Launching Scalabitz

Today marks the launch of my lingering weekend-project: scalabitz.com. It tries to surface interesting Scala content through the API of link-shortener Bit.ly. The site was built using Scala and Play (and a bit of Akka) with a MongoDB storage layer and can be found on GitHub.

A year of blogging analyzed with R

Today it’s exactly one year ago that I published my first blogpost on branchandbound.net. During this year I’ve written 12 posts, including this one. Since we live in the age of analytics, I thought it would be nice to show how this blog has fared during its first year.

Book review: Infinity and the Mind

Infinity and the Mind provides a rare mixture of mathematical, scientific and philosophical explorations. It gives both an account of the theory of transfinite numbers and discusses its implications from a philosophical point of view. With ‘The science and philosophy of the infinite’ as its subtitle, it is one of the most challenging books I’ve read in a while. Granted, this may be because I’m neither a mathematician nor a philosopher, just a software developer who has some interest in both fields. And yes, the book is relatively old, but it has stood the test of time.

Scala is like Git

Scala is often portrayed as being too complex. Many times these discussions about complexity remind me of similar arguments around the complexity of Git. I know, the comparison between a source control system and a programming language falls flat quickly when pushed too hard. But bear with me, because I do believe it can put the Scala complexity discussion in a new perspective.