Software crisis

Thursday, 9 February 2017

F-sharp books.

Title	Level	Authors	Publisher	Date	Pages	Comment
Learn F# (MEAP)	Intro	Isaac Abraham	Manning	Apr-2017	400
Real-World Functional Programming with examples in F# and C#		Tomas Petricek with Jon Skeet	Manning	Dec-2009	560
Beginning F# 4.0		Robert Pickering, Kit Eason	Apress	2016	309
Friendly F# (Fun with game programming)		Costantini, Giulia & Maggiore, Giuseppe	O'Reilly	Aug-2011	191
F# Succinctly	Free	Robert Pickering	Syncfu-sion	2012	96	Free
Analyzing and Visualizing Data with F#		Tomas Petricek	O'Reilly	Oct-2015	47	Free, from publisher
FSharp Specification 4.0		Fsharp Foundation	Fsharp Founda-tion		365	Free, Not really a book but can be published as such
F# Web Programming		Community for F#	GitBook			Free. Not really a book because it's just a set of hints!
F# Survival Guide		John Puopolo, Sandy Squires	CTO Corner	2012	171	Free.
Suave Music Store example					77
The Book of F#	Interm-ediate	Dave Fancher	No Starch Press	Mar-2014	312
Professional F# 2.0		Ted Neward Aaron, C. Erickson, Talbott Crowell, Richard Minerich	Wrox	2011	434
Programming F-sharp 3.0, 2e		Chris Smith	O'Reilly	Oct-2012	476
Testing with F#		Mikael Lundin	Packt	Feb-2015	286
F# for Developers		Tao Liu	Micro-soft	2013	619
Windows Phone 7.5 Application Development with F#	Web / mobile	Lohith G.N.	Packt	Apr-2013	138
Building Web, Cloud, and Mobile Solutions with F#		Daniel Mohl	O'Reilly	Nov-2012	176
F# Applied, A practical guide to Web dev in F# using Suave		Tamizhvendan S		2016	96	link
Expert F# 4.0	Expert	Don Syme, Adam Granicz & Antonio Cisternino	Apress	2015	582	4 editions of this book
F# High Performance		Eriawan Kusumawardhono	Packt	Jan-2017	338
Mastering F#		Alfonso García-Caro Núñez, Suhaib Fahad	Packt	Nov-2016	264
F# 4.0 Design Patterns		Gene Belitski	Packt	Nov-2016	318
F# for Quantitative Finance		Johan Astborg	Packt	Dec-2013	286
F# 4.0 Programming Cookbook		Kevin Ashton	Packt	Aug-2017	371
F# Deep Dives		Edited by Tomas Petricek, Phillip Trelford	Manning	Dec-2014	372
F# for Machine Learning Essentials	Machine Learning	Sudipta Mukherjee	Packt	Feb-2016	194
Machine Learning Projects for .NET Developers	Machine Learning	Mathias Brandewinder	Apress	2015	300
Learning F# Functional Data Structures and Algorithms	Compu-ter sciency	Adnan Masood	Packt	Jun-2015	206
Fsharp for Scientists		Jon D Harrop	Wiley	2008	334
F# for Technical Computing		Jon D Harrop	Flying frog	2010	279
Programming Language Concepts		Peter Sestoft	Springer	2012	278
Functional Programming Using F#		Michael R. Hansen, Hans Rischel	CUP	May-2013	372

Friday, 28 October 2016

VS code, asp.net core. Microsoft on all 3 platforms.

Microsoft are writing tools to develop and publish their applications on all 3 platforms. asp.net core is a slimmed down open source asp.net with web forms mercifully removed. Visual Studio code is a lightweight (by Microsoft standards), programming editor. It's cross platform (iOS, Linux, Win) and not too fat. The setup file I downloaded was 32Mb, taking 133.6Mb of disk space. It installed seriously fast (compared with other dev software from Microsoft).

I suppose this is a virtue of giving geeks more control over the development side. They will actually write tools for authoring software on any and every platform. There is presumably a Chrome version in the works too? Any application written should be portable across platforms with ease. It's a completely different philosophy from what we've been used to.

This blog is just a log of Shawn Wildermuth's long (> 9 hours) Pluralsight course "Building a Web App with ASP.NET Core, MVC 6, EF Core, and Angular", as I acquaint myself with the latest version. So much of it is command line driven, I feel I should write it down to remind myself what to do next time.

Entering code . from the command line executes VScode at lightning speed. e.g.

F:\code\CSharp\HelloWorld>code .

It loads with the project in that folder "HelloWorld", but without intellisense or coloration because each individual language must have support added separately. To add C# support, Ctrl+Shift+X shows a list of extensions, from which I selected C#. Added it, enabled it, the code editor restarts in less than a second. VSCode does not create projects like full Visual Studio. We need to use nodejs and npm for that. My copies of these two were quite old.

F:\code\CSharp\HelloWorld>node --version v4.4.3 F:\code\CSharp\HelloWorld>npm --version 2.15.1

So I installed a new nodejs from nodejs.org, which seemed to take forever! Snooze. Waking up several minutes later I do:

F:\code\CSharp\HelloWorld>node --version v6.9.1 F:\code\CSharp\HelloWorld>npm --version 3.10.8

Now, I'm happier creating a new project from the command line using yoeman, after first installing yoeman (with the global option), the asp.net generator is also installed

F:\code\CSharp\HelloWorld>npm install yo -g F:\code\CSharp\HelloWorld>npm install generator-aspnet -g

Now I will generate an asp.net application. First moving up a level out of my current project.

F:\code\CSharp\HelloWorld>cd.. F:\code\CSharp>yo aspnet

We see a command line menu system:

? What type of application do you want to create? (Use arrow keys) > Empty Web Application Empty Web Application (F#) Console Application Console Application (F#) Web Application Web Application Basic [without Membership and Authorization] Web Application Basic [without Membership and Authorization] (F#) (Move up and down to reveal more choices)

Pick "Web Application". If the command arrows are not working just enter the number for that choice ( 5 ) Select the Bootstrap option and call it FunWithYo

navigate to it.

F:\code\CSharp>cd FunWithYo F:\code\CSharp\FunWithYo>dir

Attempting to run it at this stage shows it's still missing asp.net. So we must restore it, before running it.

F:\code\CSharp\FunWithYo>dotnet restore F:\code\CSharp\FunWithYo>dotnet run

The whole can be seen in a browser on port 5000 localhost:5000

My frist asp.net core MVC application up. Ctrl+c (from the command line, where it is running) stops it.

Once the new project is complete, code ., opens VS code with the current project loaded. We need to answer Yes to the question
Required assets to build and debug are missing from your project. Add them?

Wednesday, 16 March 2016

Programming Languages and programming

There are probably five main styles of programming, which may overlap, and often relate to particular languages. We have imperative, declarative, object oriented, functional and logic programming styles. These are more commonly called programming paradigms than styles. The list below has each style with an iconic sibling language to implement it.

imperative - C, or BASIC
declarative - SQL
object oriented - Smalltalk
functional - Haskell
logic - Prolog

Imperative programming begins with the 3 rules of coding: sequence (code executes left to right, top to bottom), selection (if, case) and iteration (loops), and may develop to structured programming. There's something very low level and intuitive about imperative programming but the best programming is rarely done in this style. With imperative programming, our code explains how a problem is solved - the solution can often be understood by tracing through the steps in the code. Imperative code often has a closer relationship to machine code than other styles.

With declarative programming, one declares a statement or code block to solve a problem. Declarative features are generally higher level. We see declarative features in SQL, many functional and logic programming languages.

Object oriented (OO) programming began in the late 1960s, cumulating in Smalltalk (Alan Kay: 1970 to 1980) and design patterns (1990s through to the noughties). 1980s onward saw several post-Smalltalk languages implementing OO features: C++, Java, C#, Javascript. These four now dominate the world of code. Yet your OO-purest is a Smalltalk coder at heart!

Functional programming (FP) began in academia. Elements of LISP (Designed by John McCarthy, 1958) are functional, Robin Milner created ML in 1975. 1980s saw a commercial FP language: Miranda (David Turner). Haskell began in 1987, mostly as a copy of Miranda, ever refining itself, yet staying lean and clean. Modern functional programming stresses, functions as "first class" elements of the language, declarative programming, prefers immutable data. Other commercial FP languages are: OCaml, F#, Scala, Clojure, ...

Logic programming languages began in earnest in the early 1970s with Prolog. Coding styles are very declarative and applications often have an AI basis, data analysis or both.

All these styles mix, to some extent, in actual languages in use. Yet a language is classified with the style which is most important to it. For example we call Scala a functional programing language, even though it is very OO too. Javascript has always had functional features but does not have immutable data. There's even a style called functional Javascript. Yet Javascript will always be an OO language first.

I began this in response to a question : what programming language should one learn first? It's not really a sensible question. You should learn each of the programming language styles, and sub-styles. [e.g. sub-styles: structured programming as a sub-style of imperative programming, design patterns as a sub-style of object-oriented programming, They are not really sub-, but more like meta-, or supra-styles]. We can also recognize certain idioms that span all styles: DRY, SOLID, ... A lot of good coding practices seem orthogonal to implementing specific use cases. You could begin with imperative programming (first six books in list below), and apply the wisdom in the books to your code. Object-oriented languages dominate business, so read books 7 to 12, but only 12 is specific only to OO (in a sense). Finally, you need at least some functional programming and the last two are good starters.

Beginner programmer reading list.

TBH, A beginner can begin with any programming, or programming language book. Yet you won't really have graduated from beginner until you've read most of the 14 books below. Read and apply the lessons of all 14 and you're past beginner/junior programmer level.

Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction, 2nd Edition, by Steve McConnell
The Art of Readable Code, by Dustin Boswell and Trevor Foucher
Programming Pearls (2nd Edition), by by Jon Bentley
97 Things Every Programmer Should Know, by by Kevlin Henney
Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship, by Robert C. Martin
Test Driven Development: By Example, by Kent Beck
Agile Principles, Patterns, and Practices in C#, by Robert C. Martin and Micah Martin
Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code, by by Martin Fowler
Working Effectively with Legacy Code, by by Michael Feathers
Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests, by Steve Freeman and Nat Pryce
Agile Java: Crafting Code with Test-Driven Development, by Jeff Langr
Object Design: Roles, Responsibilities, and Collaborations, by Rebecca Wirfs-Brock and Alan McKean
Programming in Haskell, by Graham Hutton
The Joy of Clojure, 2nd Edition, by Michael Fogus and Chris Houser

Tuesday, 24 November 2015

The crossword that counts itself

I love puzzles. This is described by Alex Bellos at the Guardian.

It helps to write a spreadsheet to solve this.

Set the column widths to be about the same as the height, making them look square.
Draw out the puzzle by highlighting a phrase (there are 12 "phrases"), and formatting: format cells, borders, click outline, OK.
Repeat for each of the other 11 phrases, highlight, Ctrl-Y (repeats the last format command for a new area)
Count the lengths of the rectangles (these are "phrase length"), subtract (3 or 2) to get "word length"
The area inside the blue box is named "puzzle"
The formula (row 20) for "actual" is: = SUMPRODUCT( LEN(puzzle) - LEN( SUBSTITUTE(puzzle,"e","") ))
This formula is copied for the 11 rows below and the letter edited, each time.
The formula for "= target" is: =IF( E20 = F20, "Y", "N")
When they all show "Y", the puzzle is solved.
The sum in cell e32 just tallies the 12 "actual" numbers. It must eventually show 68 when the puzzle is solved
The working between p18 : ae32 allows one to count the number of times each number word is used and tally them (must be = 68 too)
The cells bordered in red are named: number
The "word cells" formula is just: = number * R19
This formula is copied down and across (to the 3 combos). The "3 combos" show the 3 possible combinations of possible words.
The "# letters" fomula is just the length of the number. e.g.: = LEN( AD20 )

This is not so easy to solve using purely coded program, because the rules to narrow down the combinations are not so clear. After you've figured out what constraints must be met it, no doubt, becomes much easier to program.

Tuesday, 10 November 2015

Code spippets - Fsharp

GistBox Clipper

Clipper is the companion Chrome extension to GistBox. It allows users to create Gists from:

Example code blocks
Highlighted text
Any page on the web

Install Chrome Extension

http://www.gistboxapp.com/clipper-tutorial/

Enter keyboard data, via console, with validation.
: /// Read a valid age (between 0 and 150) from key input let readage (person: string) = let mutable continueLooping = true let mutable age = 0 while continueLooping do Console.WriteLine("Enter {0}'s age (between 0 and 150): ", person) let canparse, keyin = Int32.TryParse(Console.ReadLine()) age <- keyin if canparse && age >= 0 && age < 151 then continueLooping <- false age

Code snippets - css

Lists, without indents, with buttons, and over-handing firstline
: ul { list-style: disc outside none; margin-left: 0; padding-left: 1em; } ul.circle { list-style-type: circle; } /* for lists within lists */ li { padding-left: 0.5em; }
pre :- with CR wrapping a line
: pre { white-space: pre-wrap; /* css-3 */ white-space: -moz-pre-wrap; /* Mozilla, since 1999 */ white-space: -pre-wrap; /* Opera 4-6 */ white-space: -o-pre-wrap; /* Opera 7 */ word-wrap: break-word; /* Internet Explorer 5.5+ */ }