Mokka mit Schlag » Software Development

I suspect someone’s going to give me an Amazon gift certificate for Christmas, and someone already gave me an Android. What’s the best book for learning to develop or Android? There aren’t a lot of choices yet:

• Professional Android Application Development (Wrox Programmer to Programmer) by Reto Meier (Paperback – Nov 24, 2008) $44.99
• The Busy Coder’s Guide to Android Development by Mark L. Murphy (Paperback – Jun 25, 2008) $30.00
• Android A Programmers Guide by Jerome DiMarzio (Paperback – Jul 30, 2008) $39.99
• Hello, Android: Introducing Google’s Mobile Development Platform by Ed Burnette (Paperback – Dec 28, 2008) $32.95 $21.75
• Android Essentials (Firstpress) by Chris Haseman (Paperback – Sep 18, 2008)

Which ones are worth the paper they’re printed on and which ones are headed for the recycling bin as soon as the next SDK version hits the ether?

I’ve been compiling ghc from MacPorts on this 2.0 GHz MacBook, and I’m beginning to wonder if it’s hung. I’ve been stuck on “Building ghc” for quite a while, maybe an hour:

--->  Cleaning perl5.8
--->  Fetching ghc
--->  Attempting to fetch ghc-6.10.1-src.tar.bz2 from http://haskell.org/ghc/dist/stable/dist/
--->  Attempting to fetch ghc-6.10.1-src-extralibs.tar.bz2 from http://haskell.org/ghc/dist/stable/dist/
--->  Attempting to fetch ghc-6.8.2-darwin-i386-leopard-bootstrap.tar.bz2 from http://haskell.org/ghc/dist/6.8.2/
--->  Verifying checksum(s) for ghc
--->  Extracting ghc
--->  Applying patches to ghc
--->  Configuring ghc
--->  Building ghc

Certainly it was long enough to answer a bunch of e-mails, and edit an article. Is this the point where it actually compiles the compiler? Is ghc self-hosting? That is, is ghc written in ghc? That may be what the bootstrap bit is about. Yep, looks like it is.

I do remember 2 hour gcc compiles, but that was 15 years ago on much slower hardware. How long does it take to compile a compiler nowadays?

What’s special about the number 8.388608E06F? The answer will be in my next developerWorks article.

Read on for a hint.

I’ve upgraded this site to WordPress 2.7. Please holler if you notice any problems.

I’m experimenting with AdSense for Feeds to see if I can increase the revenue from these sites from its current level at which my time would be more profitably spent digging in the couch for lost change.

This has required some changes to the feeds (they are now redirected through FeedBurner) so holler if anything looks awry. If it borks up, I’ll just kill the feed ads. The only real money this site makes is from the Amazon affiliate sales anyway. (Hmm, I wonder if I can sneak those into the feeds somehow?)

If this works, soon the feeds too will contain adds for “American Touch Painting”, “Top O.C. Divorce Attorney (Aggressive & Caring Representation)”, “Internet Dispute with a Free Telephone Consultation with Aggressive Lawyers”, and “Tummy Tuck Orange County”. Hmm, Maybe this wsn’t such a good idea after all. I wonder if AdBlock Plus works for feeds?

Here’s something weird I noticed while fooling around with the Android SDK:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<TextView xmlns:a="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    a:layout_width="fill_parent" 
    a:layout_height="wrap_content" 
    a:text="Hello World"
    />

If the weirdness doesn’t strike you, look twice.
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