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• More NASM with GVim

  - by MarkPearl

  Today I am bashing around with nasm again… some useful things I found… Set the current working directory of gvim to the current file path I have found setting the current working directory of gvim to the file location is very useful, especially if you are wanting to use commands in gvim to run your compiled code. It can be done by typing in the following in the command mode in gvim… cd %:p:h Once you have set it, you can use the ! to run commands you would normally run in the dos shell.. e.g. !dir Compiling code to make an executable There are three thing you need to specify to compile a basic file in name, they are… The output file format The output file name The source file name An example of this would be the following (where you have a file called temp.asm which is the source file) nasm –f bin temp.asm –o temp.com Output file format The –f specifies the output file format (in this case a binary file). To get a list of the available output file formats you can type nasm –hf (for my installation bin is the default, in which case I can omit it) Output file name This is just the name you want the compiled file to be called. For windows machines I specify .com as my default format.

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• F# Application Entry Point

  - by MarkPearl

  Up to now I have been looking at F# for modular solutions, but have never considered writing an end to end application. Today I was wondering how one would even start to write an end to end application and realized that I didn’t even know where the entry point is for an F# application. After browsing MSDN a bit I got a basic example of a F# application with an entry point [<EntryPoint>] let main args = printfn "Arguments passed to function : %A" args // Return 0. This indicates success. 0 Pretty simple stuff… but what happens when you have a few modules in a program – so I created a F# project with two modules and a main module as illustrated in the image below… When I try to compile my program I get a build error… A function labeled with the 'EntryPointAttribute' attribute must be the last declaration in the last file in the compilation sequence, and can only be used when compiling to a .exe… What does this mean? After some more reading I discovered that the Program.fs needs to be the last file in the F# application – the order of the files in a F# solution are important. How do I move a source file up or down? I tried dragging the Program.fs file below ModuleB.fs but it wouldn’t allow me to. Then I thought to right click on a source file and got the following menu.   Wala… to move the source file to the bottom of the solution you can select the “Move Up” or “Move Down” option. Now that I got this right I decided to put some code in ModuleA & ModuleB and I have the start of a basic application structure. ModuleA Code namespace MyApp module ModuleA = let PrintModuleA = printf "hello a \n" ()   ModuleB Code namespace MyApp module ModuleB = let PrintModuleB = printf "hello b \n" ()   Program Code // Learn more about F# at http://fsharp.net #light namespace MyApp module Main = open System [<EntryPoint>] let main args = ModuleA.PrintModuleA let endofapp = Console.ReadKey() 0

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• Driven2Distraction &ndash; New South African Developer Podcast

  - by MarkPearl

  For those out there that are interested… I am now one of the hosts of the Driven2Distraction podcast. Being a fan of podcasts like .Net Rocks and Hanselminutes for years now, I have always wanted to be involved in the recording of a podcast and now that time has finally come. What makes the Driven2Distraction podcast different from all the others out there is its uniquely South African flair. It’s focus is towards Software Development in the Southern Africa – and has a mix of “what happening locally” episodes as well as proper “interview style” episodes of local developers and visitors from overseas. If you are interested you can follow the show on twitter on @d2dpodcast or visit the site

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• Euler Problem 20

  - by MarkPearl

  This was probably one of the easiest ones to complete – a quick bash got me the following… The Problem n! means n (n 1) ... 3 2 1 For example, 10! = 10 9 ... 3 2 1 = 3628800, and the sum of the digits in the number 10! is 3 + 6 + 2 + 8 + 8 + 0 + 0 = 27. Find the sum of the digits in the number 100! The Solution   private static BigInteger Factorial(int num) { if (num > 1) return (BigInteger)num * Factorial(num - 1); else return 1; } private static BigInteger SumDigits(string digits) { BigInteger result = 0; foreach (char number in digits) { result += Convert.ToInt32(number)-48; } return result; } static void Main(string[] args) { Console.WriteLine(SumDigits(Factorial(100).ToString())); Console.ReadLine(); }

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• Organization &amp; Architecture UNISA Studies &ndash; Chap 13

  - by MarkPearl

  Learning Outcomes Explain the advantages of using a large number of registers Discuss the way in which compilers optimize register usage Discuss the evolution of CISC machines Describe the characteristics of RISC architecture Discuss the RISC vs. CISC controversy Describe the way in which RISC and CISC design principles can be combined Instruction Execution Characteristics To understand the the line of reasoning of RISC advocates, we need a brief overview of instruction execution characteristics. These include… Operations Operands Procedure Calls These three sections can be studied in depth in the textbook at pages 503 - 505 A number of groups have come up with the conclusion that the attempt to make the instruction set architecture closer to HLLs (High Level Languages) is not the most effective design strategy. Rather HLL’s can be best supported by optimizing performance of the most time-consuming features of typical HLL programs. Generally 3 main characteristics came up to improve performance… Use a large number of registers or use a compiler to optimize register usage Careful attention needs to be paid to the design of instruction pipelines A simplified (reduced) instruction set is indicated The use of a large register optimization One of the most important design principles of RISC machines is the use of a large number of registers. The concept of register windows and the use of a large register file versus the use of cache memory are discussed. On the face of it, the use of a large set of registers should decrease the need to access memory. The design task is to organize the registers in such a fashion that this goal is realized. Read page 507 – 510 for a detailed explanation. Compiler-based register optimization   Reduced Instructions Set Architecture There are two advantages to smaller programs… Because the program takes up less memory, there is a savings in that resource (this was more compelling when memory was more expensive) Smaller programs should improve performance, and this will happen in two ways – fewer instructions means fewer instruction bytes to be fetched and in a paging environment smaller programs occupy fewer pages, reducing page faults. Certain characteristics are common to RISC processors… One instruction per cycle Register-to-register operations Simple addressing modes Simple instruction formats RISC vs. CISC After initial enthusiasm for RISC machines, there has been a growing realization that RISC designs may benefit from the inclusion of some CISC features CISC designs may benefit from the inclusion of some RISC features

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• F# Objects &ndash; Part 3 &ndash; it&rsquo;s time to overload&hellip;

  - by MarkPearl

  Okay, some basic examples of overloading in F# Overloading Constructors Assume you have a F# object called person… type Person (firstname : string, lastname : string) = member v.Fullname = firstname + " " + lastname   This only has one constructor. To add additional constructors to the object by explicitly declaring them using the method member new. type Person (firstname : string, lastname : string) = new () = Person("Unknown", "Unknown") member v.Fullname = firstname + " " + lastname   In the code above I added another constructor to the Person object that takes no parameters and then refers to the primary constructor. Using the same technique in the code below I have created another constructor that accepts only the firstname as a parameter to create an object. type Person (firstname : string, lastname : string) = new () = Person("Unknown", "Unknown") new (firstname : string) = Person(firstname, "Unknown") member v.Fullname = firstname + " " + lastname   Overloading Operators So, you can overload operators of objects in F# as well… let’s look at example code… type Person(name : string) = member v.name = name static member (+) (person1 : Person , person2 : Person) = Person(person1.name + " " + person2.name)   In the code above we have overloaded the “+” operator. Whenever we add to Person objects together, it will now create a new object with the combined names…

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• F# &ndash; a good reference of resources

  - by MarkPearl

  I was browsing StackOverflow this weekend and came across a great response to the question “What is a good way to get started in F#”. Find the question & answer here.

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• F# and the useful infinite Sequence (I think)

  - by MarkPearl

  So I have seen a few posts done by other F# fans on solving project Euler problems. They looked really interesting and I thought with my limited knowledge of F# I would attempt a few and the first one I had a look at was problem 5. Which said : “2520 is the smallest number that can be divided by each of the numbers from 1 to 10 without any remainder. What is the smallest number that is evenly divisible by all of the numbers from 1 to 20?” So I jumped into coding it and straight away got stuck – the C# programmer in me wants to do a loop, starting at one and dividing every number by 1 to 20 to see if they all divide and once a match is found, there is your solution. Obviously not the most elegant way but a good old brute force approach. However I am pretty sure this would not be the F# way…. So after a bit of research I found the Sequences and how useful they were. Sequences seemed like the beginning of an approach to solve my problem. In my head I thought - create a sequence, and then start at the beginning of it and move through it till you find a value that is divisible by 1 to 20. Sounds reasonable? So the question is begged - how would you create a sequence that you are sure will be large enough to hold the solution to the problem? Well… You can’t know! Some more googling and I found what I would call infinite sequences – something that looks like this… let nums = 1 |> Seq.unfold (fun i -> Some (i, i + 1))   My interpretation of this would be as follows… create a sequence, and whenever it is called add 1 to its size (I would appreciate someone helping me on wording this right functionally). Something that I don’t understand fully yet is the forward pipe operator (|>) which I think plays a key role in this code. With this in hand I was able to code a basic optimized solution to this problem. I’m going to go over it some more before I post the full code just in case!

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• F# Objects &ndash; Integration with the other .Net Languages &ndash; Part 2

  - by MarkPearl

  So in part one of my posting I covered the real basics of object creation. Today I will hopefully dig a little deeper… My expert F# book brings up an interesting point – properties in F# are just syntactic sugar for method calls. This makes sense… for instance assume I had the following object with the property exposed called Firstname. type Person(Firstname : string, Lastname : string) = member v.Firstname = Firstname I could extend the Firstname property with the following code and everything would be hunky dory… type Person(Firstname : string, Lastname : string) = member v.Firstname = Console.WriteLine("Side Effect") Firstname   All that this would do is each time I use the property Firstname, I would see the side effect printed to the screen saying “Side Effect”. Member methods have a very similar look & feel to properties, in fact the only difference really is that you declare that parameters are being passed in. type Person(Firstname : string, Lastname : string) = member v.FullName(middleName) = Firstname + " " + middleName + " " + Lastname   In the code above, FullName requires the parameter middleName, and if viewed from another project in C# would show as a method and not a property. Precomputation Optimizations Okay, so something that is obvious once you think of it but that poses an interesting side effect of mutable value holders is pre-computation of results. All it is, is a slight difference in code but can result in quite a huge saving in performance. Basically pre-computation means you would not need to compute a value every time a method is called – but could perform the computation at the creation of the object (I hope I have got it right). In a way I battle to differentiate this from lazy evaluation but I will show an example to explain the principle. Let me try and show an example to illustrate the principle… assume the following F# module namespace myNamespace open System module myMod = let Add val1 val2 = Console.WriteLine("Compute") val1 + val2 type MathPrecompute(val1 : int, val2 : int) = let precomputedsum = Add val1 val2 member v.Sum = precomputedsum type MathNormalCompute(val1 : int, val2 : int) = member v.Sum = Add val1 val2 Now assume you have a C# console app that makes use of the objects with code similar to the following… using System; using myNamespace; namespace CSharpTest { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { Console.WriteLine("Constructing Objects"); var myObj1 = new myMod.MathNormalCompute(10, 11); var myObj2 = new myMod.MathPrecompute(10, 11); Console.WriteLine(""); Console.WriteLine("Normal Compute Sum..."); Console.WriteLine(myObj1.Sum); Console.WriteLine(myObj1.Sum); Console.WriteLine(myObj1.Sum); Console.WriteLine(""); Console.WriteLine("Pre Compute Sum..."); Console.WriteLine(myObj2.Sum); Console.WriteLine(myObj2.Sum); Console.WriteLine(myObj2.Sum); Console.ReadKey(); } } } The output when running the console application would be as follows…. You will notice with the normal compute object that the system would call the Add function every time the method was called. With the Precompute object it only called the compute method when the object was created. Subtle, but something that could lead to major performance benefits. So… this post has gone off in a slight tangent but still related to F# objects.

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• Encapsulating code in F# (Part 1)

  - by MarkPearl

  I have been looking at F# for a while now and seem a few really interesting samples and snippets on howto’s. This has been great to see the basic outline of the language and the possibilities, however a nagging question in the back of my mind has been what does an F# project look like? How do I code group code in F# so that it can be modularized and brought in and out of a project easily? My Expert F# book has an entire chapter (7) dedicated to this and after browsing the other chapters of the book I decided that this topic was something I really wanted to know more about now! Because of my C# background I keep trying to think in F# of objects. So to try and get a clearer idea of how to do things the F# way I am first going to take a very simplified C# example and try to “translate” it. using System; namespace ConsoleApplication1 { namespace ExampleOfEncapsulationInCSharp { class Program { static void EncapsulatedVariableInAMethod() { int count = 10; Console.WriteLine(count); } static void Main(string[] args) { EncapsulatedVariableInAMethod(); Console.ReadLine(); } } } } From the above example the count integer is encapsulated within EncapsulatedVariableInAMethod method. You couldn’t access the count variable from outside the scope of its parent method but have full access to it within the method. Lets look at my F# equivalent… open System let EncapsulatedVariableInAMethod = let count = 10 Console.WriteLine(count) () EncapsulatedVariableInAMethod Console.ReadLine()   Now, when I first attempted to write the F# code I got stuck… I didn’t have the Console.WriteLine calls but had the following… open System let EncapsulatedVariableInAMethod = let count = 10 EncapsulatedVariableInAMethod Console.ReadLine()   The compiler didn’t like the let before the count = 10. This is because every F# expression must evaluate to a value. If I did not want to make the Console call, I would still need to evaluate the expression to something – and for this reason the Unit Type is provided. I could have done something like…. open System let EncapsulatedVariableInAMethod = let count = 10 () EncapsulatedVariableInAMethod Console.ReadLine()   Which the compiler would be happy with…

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• C# double &amp; nary for loops

  - by MarkPearl

  Something that I wasn’t aware was possible in C# was double for loops… they have the following format. for (int x = 0, y = 0; x < 10; x++, y=x*2) { Console.Write("{0} ", y); } Console.ReadLine(); This would give you the following output… 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 In fact you can use as many variables as you want, the following would also be valid… for (int x = 0, y = 0, z = 10; x < 10; x++, y=x*2) { Console.Write("{0} ", z); } Console.ReadLine();

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• Euler Problem 13

  - by MarkPearl

  The Problem Work out the first ten digits of the sum of the following one-hundred 50-digit numbers. 37107287533902102798797998220837590246510135740250 46376937677490009712648124896970078050417018260538 74324986199524741059474233309513058123726617309629 91942213363574161572522430563301811072406154908250 23067588207539346171171980310421047513778063246676 89261670696623633820136378418383684178734361726757 28112879812849979408065481931592621691275889832738 44274228917432520321923589422876796487670272189318 47451445736001306439091167216856844588711603153276 70386486105843025439939619828917593665686757934951 62176457141856560629502157223196586755079324193331 64906352462741904929101432445813822663347944758178 92575867718337217661963751590579239728245598838407 58203565325359399008402633568948830189458628227828 80181199384826282014278194139940567587151170094390 35398664372827112653829987240784473053190104293586 86515506006295864861532075273371959191420517255829 71693888707715466499115593487603532921714970056938 54370070576826684624621495650076471787294438377604 53282654108756828443191190634694037855217779295145 36123272525000296071075082563815656710885258350721 45876576172410976447339110607218265236877223636045 17423706905851860660448207621209813287860733969412 81142660418086830619328460811191061556940512689692 51934325451728388641918047049293215058642563049483 62467221648435076201727918039944693004732956340691 15732444386908125794514089057706229429197107928209 55037687525678773091862540744969844508330393682126 18336384825330154686196124348767681297534375946515 80386287592878490201521685554828717201219257766954 78182833757993103614740356856449095527097864797581 16726320100436897842553539920931837441497806860984 48403098129077791799088218795327364475675590848030 87086987551392711854517078544161852424320693150332 59959406895756536782107074926966537676326235447210 69793950679652694742597709739166693763042633987085 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81234880673210146739058568557934581403627822703280 82616570773948327592232845941706525094512325230608 22918802058777319719839450180888072429661980811197 77158542502016545090413245809786882778948721859617 72107838435069186155435662884062257473692284509516 20849603980134001723930671666823555245252804609722 53503534226472524250874054075591789781264330331690   The Solution private static List<string> table = new List<string> { "37107287533902102798797998220837590246510135740250", "46376937677490009712648124896970078050417018260538", "74324986199524741059474233309513058123726617309629", "91942213363574161572522430563301811072406154908250", "23067588207539346171171980310421047513778063246676", "89261670696623633820136378418383684178734361726757", "28112879812849979408065481931592621691275889832738", "44274228917432520321923589422876796487670272189318", "47451445736001306439091167216856844588711603153276", "70386486105843025439939619828917593665686757934951", "62176457141856560629502157223196586755079324193331", "64906352462741904929101432445813822663347944758178", "92575867718337217661963751590579239728245598838407", "58203565325359399008402633568948830189458628227828", "80181199384826282014278194139940567587151170094390", "35398664372827112653829987240784473053190104293586", "86515506006295864861532075273371959191420517255829", "71693888707715466499115593487603532921714970056938", "54370070576826684624621495650076471787294438377604", "53282654108756828443191190634694037855217779295145", "36123272525000296071075082563815656710885258350721", "45876576172410976447339110607218265236877223636045", "17423706905851860660448207621209813287860733969412", "81142660418086830619328460811191061556940512689692", "51934325451728388641918047049293215058642563049483", "62467221648435076201727918039944693004732956340691", "15732444386908125794514089057706229429197107928209", "55037687525678773091862540744969844508330393682126", "18336384825330154686196124348767681297534375946515", "80386287592878490201521685554828717201219257766954", "78182833757993103614740356856449095527097864797581", "16726320100436897842553539920931837441497806860984", "48403098129077791799088218795327364475675590848030", "87086987551392711854517078544161852424320693150332", "59959406895756536782107074926966537676326235447210", "69793950679652694742597709739166693763042633987085", "41052684708299085211399427365734116182760315001271", "65378607361501080857009149939512557028198746004375", "35829035317434717326932123578154982629742552737307", "94953759765105305946966067683156574377167401875275", "88902802571733229619176668713819931811048770190271", "25267680276078003013678680992525463401061632866526", "36270218540497705585629946580636237993140746255962", "24074486908231174977792365466257246923322810917141", "91430288197103288597806669760892938638285025333403", "34413065578016127815921815005561868836468420090470", "23053081172816430487623791969842487255036638784583", "11487696932154902810424020138335124462181441773470", "63783299490636259666498587618221225225512486764533", "67720186971698544312419572409913959008952310058822", "95548255300263520781532296796249481641953868218774", "76085327132285723110424803456124867697064507995236", "37774242535411291684276865538926205024910326572967", "23701913275725675285653248258265463092207058596522", "29798860272258331913126375147341994889534765745501", "18495701454879288984856827726077713721403798879715", "38298203783031473527721580348144513491373226651381", "34829543829199918180278916522431027392251122869539", "40957953066405232632538044100059654939159879593635", "29746152185502371307642255121183693803580388584903", "41698116222072977186158236678424689157993532961922", "62467957194401269043877107275048102390895523597457", "23189706772547915061505504953922979530901129967519", "86188088225875314529584099251203829009407770775672", 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"60661826293682836764744779239180335110989069790714", "85786944089552990653640447425576083659976645795096", "66024396409905389607120198219976047599490197230297", "64913982680032973156037120041377903785566085089252", "16730939319872750275468906903707539413042652315011", "94809377245048795150954100921645863754710598436791", "78639167021187492431995700641917969777599028300699", "15368713711936614952811305876380278410754449733078", "40789923115535562561142322423255033685442488917353", "44889911501440648020369068063960672322193204149535", "41503128880339536053299340368006977710650566631954", "81234880673210146739058568557934581403627822703280", "82616570773948327592232845941706525094512325230608", "22918802058777319719839450180888072429661980811197", "77158542502016545090413245809786882778948721859617", "72107838435069186155435662884062257473692284509516", "20849603980134001723930671666823555245252804609722", "53503534226472524250874054075591789781264330331690"}; static void Main(string[] args) { BigInteger result = 0; table.ForEach(x => result += BigInteger.Parse(x)); Console.WriteLine(result.ToString().Substring(0,10)); Console.ReadLine(); }

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• It is not quantifiably better

  - by MarkPearl

  An interesting statement I have heard recently in one of the organizations that I have been working with is that some of the agile processes that we are implementing are not quanitfiably better than the traditional processes they had before. This seemed to be the motivation for not moving the new process to the rest of the organization or expanding it. They would say, “the team seems to be happier than they were before but the improvement is not quanitifiable and until we can quantify it on paper we cannot make any further changes”. Up till recently I thought this was a problem until it dawned on me that their existing system was not being quantified, meaning even if I managed to quantify what we were doing (which I can), what would we be comparing it to? An appropriate response to someone when they give this reasoning is - "That's a very good point, let's go over the quantifiable attributes of your existing processes and see if we can get some common metric that we can compare them on?" If they then are able to produce some quantifiable metrics, you win because you now have something to compare it to, and if they don't then you can politely point the logic of that out as well.

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• Great F# getting started online book

  - by MarkPearl

  So I have been battling around with F# for a few weeks and it has been frustrating just getting my brain around the syntax etc. Then someone put a comment on my blog that I should check out the following online book called the F# Survival Guide. I highly recommend those wanting to get into the basics of the language to go through this resource. It is easy to understand, especially for someone coming from a C# background. Give it a read… it gets a two thumbs up from me!

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• Cancelling WPF Application.Shutdown

  - by MarkPearl

  Today I spent the better part of an hour trying to figure out what I had had done wrong. I had an application that when the user click’s “exit”, it should prompt if they want to save the last unsaved file, or cancel the exit. If the select cancel it should not exit the application. Everything seemed fine in my code, all I was doing was calling Application.Current.Shutdown(); And then capturing the Closing event and setting cancel to true.. (see SO question here) Long story short, If should not have been calling Application.Current.Shutdown() but rather Application.Current.MainWindow.Close(). grrrr… <I must read documentation properly>

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• Strangling the life out of Software Testing

  - by MarkPearl

  I recently did a course at the local university on Software Engineering. At the beginning of the course I looked over the outline of the subject and there seemed to be some really good content. It covered traditional & agile project methodologies, some general communication and modelling chapters and finished off with testing. I was particularly excited to see the section on testing as this was something I learnt on my own and see great value in. The course has now just ended and I am very disappointed. I now know one of the reasons why so few people i.e. in my region do Test Driven Development, or perform even basic testing methodologies. The topic was to academic! Yes, you might be able to list 4 different types of black box test approaches vs. white box test approaches and describe the characteristics of Smoke Tests, but never during course did we see an example of an actual test or how it might be implemented! In fact, if I did not have personal experience of applying testing in actual projects, I wouldn’t even know what a unit test looked like. Now, what worries me is the following… It took us 6 months to cover the course material, other students more than likely came out of that course with little appreciation of the subject – in fact they now have a very complex view of what a test is – so complex that I think most of them will never attempt it again on their own. Secondly, imagine studying to be a dentist without ever actually seeing a tooth? Yes, you might be able to describe a tooth, and know what it is made out of – but nobody would want a dentist who has never seen a tooth to operate on them. Yet somehow we expect people studying software engineering to do the same? This is not right. Now, before I finish my rant let me say that I know this is not the same everywhere in the world, and that there needs to be a balance on practical implementation and academic understanding – I am just disappointed that this does not seem to be happening at the institution that I am currently studying at ;-( Please, if you happen to be a lecturer or teacher reading this post – a combination of theory and practical's goes a long way. We need to up the quality of software being produced and that starts at learner level!

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• GWB | Contest Standings as of May 17th, 2010

  - by Staff of Geeks

  I want to officially let everyone know the 30 posts in 60 days contest has started.  The current standings as as followed for those in the “Top 10” (there are twelve due to ties now).  For those who don’t know about the contest, we are ordering custom Geekswithblogs.net t-shirts for those members who post 30 posts in the 60 days, starting May 15th, 2010.  The shirts will have the Geekswithblogs.net logo on the front and your URL on the back.    Top 12 Bloggers in the 30 in 60 Contest Christopher House (4 posts) - http://geekswithblogs.net/13DaysaWeek Robert May (3 posts) - http://geekswithblogs.net/rakker Stuart Brierley (3 posts) - http://geekswithblogs.net/StuartBrierley Dave Campbell (2 posts) - http://geekswithblogs.net/WynApseTechnicalMusings Steve Michelotti (2 posts) - http://geekswithblogs.net/michelotti Scott Klein (2 posts) - http://geekswithblogs.net/ScottKlein Robert Kokuti (2 posts) - http://geekswithblogs.net/robertkokuti Robz / Fervent Coder (2 posts) - http://geekswithblogs.net/robz Mai Nguyen (2 posts) - http://geekswithblogs.net/Maisblog Mark Pearl (2 posts) - http://geekswithblogs.net/MarkPearl Enrique Lima (2 posts) - http://geekswithblogs.net/enriquelima Frez (2 posts) - http://geekswithblogs.net/Frez I will be publishing updates throughout the contest on this blog.  Technorati Tags: Contest,Geekswithblogs,30 in 60

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