Dragons in the Algorithm
Adventures in Programming
by Michael Chermside

Logging APIs - Evaluating Options

In my previous post, I defined a number of different features that logging libraries could have. This time, I will evaluate some Java libraries based on those features. I'll start by ranking these according to how important I think they are, at least for my purposes.

  1. Severity - mandatory: no logging …

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Posted Tue 09 February 2010 by mcherm in Programming

Logging APIs - Feature List

Logging is not the world's most interesting computing problem, but it is important, and it's been on my mind lately because people have been pointing out that my company's use of logging is currently a bit of a mess and ought to be cleaned up. Specifically, I've been thinking about …

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Posted Mon 01 February 2010 by mcherm in Programming

Password in Pieces

I came across the following question on reddit:

My bank on the online banking login instead of having a password field it presents you with 3 password fields 1 character each where it asks you for 3 characters from your password, chosen randomly. E.g. the 2nd, 4th and 7th …

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Posted Sat 05 December 2009 by mcherm in Programming

Raising the limit on IDs processed

It is a fairly simple screen for entering "mass alerts". There are (omitting some irrelevant details) just two fields: one in which the user enters the text of an alert, and the other in which they enter a list of customer-ids specifying who we should show the alert to. This …

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Posted Fri 13 November 2009 by mcherm in Programming

Upgrading GWT/AppEngine to v1.6+

I had a project using Google Web Toolkit (GWT) and App Engine. It was developed in Eclipse (which I don't like much, mostly because I don't know how to use it very well) because Google recommends this and provides support in the form of Eclipse plugins for working with these …

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Posted Mon 09 November 2009 by mcherm in Programming