It’s My Life

A video of an interview with Joe Armstrong about Erlang put on the website of InfoQ:

http://www.infoq.com/interviews/Erlang-Joe-Armstrong

I talked with Dragan Havelka, my very good colleague at Mobile Arts AB, about his experience on how to master Erlang and improve self skills further. Here are some essential points he gave me:

1) Search others’ masterpiece Erlang projects, try them out and digest the great code. Remember to reserve only good projects from real Erlang experts or guru but fill out crappy works.

2) Besides own daily works on Erlang i.e. projects in the company one works, it is really important to spend extra time working on either own hobby projects or interesting problems that attract one’s attention. Thinking, implementing and trying. Just try out anything in Erlang that one might be interested in.

3) Have real passion on programing Erlang and thinking in Erlang. Find some interesting topics or ideas, dig into it and enjoy the process.

4) Never stop learning new stuff in Erlang. It is growing really fast nowadays.

My own extra complementary opinions will be:

1) Communicate and exchange ideas with real Erlang guys, either experienced experts or others with great passion in Erlang. For example, Erlang User Conference (EUC) each year is really a good opportunity of this kind.

2) Keep own knowledge of Erlang up-to-date. Reading documents, trying out tools, exploring others’ projects etc.

3) Participate open source Erlang projects out there. It will improve both technical skills and coorperation skills. In addition, it enables good ideas exchange between Erlang users.

4) Passion, yes, most important thing is your great passion in Erlang which drives you forward all the time!

Erlang rocks. I really fall in love with it as my life lasts.

This article tells you some tips on how to recognise a good programmer:

http://www.inter-sections.net/2007/11/13/how-to-recognise-a-good-programmer/

Here is an interesting article that compares programming languages: Scala and Erlang

http://www.infoq.com/news/2008/06/scala-vs-erlang

I found the following method to remove directories in CVS:

In concept, removing directories is somewhat similar to removing files–you want the directory to not exist in your current working directories, but you also want to be able to retrieve old releases in which the directory existed.

The way that you remove a directory is to remove all the files in it. You don’t remove the directory itself; there is no way to do that. Instead you specify the ‘-P’ option to cvs update or cvs checkout, which will cause CVS to remove empty directories from working directories. (Note that cvs export always removes empty directories.) Probably the best way to do this is to always specify ‘-P’; if you want an empty directory then put a dummy file (for example ‘.keepme’) in it to prevent ‘-P’ from removing it.

Note that ‘-P’ is implied by the ‘-r’ or ‘-D’ options of checkout. This way, CVS will be able to correctly create the directory or not depending on whether the particular version you are checking out contains any files in that directory.

Reference: http://www.network-theory.co.uk/docs/cvsmanual/Removingdirectories.html

http://www.mygazines.com/

Refer to this blog about Distel:

http://bc.tech.coop/blog/070528.html

As well as google code homepage for Distel:

http://code.google.com/p/distel/

Uppsala University the strongest in Sweden in Computer Science/Mathematics: A recently published report shows that Uppsala University has the largest combined scientific weight in Sweden in the Computer Science and Mathematics fields. Read more.

World leading research at the IT Department: All research at Uppsala University has recently been assessed by external panels and bibliometric analysis. The Department of Information Technology received very good grading of its research. All research is of high international class, and in many cases it is of world class. Read more.

It is 2008 now! Happy New Year to you all and myself!

2008 will be a wonderful year to me, I guess. Anyway, a good start is half of the success. Let’s move on.

I started to work at Mobile Arts company from this Monday 2007-12-10. It is a telecommunication software company in Stockholm in Sweden. I have been working on my master thesis project in this company since 2007-07-01. So I feel comfortable and happy to be able to continue working as a regular employee in Mobile Arts.

I like my current job in Mobile Arts to be a professional software engineer focusing on developing system software for mobile network operators in telecommunication industry. What’s more, Mobile Arts uses Erlang to develop software products while my favorite programming language is definitely Erlang. Thus, I am happy working in Mobile Arts and I will work hard everyday.

The website of Mobile Arts company is: www.mobilearts.com or www.mobilearts.se