Interesting links

This page contains links that I consider interesting.

Software engineering

Date and time in Java. This page explains everything you need to know about dates and times in Java including the difference between the classes java.util.Date and java.util.Calendar. It also explains all you need to know about dealing with time zones.

Interface Hall of Shame. The Interface Hall of Shame is a collection of mistakes made in user interfaces. It is fun to read and hopefully software developers learn from these mistakes.

Sorting algorithms. This website graphically shows the working of a lot of comparison based sorting algorithms.

Soft hyphen (SHY) – a hard problem? An article about problems occuring when using soft hyphens in HTML.

In Defense of Not-Invented-Here Syndrome An article that illustrates that the Not-Invented-Here Syndrome sometimes sometimes should be applied.

Hope, belief and Wizardry. A parody on (design) patterns applied to project management by Markus Völter.

CPD. A tool for finding copied and pasted code. This tool is very fast and very useful!

Data Compression with the Burrows-Wheeler Transform. A document about a compression technique.

TV guide tool. A small tool I have written to generate a TV guide in HTML containing all programs sorted on start time.

Dirsynch. Dirsynch is a tool for synchronizing directory trees on both computer’s file systems as on FTP servers. This tool is used to upload this website to FTP servers.

Mathmeth.com. This site contains articles on solving mathematical problems. Problems are solved in the Calculational style developed by  Edsger W.  Dijkstra and others. I received education from some of the contributors.

The manuscripts of Edsger W. Dijkstra. This website offers acces to the many manuscripts written by Edsger W. Dijkstra, one of the most important computer scientists of the last century. His manuscripts have become known under the name “EWDs”, since EWD are the initials of Edsger W. Dijkstra.

Comics

Dilbert. Thee struggle of an engineer during work and his daily life.

Garfield. The most famous, lazy and hungry cat in the world.

User Friendly. The every-day life of an internet provider.

Fokke & Sukke. A Dutch comic about a duck and canary making fun of news items and everyday life.

The Order of the Stick. A comic about adventures of a group in a “Dungeons & Dragons” campaign. My cartoons about Smarty have the same style as The Order of the Stick.

xkcd. A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math and language.

Friends

Ruud van Gestel. Ruud is currently working on a website about movies.

Patrick Holthuizen. Patrick is a former colleague and a friend. Patrick’s website contains Java tutorials about equality and serialization.

Tim van Klooster. Tim is a friend from primary school. He programs games for PC, Sony Playstation etc. When we were teenagers, Tim started programming on his Commodore 64. He inspired me to start progamming on my MSX computer. Now, both of us make a living out of progamming.

Wilco en Lies Verberk. Wilco is a friend from secondary school.

Martin van den Akker. Martin is a friend from secondary school.

Diego Lont. Diego is a friend from university. We lived in the same student residence. Nowadays, Diego owns his own software company, named Delware.

Maarten ter Huurne. Maartin is a friend from university. We lived in the same student residence. Maarten, please regrow your site soon…

Information on the internet

Secure search engines that don’t create a personal profile based on your searches: duckduckgo.com, ixquick.com and scroogle.org.

Wikipedia, the free-content encyclopedia that anyone can edit. It contains articles on hundreds of thousands of subjects.

Merriam-Webster Online, an English dictionary.

Ius mentis, Law and technology explained. A good website made by Arnoud Engelfriet about patents, copyrights, intellectual property and much more. Some articles on this website are available in Dutch only. Arnoud aslo studied computer science at Eindhoven University at the same time as I did.

De Intensieve Menshouderij. An interesting article on how companies manage their staff as an intensive livestock. Dutch only.