Top all-time · #2518
Cay Horstmann
Personal blog · horstmann.comprogrammingwritingsystems
Cay Horstmann's personal blog at horstmann.com covers programming, writing and systems. Since 2011, 33 different Hacker News readers have linked it 41 times, most often “Ebook: Scala for the Impatient ”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Most-linked posts?
- Ebook: Scala for the Impatient 3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2011-12-05
- /scala/index.html3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2014-07-15
- C++ pitfalls2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-11-28
- Java in the Small2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-12-13
What Hacker News says?
There are tradeoffs with all languages. C++ avoids the GC, but you then have to make sure you know how to avoid the common pitfalls of that language. We use C++ at Scylla (saw that we got a shout-out in the blog! Woot!) but it's not like there isn't a whole industry about writing blogs avoiding C++ pitfalls. C++ pitfalls through the years... • https://www.horstmann.com/cpp/pitfalls.html (1997) • https://stackoverflo…
Comment linking /cpp/pitfalls.html
on “Why Discord is switching from Go to Rust”Submitted Java in the Small as a story · 409 points
HN discussionDr. Horstmann was my advisor in college, San Jose State. I just loved his lectures, very dry sense of humor, and extremely funny. He was just getting started writing books in the early 90s. He has this awesome way of thinking about programming, that I imparted to my own students when it came my turn to teach programming. I wish there some videos of his classes that I could go back to and share with people. Good webs…
Comment linking /
on “Java in the Small”Submitted Code Page 437 Refuses to Die as a story · 197 points
HN discussionHorstmann style looks like my ideal, but there's very little tool support for it, from what I've seen. For instance, if I want to swap the first two lines of an "if" statement, I can't use "line-based" copy/paste. Do you do things manually, or does your editor support it fairly well? EDIT: looks like the tool support is so bad, Horstmann himself pretty much gave up: http://horstmann.com/unblog/2010-06-28/braces.html
Comment linking /unblog/2010-06-28/braces.html
on “Alternative code styles”Submitted C++ pitfalls as a story · 54 points
HN discussionI'm in the same boat. It's an old joke that Java tried to kill off printf style formatting but had to bring it back because it's a really great idea : 1980: C printf("%10.2f", x); 1988: C++ cout << setw(10) << setprecision(2) << showpoint << x; 1996: Java java.text.NumberFormat formatter = java.text.NumberFormat.getNumberInstance(); formatter.setMinimumFractionDigits(2); formatter.setMaximumFractionDigits(2); String…
Comment linking /
on “Improving your (Python) code with modern idioms”Submitted Help My LocalDate Isn't Flattened as a story · 20 points
HN discussionAs you are asking for books - Scala for the impatient ( http://www.horstmann.com/scala/ ) - Programming in Scala ( https://booksites.artima.com/programming_in_scala_3ed ) I found those books very good resources. The Scala website lists a few others ( https://www.scala-lang.org/documentation/books.html ) Aprt from that I found Daniel Westheides blog a very good starting point ( http://danielwestheide.com/scala/neophy…
Comment linking /scala/
on “Ask HN: What are the best resources to properly learn Scala?”Submitted Teaching Java Is Getting Simpler as a story · 6 points
HN discussionI read through Scala for the Impatient when I was initially learning Scala a few years ago. It's relatively new and written for version 2.10. Scala is on 2.11, but compared to 2.09 → 2.10, the changes are minimal. The book itself cuts out a lot of the BS and gets down to what a user wants to know about the language (features, syntax, how it differs from Java, etc). Most Scala books were written pre 2.10, which makes…
Comment linking /scala/index.html
on “Metascala – A JVM written in Scala”Submitted Ebook: Scala for the Impatient as a story · 6 points
HN discussionAlways have been, for higher-level languages. James Gosling, 1997: > The feel of Java > Java is a blue collar language. It’s not PhD thesis material but a language for a job. Java feels very familiar to many different programmers because we preferred tried-and-tested things. https://horstmann.com/corejava/feel-of-java.pdf
Comment linking /corejava/feel-of-java.pdf
on “Were software engineers blue-collar workers all along?”Submitted Stop Using Char in Java. and Code Points as a story · 5 points
HN discussionCore Java by Cay Horstmann ( https://horstmann.com/corejava/ ) is a well-structured and concise review of major features. Historically, the most interesting chapters were scattered across both volumes. So completely skipping the "Fundamentals" volume was ill-advised while the "Advanced Features" volume had some boring and mostly unnecessary chapters.
Comment linking /corejava/
on “Java 23: The New Features Are Officially Announced”Submitted Java in the Small as a story · 4 points
HN discussionbesides staircase book (the one from Artima.com: the other good starter book: http://horstmann.com/scala/ detailed looks, all angles: http://www.manning.com/suereth/
Comment linking /scala/
on “Why Learn Scala in 2013?”Submitted Linux High DPI Settings as a story · 3 points
HN discussionBoth claim to have gotten it from http://www.horstmann.com/
Comment linking /
on “The March of Progress (in programming language syntax :)”Submitted Core Java SE 9 for the Impatient as a story · 3 points
HN discussionDoes anyone remember ChiWriter? https://horstmann.com/ChiWriter/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChiWriter
Comment linking /ChiWriter/
on “Volkswriter Deluxe – One of the first word processors for the IBM PC”Submitted German Driving Licenses for Expats as a story · 2 points
HN discussionWhich issues did you experience with http://www.artima.com/pins1ed/ ? (It's a slightly older version, but there aren't many changes which would be important for newbies.) Partially free: Atomic Scala also has at least a free sample, which expects basically no programming experience at all: http://www.atomicscala.com/free-sample/ Scala for the Impatient is also nice, but is more intended to help programmers get up to…
Comment linking /scala/index.html
on “Ask HN: Why do people have a hatred for Scala?”Submitted Observing Project Valhalla as a story · 2 points
HN discussionBest introductory text: http://horstmann.com/scala/ Best IDE: IntelliJ community edition (free) + Free Scala plugin http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/
Comment linking /scala/
on “Rod Johnson joins Typesafe's Board”Submitted Core Java 13th Edition at the Printer as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSeems he forgot the link. Another excellent book for learning Scala is Scala for the Impatient. The first 9 chapters are free: http://horstmann.com/scala/
Comment linking /scala/
on “Atomic Scala”Submitted Java 21: The Nice, the Meh, and the Momentous as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI've never used Scala, but a few weeks ago it was really hot outside so I walked into a book store to cool off. I noticed "Scala for the Impatient"[0] was sitting on the bookshelf and I was intrigued. I sat down with the book and about an hour and a half went by without looking up. I think it's a great book and a very interesting language. I might have explored Scala more if I wasn't already quite busy with Elixir[1…
Comment linking /scala/index.html
on “Ask HN: Are dynamic languages more productive?”Submitted The Horstmann Brace Style as a story · 2 points
HN discussion
