Monday, May 08, 2006
Dual Boots and Smarter Pointers
LINUX NEWS FROM O'REILLY NETWORK
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The Latest from http://www.linuxdevcenter.com and http://ONLamp.com
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Carson Workshops: Getting Started with Rails
Taught by Geoffrey Grosenbach, May 25th 2006, NYC
Learn how to get rockin' with Ruby on Rails
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Welcome to the Linux newsletter, everyone. This weekly mailing is a
transparent plea for you to read, read, read the latest articles and
weblogs on the O'Reilly Network related to the whole world of open source
and free software.
If you don't know pointers, you don't know C. (Your editor learned more
than he ever wanted to know about cross-platform function pointer
portability this weekend.) If you don't know pointers well, your C++ will
suffer. Manually managing dynamic memory in C++ can be difficult unless
you work with the system. Part of that is understanding the Resource
Acquisition Is Initialization idiom. Part of it is taking advantage of
smart pointers to free you from subtle, once-in-a-while failures. Julio
M. Merino Vidal explains the problems and demonstrates the solutions in
"Smart Pointers in C++":
<http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2006/05/04/smart-pointers.html>
Alex Gough has an odd job. He's perhaps the only Perl programmer for 500
miles. Yet when the winds come up (and not too far up), his colleagues at
the South Pole want to go kite surfing. How does a Perl hacker at the
bottom of the world know when it's time to go out and have some fun? By
making pretty graphs of temperatures and wind speeds and other weather
conditions from lots of sensors. Here's what it's like to write code in
Antarctica:
<http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2006/05/04/charting-data.html>
Notebook computers generally start life with Windows XP sprawled across
their hard drives. For people who prefer the free and unfettered life,
this is not ideal. Cygwin can make Windows somewhat more palatable, but
there's nothing quite like actual Unix on your notebook. Kevin Farnham
recently made Ubuntu and Windows XP work together. Here's how he made his
laptop dual-boot:
<http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2006/05/08/dual-boot-laptop.html>
In weblogs this week, your editor continued to refactor an aging Perl web
application in public, learning new things and revealing his own gradual
competence:
<http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2006/05/refactoring_everything_day_13.html>
<http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2006/05/refactoring_everything_day_14.html>
<http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2006/05/refactoring_everything_day_15.html>
He also interviewed Patrick Michaud, Perl 6 pumpking and announced
Patrick's supersecret current project--Perl 6 running on Parrot:
<http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2006/05/people_of_perl_patrick_michaud.html>
<http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2006/05/perl_6_on_parrot.html>
Jeremy Jones found Guido van Rossum blessing Django:
<http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2006/05/guido_points_out_django_is_gai.html>
He also tried PyDev again, preferring it over Eclipse:
<http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2006/05/a_glance_at_pydev.html>
Dave Cross wondered why people planning to build new MVC-based web
applications don't seem to be choosing Perl:
<http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2006/05/mvc_frameworks_in_perl.html>
Caitlyn Martin revived a pair of ancient 133MHz laptops with small Linux
distributions:
<http://www.oreillynet.com/linux/blog/2006/05/atticware_reving_ancient_littl.html>
Carla Schroder praised internet radio:
<http://www.oreillynet.com/linux/blog/2006/05/bah_humbug_tinny_digital_music.html>
Andy Oram wondered if Red Hat might benefit most from Sun's relaxing the
distribution requirements for Java:
<http://www.oreillynet.com/etel/blog/2006/05/might_red_hat_benefit_most_fro.html>
Caleb Tennis made the case against Python (or any other language) as the
default "just get into programming" language:
<http://www.oreillynet.com/ruby/blog/2006/05/the_case_for_python.html>
James Britt explained his plan for introducing Ruby last weekend:
<http://www.oreillynet.com/ruby/blog/2006/05/ruby_at_code_camp.html>
Your editor pondered the notion of agile database administration:
<http://www.oreillynet.com/databases/blog/2006/05/reducing_the_cost_of_database.html>
That sums up this week. Be sure to check back on the various open sourcey
sites through this week to see what's new. If you leave a comment on any
one of these weblogs, you even have a chance to shape what's on the site
next week! How cool is that?
Until next time,
- c
chromatic
chromatic@oreilly.com
Technical Editor
O'Reilly Network
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ONLamp.com and Linux Devcenter Top Five Articles Last Week
1. Ajax on Rails
XMLHttpRequest and Ruby on Rails are two hot topics in web development. As
you ought to expect by now, they work really well together. Curt Hibbs
explains the minimal Ajax you need to know and the minimal Ruby you need
to write to Ajax-ify your Rails applications.
<http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2005/06/09/rails_ajax.html>
***
2. Smart Pointers in C++
C++ is a powerful language that allows fine-grained control over almost
all aspects of your program. Of course, low-level code has its
disadvantages too. Manual memory management can be complex and difficult
to get right. Fortunately, the RAII idiom and smart pointers can help you
write correct and efficient code. Julio M. Merino Vidal demonstrates.
<http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2006/05/04/smart-pointers.html>
***
3. Managing Disk Space with LVM
Linux's Logical Volume Manager (LVM) allows you to create virtual disk
partitions out of one or more hard drives. This makes it easy to manage
growth in filesystems. Combined with RAID, it provides a nearly unbeatable
way to keep your files safe and available. Bryce Harrington and Kees Cook
show how to configure LVM, how to combine it with RAID, and how to use it
on desktop machines too.
<http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2006/04/27/managing-disk-space-with-lvm.html>
***
4. OpenBSD 3.9: Blob-Busters Interviewed
Every six months, the OpenBSD team releases a new version of their OS.
OpenBSD 3.9 is here. Federico Biancuzzi recently interviewed the core
developers about new features and improvements, as well as their
principled stand against shipping binary-only blobs in place of actual
drivers.
<http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/bsd/2006/04/27/openbsd-3_9.html>
***
5. PHP Form Handling
If your PHP program is a dynamic web page (and it probably is) and your
PHP program is dealing with user input (and it probably is), then you need
to work with HTML forms. David Sklar, author of Learning PHP 5, offers
tips for simplifying, securing, and organizing your form-handling PHP
code.
<http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/php/2004/08/26/PHPformhandling.html>
***
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