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Author Archives: javierestrada
Mary had a Little Lambda (Architecture)
Nursery rhyme aside, I’ve been looking avidly at Big Data Lambda Architectures. Nathan Marz introduced the term back in 2012, which is reminiscent of λ-Calculus. The first time you hear the term it brings memories of high-order functions in … Continue reading
Customizing Priority Queues in C++
A nifty feature of priority queues in C++ is that you can implement a max heap or a min heap by simply changing the compare type. For most purposes, std::less and std::greater can do the job, provided that you use built-in … Continue reading
Posted in algorithms, data structures, software
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The (White) Elephant in the Room
All successful software development projects are alike; each unsuccessful software development project is unsuccessful in its own way…and some become white elephants. Paraphrasing and extending the first sentence of Anna Karenina, a white elephant is not only a failed project, but also a project that fails miserably, severely late to market–if … Continue reading
Posted in software
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My Sister From Another Mister
No, this is not about family infidelities. Rather, it is about copyright laws. You see, a couple of months ago the debate team in my daughter’s school had to prepare for a topic on copyright laws and how effective or … Continue reading
Posted in software
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The Leprechaun Trap
A few years ago and on occasion of St. Patrick’s Day, my daughter built a leprechaun trap. She wrapped a shoe box in shiny green paper and cut a slot through it, decorated it with a border with jingle bells, added … Continue reading
Observations on Observer
My first encounter with the Observer design pattern was circa 1998. The GoF book was still new–published in 1994–and the community was still assimilating design patterns. Java the Hot* even offered an Observer interface and an Observable class. What could be simpler? However, I’ve used Observer … Continue reading
Posted in design patterns, software
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Singling out Singleton
Out of all the design patterns that I’ve used in my professional career, Singleton is the one I’ve used the least. Don’t get me wrong. In my experience, as developers we are fascinated with the ability to refer to a single … Continue reading
