Arcoarena

Well I spent Thursday back at Imperial College (Union). It was cool to be back. Slightly odd as each year I go back I recognise fewer and fewer people. I did have a quick chat to Kristine from the office though.

I have to say I wasn’t expecting much from a Xyratex point of view as I went last year and spent most of my time explaining what Xyratex does to people whilst thinking ‘I wouldn’t employ you if it was my choice’. This year I spent most of my time explaing what Xyratex does to people who seemed quite promising. It was much better than Bath careers fair (sorry Nia) where we had a couple of good people. At Imperial it was probably in double figures. This was all largely helped by being at the end of the UDH so we got fewer people visiting but those that did make it were the motivated ones.

Whilst on the subject of Imperial it is possibly time to say that I do miss Dramsoc. Not university as such but Dramsoc and the stuff related to it. I get very few chances to do anything big like Freshers week now, the big society thing and bar nights were good too. Having said that I’m determined not to say ‘I wish I was back at university’ it’s very much a one opportunity ends and another begins, sort of. I still get urges to march up to the staff in clubs and demand to do some decent lighting rather than the crap they have. I’ve also spent the weekend looking a various techy website and discovered how simple DMX appears to be compared to other serial busses.

Finally, there has been much argument about whether Linux is ready for the desktop or not and usability as a whole. I got a phone call from Andrea wanting to check her email so I told her the details to log onto my Ubuntu system (so a Gnome desktop). Now Andrea isn’t the most computer literate person, but a while later I phoned back and she said that everything was in an obvious place, that it was easy to use and that she ‘prefered it to Windows’.

Well I’ve just made it back from tour. It was quite good fun, tiring but fun. It’s a pity I only got to do the fit-up but I had to leave to get ready to go on holiday. Oh well, I’m sure I’ll make alteast the weekends next year.

Anyway, stuff to do. More later

Right, I promise (hand on heart) that this will be the last time I say anything about SML. I’m sure it’s all bored you lot (which is why this is a static page rather than a blog entry) so I won’t say anymore about it……after this.

I just have a few things to say to purge my opinions having finished working with SML (for good).

SML isn’t a bad language. It’s (mainly) functional and if you like functional programming or think in a certain way you will probably like it. It’s very elegant and neat, things happen in a few lines and you can do some very clever stuff.

The best things I liked about SML were:
-the map function: you write a function that applies to one element of a list and the map function will give you a function that applies that to the whole list
-curried functions and partial instantiation: also quite handy. Curried functions allow you to partially instantiate things (i.e. you can pass parameters one at a time (which is a great deal more useful than you would think).

I think it’s good points are also it’s bad points. I don’t care about elegant code and hence it infuriated me when my project supervisor went all starry-eyed about how wonderful SML is. The fact you can do stuff in a few lines is very cool; it’s also very confusing. Setting something out in a longer-winded way can often lead to code that a larger number of people can read and understand.

One of my other problem with SML was that I had to learn it before I could use it. This inevitably meant that I didn’t use the fancy stuff that SML can do but something like C++ (or dare I say it Python (think higher-order functions other than map)) can’t.

Now having finished talking (well…mainly complaining) about SML as a language - I have a few other problems.

1) The documentation is crap. It’s fairly non-existent. Most of the stuff on the web is also pre-1997 when there was a big change in the language and hence it’s useless. Nobody tells you this though! If anyone reading this has to learn to program in SML - buy a book

2) You can’t do anything with it - No-one writes APIs (interfaces to programs) for SML. Also there are two systems available to make GUIs - both are appalling, particularly the ones the SML website wants you to use. They both appear to be ‘proof of concept’ rather than anything anyone is expected to use. Anything that is written for SML (including the Gui systems) has the documentation issue too (see 1)

3) It’s only used by academics - perhaps this is the root of all the other problems. In essence, nobody writes about it, nobody uses it and even if somebody did use it they couldn’t do anything with it.

Basically my problem with my project was that I see no point in using the language I was being forced to use. I didn’t use the fancy stuff and that is the only reason to even think of using SML

Sorry for the the long rant. It’s my last on this subject I promise. Happy programming, live long, prosper and don’t use functional languages.

Well with Guildford not happening from my point of view (it is happening, I’m just not going - they are over-crewed as it is). I now need something to occupy me before I go away. I am also still debating the tour issue but the lack of Guildford makes it more likely I’ll go.

So as I was saying I need something constructive to do. I think I might try and learn something useful. I think first off I’m changing the comment module so you don’t have to be logged in to add your name. I’ll have to think what else to do.

Well 4 years of work got me the same class of degree as Gary. What the class of degree won’t show however is that his will be a high 2:1 and mine will be somewhere below that. It’ll be interesting to see the actual mark

Much like Mike I too am looking to the future. I’ve finished my course (I find out the class of my degree on Friday and it had better be a 2:1 or I’ll cry - I’m probably not joking there). Not that the class of my degree affects anything other than my pride. In September (the 6th at 9am to be precise) I start my new job at Xyratex in Havant, I’ve got that whatever my degree turns out to be. At some point before that I’m moving to Portsmouth/Southsea with Andrea (and my god aren’t flats expensive to rent down south, talk about North/South divide - you can buy a 3 bedroom semi in my village for 130K).

In between now and moving to Southsea I’ve still got loads to do. I’m hopefully helping out with the Guildford festival thanks to Surrey Union Crew and then I shall be attending about a week of MT Soc tour. I am then heading off on holiday. It’s all booked now so I’m taking flights from Heathrow (via Amsterdam - KLM do cheap flights) to Shanghia. The tour takes us round what appears to be the big things to see (the terracotta warriors and all that kind of stuff). We end up in Beijing and fly back again via Amsterdam. Should be cool. Following that I have about a week to find a flat before my Cousin’s wedding. I’m sure it’s not meant to be quite so busy. Added to which all of this is disguising the fact I’m actually moving out of my parents home for good in around 7 weeks time.

Based on my moving out status I’m currently unpacking from University (it was very odd to leave London for the last time - I shall visit but never live there again). As I’m unpacking I’m also chucking the random junk I left behind at home out. Anyone want a very old set of rock boots (I’m shoe size 10), or some old Linux Distro CDs (go on Gary you know you do)…?

All this thinking is making me nostalgic so I shall go now before I get too soppy (and start professing my undying love for everyone I ever knew). This is all in marked contrast to the reports I hear from my old school which appears to be going down the pan (I blame the new Head Teacher - well head-somthing anyway).

Well, I’ve finished my course but haven’t had a moment spare since then. I’ve done quite a lot, a quick trip to Portsmouth (to see where I’m going to live), I booked a holiday for August (Shanghai to Beijing), been to Alton Towers and done a Fashion show.

I’ve just returned a hired van to the company after a slightly nervous wait to see if they were going to complain about anything and take my £250 deposit away from me. They shouldn’t have as I didn’t get anywhere near scratching or hitting anything but you never know.

The past day has confirmed that all Mercedes drivers are arrogant idoits. I’ve had about 5 cut me up or push in front of me in the past day. And it’s always Mercedes (except the one taxi). Anyway, in honour of this and all my other posts about my final year project I have decided to create a ‘Bitterness’ catagory for you to be able to browse my posts and find only those containing me whinging about one thing or another.

I might get round to writing about all the stuff that’s happened recently at some point. But that’s all for now

I think I’m going to have to stop writing the “Disadvantages of ML” section of my report now as it’s about 4 times longer than the “Advantages of ML” and given that my project supervisor is in love with ML I don’t think it’s a good idead to slate it too much. He was quite dismissive of Python for reasons he didn’t go into. Probably lack of “elegance”. Now call me unromantic but….I don’t give a damn whether my code is “elegant” or not. It’s code I’m not going to frame it and hang it on the wall. If it works, does what it’s meant to and wasn’t too hard to write then it’s good code. (Stompts off muttering something about stupid functional programming)

Actually, while I think about it. The documentation is crap. If anyone trying to write in ML actually reads this. Ignore most online tutorials as they were all written before 1996 and so don’t actually bear any resemblance to the language nowadays. Nobody tells you this. That took me ages to find out

I promise that in a few days I’ll stop moaning about SML and get on with my life. I may however write up some thoughts and tips just incase some other poor sap being forced to use it finds it and makes use of it.

Well lots more progress really. I have a GUI that is half working now which is distinctly better that not working at all. It was all quite simple once I worked out what I had to do and that it wasn’t hard to do. The annoying thing is they never tell you this. At some point I might try writing up stuff I’ve found for the next helpless sap that has to do a project in SML with a GUI.

I have a few more things to code up and I’ve got a report to write. It’ll all be ok as long as I work like a maniac. Two things concern me however. Firstly I’m a little concerned whether the project is complicated enough. It hardly seems like a work of genius at the moment but maybe I’m being pessimistic. Secondly, and the less abstract of the two is I have visions of getting into college printing it out and it looking completely different to the way it’s meant to. It all comes of not owning a printer I guess.

Oh well, to distract me today I have the Physics Ball to help with.

Well my project is slowly coming along. I’ve worked out how to use functions in the GUI (finally) all I need to do now is work out how to interface with my external modules. They don’t want to make anything simple though. I spent most of the day not achieving much and generally having a crap day. I have however eventually got round to adding support for “don’t cares” in my code which is nice because I would have looked quite stupid if anyone noticed it was missing. Fortunatly I haven’t finished the simulation bit of my code so I didn’t have to change much. I’ve only got two really important bits to do now (excluding the GUI) so it’s coming along. Bring on the end!