Published in Lessons from History·1 day agoMember-onlyHow Ships and Forts Created Western DominanceHow could tiny nations such as Portugal and the Netherlands challenge vast empires like China and India in the age of sail? — Europe began as a backwater far behind great civilizations in India, China and in Muslim empires in the Middle East. 1498 was the year it all began to change. Explorer Vasco da Gama of Portugal found a sea route around Africa and reached India. The European seafaring Leviathan had awoken…Maritime18 min read
Published in ITNEXT·6 days agoMember-onlyObject-Oriented Carbon, C++ and Go ComparedCreating class or type hierarchies in the Go, C++ and Carbon programming languages — Let us go through a simple example of creating an abstract base class representing a rocket engine with some concrete implementations in Go, C++ and the new Carbon language from Google. To be accurate, Carbon is not an official Google project, but done by people working at Google. There is…Carbonlang13 min read
Published in ITNEXT·Aug 6Member-onlyC++ Syntax Sucks and Carbon Fixes ItIsn’t C++ syntax perfectly fine? Why did the Carbon guys need to change it? — Judging by the many twitter comments I have read about Carbon, there is a significant number of C++ developers who are very displeased with the syntax of the Carbon programming language. A question I have seen repeatedly asked is: If they are making a new language for C++ developers, then…Carbonlang9 min read
Aug 5Member-onlyDon’t Get Burned by Google CarbonShould you jump in and play with the new programming language, Carbon, from Google or wait? — Carbon is the hot new thing, but you might want to think twice before sinking a lot of time into Carbon. This language is in an extremely early stage. There is no actual compiler or toolchain. The language specification is far from done. All we have at the moment is…Carbonlang5 min read
Aug 4Member-onlyWhy Did Europe and Not China Dominate Gunpowder Warfare?China invented gunpowder and made the first cannons, so why did the world not get conquered by the Chinese? — When China went headlong against great European powers in the 1600s, they quickly discovered that European gunpowder weapons were far superior to anything the Chinese possessed themselves. How had China fallen behind on a technology they pioneered? …Gunpowder11 min read
Published in Lessons from History·Aug 3Member-onlyWhen Military Might Relied on UrineA look at the chemistry behind the historical production of saltpeter from urine — Gunpowder has come to dominate battlefields since the 15th century (1400 to 1500). It is an explosive mixture of potassium nitrate (KNO₃), charcoal (C) and sulfur (S).Gunpowder9 min read
Aug 2Member-onlyGunpowder is a way of burning charcoal fastA look at what makes gunpowder go boom! — A gunpowder explosion is just charcoal burning really fast. You would have gotten the same energy released by burning a lump of charcoal in your BBQ. When coal is burned, it turns into hot carbon dioxide gas. This gas expands to significantly larger volume than the lump of coal which…Gunpowder5 min read
Jul 27How Did Nordic Countries Get So Democratic?A look at the unique role of literature in the development of Nordic democracy and prosperity — Democracy is easy, right? Just hold elections and select a leader? Not quite. We have seen in countless countries from Iraq to Afghanistan that merely holding elections does not create a fully functioning democracy. This applies to well-developed countries as well, such as Singapore and the US. Both are ranked…Nordics20 min read
Published in ITNEXT·Jul 26Member-onlyGo Generics vs Java GenericsThe Java and C# crowds are running out of reasons to hate Go — Go is a much loved and hated language. Dunking on Go for not having generics has been almost like a sporting event in the global developer community. With the launch of Go generics, the Go hating community will run into a bit of an identity crisis. The lack of generics…Golang6 min read
Published in ITNEXT·Jul 26Member-onlyGeneric Map, Filter and Reduce in GoImplementing higher-order functions in Go using generics — With generics, it has suddenly becomes much easier to add support for higher-order functions such as Map, Filter and Reduce in Go. However, there is much disagreement around how these functions should be implemented. I will claim part of the confusion stems from the fact that many Go developers come…Golang11 min read
