting language that provides user-level access to digital camera controls and image and information flow.
With the emergence of low-power, low-cost, high-processing PC-based embedded-systems solutions, DOS has turned into a serious alternative for embedded applications. However, you still have to deal with the problem of interrupt latencies.
Going from a one-person shop to team development brings new requirements, such as the need for a source-code control and versioning applications, that may be familiar to programmers, but not web developers.
David created the Network Query Language (NQL) with the new class of "connected" applications in mind — intelligent agents, bots, spiders, middleware, and web apps.
Michael's mixed bag includes database design, business rules, new programming environments, and a look at the cottage industry of books about Steve Jobs.
Before hitting the road in his venerable DobbsMobile, Al takes his own walk down memory lane and gives Quincy a new compiler.
The lightweight controls which come with Sun's JFC Swing framework provide a rich set of interfaces for extending the way they look or behave. Jason extends the JComboBox control using Listener interfaces and a custom data model to make it a little smarter and less prone to error.
Reservoir sampling lets you find precisely the right number N of records without any prior knowledge of the number of records in the file — provided that there are enough!
The "Wildfire" Ecco and Liane have to deal with is more than a golden oldie rock hit.
This month Lou examines Beginning Perl, by Simon Cozens, while Trudy takes a look at Al Williams's Windows 2000 Systems Programming Black Book.