Programming

Solving Calibron 12, a very hard wooden block puzzle — Part 2

In this part, we solve the 2D geometry…

Solving Calibron 12, a very hard wooden block puzzle — Part 1

How to Shave a Yak

We’ve all been there. You’ve got a complex problem to solve and you have no idea where to start. It’s time to roll up your…

When is a Set not a Set?

I come into work one morning, and I hear about a new customer bug. A data import failed, with this technical-looking error message:

Document size of 16990947 is larger than maximum of 16777216.

Is it Possible to Write Bug-Free Code? A Case for Thorough Specifications

When I started as a server developer at Vena in 2013, we didn’t have test-driven development. Sure, we designed our codebase to be testable by using dependency injection from the start, with the…

Malloc envy

Folks using programming languages with automatic garbage collection (GC) often feel that it’s a price worth paying. I disagree: outside of some fairly limited circumstances, there’s no price to be paid at all.

Unexpected Iterations

Here at Vena, we build a multidimensional database (also known as an OLAP Cube, or simply “The Cube”) for our customers to store and analyze their data. Part of the functionality we provide is a programming language to express relationships between different pieces of data. For example, a…

Technical Talk at University of Toronto on March 23

A few of us will be visiting U of T next week to give a talk on Vena’s Calc programming language. If you like programming languages and compilers, come by SF3202 at 5:00pm on Wednesday, March 23 to hear us talk about the challenges faced by…