June 2008

Introducing Lingwo.ws

Over the past several months, I've been thinking about how to make a really strong RESTful API for Lingwo.flashcards.  At my straight job, there has also been lots of talk about building a RESTful API (although, unfortunately, no actual work!  I'm bursting at the seams to start it!).  This and the fact that all the other Lingwo Projects will need APIs, has compelled me to take the API design I've come up with and release it as an open specification.

So, to start over... Lingwo.ws is an open specification for a pattern by which one can design RESTful web-services.

But why do we need such a specification?

Well, being RESTful means that you adhere to some rather abstract concepts.  Two APIs can be designed in drastically different ways and still be perfectly RESTful.  We can gain alot by having a standard:

Software Development Meme

This just in, guys!  I'm about to participate in a meme.  I've never done that before, so I'm a little nervous...

Mr. Damon Payne called me out.  This is a list of questions about your personal history with software development.

How old were you when you started programming?

I was 8-ish.  I can't really remember exactly, because that was quite awhile ago.  My pa used to get magazines on model rocketry and I'd like to page through them.  They'd occasionally have code listings in BASIC for calculating stuff on your home computer.  I was showing this to my buddy and he said, "I've seen this before!  We type this into our computer and then we can play games!"

So, over to his house, on his Apple II, we spent an enormous amount of time typing in some random program from the magazine.  In the end, it was something super boring that asked for a bunch of numbers and spit out a result.  I didn't get it.

Another Harry Potter bites the dust!

On Friday, while walking home from work, I finished listening to Harry Potter i Więzień Azkabanu (the 3rd Harry Potter book in Polish). This is the first one where I had both the text and the audio. I tried doing a couple of things with this:

  1. Simultaneous reading and listening.
  2. Listening then later reading.
  3. Switching off, doing which ever one I feel like at the time.

#1 turned out to be waaay harder than I thought. I read at a different speed than the actor read the text. I kept wanting to pause the audio so I could catch-up. This turned out to not be very enjoyable for me. #2 worked great, although it was a little boring at reading time. There would sometimes be a word or two that I failed to catch in the listening that the later reading would clarify, but nothing that ever changed my understanding of the text.