In the Beginning... ...there was no inheritance and no composition, only code. And the code was unwieldy, repetitive, blocky, unhappy, verbose, and tired. Copy and Paste were the primary mechanisms of code reuse. Procedures and functions were rare, newfangled gadgets viewed with suspicion. Calling a procedure was expensive! Separating pieces of code from the main logic caused confusion! It was a Dark Time.
Programmers think dynamic languages like Python are easier to use than static ones, but why? I look at uniquely dynamic programming idioms and their static alternatives, identifying a few broad trends that impact language usability.
In this article, I want to explain what a software developer, who uses JavaScript to write applications, should know about engines so that the written code executes properly. You’ll see below a…
Ben Nadel discusses database index design, including Primary and Secondary indexes, surrogate and natural keys, uniqueness constraints, foreign keys, covering indexes, and even cow-path paving. His hope here is write the article on database index design that he wishes he had had access to way earlier in his web development career.