Coding

Programming and everything around

Solidity is NOT JavaScript

by

As blockchains are expanding their influence, it's quite evident for an ordinary developer that Solidity has almost nothing to do with JavaScript.

I'm very particular about compile-time checks and runtime safety when it comes to writing software, and it becomes apparent if you read my other posts. In 2018, when I first came across Ethereum, also known as the 'world computer,' I knew nothing about the technologies behind it except that I'd need to use Solidity for this computer. The Solidity language website v2.2.0 stated, "Solidity is a high-level language whose syntax is similar to that of JavaScript, and it is designed to compile to code for the Ethereum Virtual Machine."

The reference to JavaScript alarmed me. How come someone use a potentially risky language like JavaScript to manage money? I know it mentioned only the syntax, but the reference was strong enough to discourage further exploration in that area, given at that time it didn't look something worth attention.

Read more

Project Update: PronounceMe – implementation details

by

I have several post about the PronounceMe project experiments - automatic video and voice generator for English learners. If you missed previous posts please review #pronounceMe for more information about the project, ideas behind and some statistics. In this post I'd focus on the technical implementation with some diagrams and noticeable code snippets.

Read more

Functional Kotlin part 4: collections manipulation

by

This is a part 4 of the #kotlin-showoff series and it's going to be about the standard functions over the collections(mostly iterables to be precise) allowing developer to express data modification in the clean and functional way.

General convention

Although one might think that kotlin has inherited all the base collection types from the Java it's not quite true. Kotlin transparently maps existing Java collections into the Kotlin by using some tricks such as typealiasing. Collections hierarchy in Kotlin make code even more safer by imposing separation between mutable and immutable data structures. Take a look on the interfaces diagram:

Read more

Project update: Alexa London Bus Stop

by

A while ago I have published post about the first skill for Alexa I developed. Personally I use it since then practically every day and I found it very useful. I didn't even bother to check analytics since, well, it does work for me and I expected people to use it as well if it's useful.

Thanks to my wife, I recently learnt London Bus Stop skill:

  • still in the top 30 skills in the area because I'm receiving $100 credit for AWS every month;
  • it's not listed anymore! That fact slipped through the cracks!

Read more

Functional kotlin part 3: scoping functions

by

In the part 3 of the series of the posts about kotlin we going to look into the one of the intensively used kotlin extension functions from the standard library - they allow to write very expressive and safe, functionally-looking code.

For folks who got lost on the word "extension functions" - it's a way to attach a function or property to the instances of the existing classes. For example, val d = 10.twice()It's very much like a classic Java Util classes with method twice(int) but done in a very clean way. Visually it looks like you're calling a member of the class, but in reality, the compiler calls your function passing receiver as an argument.

Read more

Functional kotlin part 2: elvis operator

by

Continuing series of posts #kotlin-showoff about functional constructions in kotlin I want to demostrate use of elvis operator

Essentially, elvis operator lvalue ?: rexpression is returning left value if it's not null or executes rexpression otherwise. The crazy thing about kotlin is most of the constructions are expressions and that gives another way to express business logic.

Read more

Functional kotlin part 1: safe calls

by

For the seasoned Java developer it's very easy to switch to kotlin. Even more, thanks to the great effort of JetBrains team for java interop, there is no need to wait for the greenfield project to start to write kotlin code. You can start koding straight away by either implementing new functionality in kotlin or converting existing classes into the new language by employing Intellj Idea automagic converter

This is a first of this series of posts unioned by tag #kotlin-showoff

Read more

Presentation – GCP APIs with kotlin

by

I was invited for the talk as part of kotlin/everywhere at GDG Cloud London meetup on June 8th 2019. Unlike previous talks in this one I focused on the live coding part after brief intro into the language.

The demo project I prepared is a web site allowing user to upload pictures into GCP Storage, automatically annotate content using Vision API, synthesise voice which describes content of the image.

Read more

Dynamically typed languages are selling snake oil

by

I truly believe they are

I hear the same statements and misunderstandings over and over again from people who like dynamically typed languages. Obliviously, that spikes a lot of endless conversations and fights between two camps.

Generally, I'm avoiding conversations about static vs dynamic typing but every once in the while I drifted into that and hear the same statements, all the time. Often both sides just aren't able to listen to each other and thus conversation end up in the dead end.

Read more

Kotlin Presentation – GDG Reading Meetup @ Spaces, Reading 21 Feb 2019

by

Just returned from meetup where I had a talk about kotlin language - "Why Kotlin? Why now?"

The talk took place in Spaces, Reading on 21st of February 2019 and was organised by Google Developer Group Reading, namely by Chris Guest and his team.
In this talk, I highlighted reasons for learning one more language, guided through most noticeable features. In the second part, we had a live demo - kwitter REST web server.

I found people there were very friendly, it feels like they know each other for a long time. Really nice atmosphere and good vibes!

Read more