I’ve been using a Mac Mini (2.0GHz Core 2 Duo/1GB memory) for iPhone development. Mostly, it’s great, but it is a little low on memory. It always seems to have enough to run whatever I’m using at the moment w/o any problems, but switches between programs (Xcode->Interface Builder->Safari) generally involve some delay as pages are pulled off the disk. I decided to do a 4GB upgrade. It didn’t go very well; here’s what I learned along the way.
I’ve written about Keith Hennessey before, but this post is particularly interesting: He writes about the internal bureaucratic arrangement of the Bush (43) White House staff. Of special note: Bush 43 had about two dozen direct reports, which is more than one would see in a typical organization, but not that many more, given that he was at the head of an organization (the U. S. federal gov’t) that is not only undeniably huge, but arguably the most influential on earth. This fact suggests that ~25 people is the outer limit of the size of an effective team.
When writing multithreaded Cocoa apps (on Mac OS X or on iPhone OS) it’s necessary to consider the “run loop(s)” of your application. Run loops are the message pumps which drive (among other things) all the parts of your application that you don’t have to write (e.g. low-level rendering of the user interface, handling keyboard and mouse events, and so forth). In single-threaded applications you can largely ignore the run loop, since it’s set up automatically, but multi-threaded apps present more complicated questions.
It’s easy to go overboard when praising Apple’s design, but they do turn their attention to some pretty neat challenges.
Editorial note: Today, we’re starting a new feature: “Book Club”. This feature will appear regularly every Wednesday, and may appear on other days as well. It will consist of a summary of, highlights from, and notes on part of a particular book about people. We’re starting with “Men Against Fire”, a 1947 book about infantry combat.
Today, just three quick notes on iPhone development, Objective-C, and Cocoa. Briefly:
Today is Memorial Day in the United States. Memorial Day is a modification of an earlier day of commemoration, Decoration Day, which was in turn created to honor those Union soldiers who died in the American Civil War.
To present some context, consider that more than 600,000 American men at arms died in the Civil War. The population of the U.S. in 1865 was around 35 million. This means that the Civil War claimed about 1.7% of the population, or 1 out of every 59 people. (1 out of every 30 men.)
I was listening to AC/DC’s “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap” the other day. Fun little CD. And, you know – AC/DC: Rock and roll. Guitars and drums. Lots of songs about sex and touring. But there’s also this one track – “Ride On” – that isn’t like anything else I’ve heard them do. I quite liked it.
Those little surprises are probably the best thing about buying music by the album, instead of by the track.
Moral hazard has been much in the news recently. (Wiki’s article is a pretty effective primer on the topic.) Most of the time, moral hazard is discussed in the context of the deleterious effects of bailing out the stockholders and/or creditors of institutions deemed “too big to fail”. This is certainly a legitimate concern; investors will misallocate capital if they do not have to worry about losses, to the cost of the taxpayer and the detriment of the economy as a whole. I want to point out a different instance of moral hazard, however: Government-controlled enterprises.
When setting up Xcode to use Subversion (SVN) as its Source Code Management (SCM) system for a new project, I encountered a few hiccups. Nothing too major, and I’m sure that some of them were due to my unfamiliarity with Xcode, but I thought it would be worthwhile to post some notes on my experience.
