Dr. Dobb's Blogs

Things That Go Boom

Wed, 24 Dec 2014 07:59:00 -0500

It is easier to make a safe light bulb than to make a safe explosive.

Abstractions For Binary Search, Part 10: Putting It All Together

Mon, 22 Dec 2014 07:24:00 -0500

After the discussions of the last few weeks, we are finally ready to build our test cases.

The Touch of a Button

Fri, 19 Dec 2014 07:13:00 -0500

Of course, I wasn't satisfied with the simple approach, so I added a bit of code to sense swipes much as you would find on a touchscreen phone.

Abstractions For Binary Search, Part 9: What Do We Need to Test?

Tue, 16 Dec 2014 01:52:00 -0500

Many people confuse the idea of a test case working correctly with the idea of a program producing correct output.

Hosting USB

Thu, 11 Dec 2014 09:12:00 -0500

I wanted to like the Vinculum. I really did.

Abstractions for Binary Search, Part 8: What Does It Mean To Say "It Works?"

Tue, 09 Dec 2014 09:20:00 -0500

Last week, we talked in general terms about how to test a binary-search function. Now let's get specific.

Ham for the Holidays

Fri, 05 Dec 2014 14:52:00 -0500

As I look around my lab, I see no fewer than 12 development boards of different kinds.

Abstractions For Binary Search, Part 7: Choosing Test Cases

Wed, 03 Dec 2014 22:15:00 -0500

Binary search is a particularly instructive algorithm to figure out how to test.

Embedded Goes to Shell

Thu, 27 Nov 2014 22:31:00 -0500

I converted the standard Linux shell (bash) into a specialized programming language that can control a serial I/O board.

Abstractions For Binary Search, Part 6: How On Earth Do You Test It?

Mon, 24 Nov 2014 09:22:00 -0500

We will reduce a substantial part of our problem to calling these two functions repeatedly with suitably chosen test cases and verifying that they return the same results.

In Command

Tue, 18 Nov 2014 09:09:00 -0500

Simple tools can be combined in many ways to do things

Bluetooth Phone Home

Fri, 14 Nov 2014 11:32:00 -0500

Using mbed on the embedded side to quickly create a BLE device and with the Android API doing most of the heavy lifting on the phone side, it can be pretty painless to create a complete BLE application.

Abstractions For Binary Search, Part 5: Getting Down to Details

Thu, 13 Nov 2014 07:44:00 -0500

It's hard to imagine how this code could be much simpler. However, we don't actually know whether it works.

Invariants for Binary Search, Part 4: Using The Improved Abstractions

Mon, 10 Nov 2014 07:53:00 -0500

We continue our discussion of how to implement our binary search in an n-element sequence.

The IT Talent Shortage Debate

Wed, 05 Nov 2014 14:26:00 -0500

Tech employers say good people are hard to find. Job hunters see a broken hiring process. Both sides need to shake their frustration and find new ways to connect.

Sharper Than a Blue Tooth

Mon, 03 Nov 2014 17:20:00 -0500

This simple project sends out beacon data using the board's onboard temperature sensor (granted, it measures the internal chip temperature, which might not be that useful).

Invariants for Binary Search, Part 3: Improving Our Abstractions

Fri, 31 Oct 2014 07:15:00 -0400

With this abstraction under our belts, we can proceed to write code. If you're interested, you might like to do so for yourself before I show you the details next week.

Agile Certifications Are Actively Destructive

Tue, 28 Oct 2014 11:45:00 -0400

Is it even possible to assess competence in agile development with a test?

Lazy Bluetooth

Sat, 25 Oct 2014 00:15:00 -0400

There is a Bluetooth profile made just for the Internet of Whatever.

Invariants for Binary Search, Part 2: Refining The Specifications

Wed, 22 Oct 2014 17:11:00 -0400

This week, we will try to define more carefully the problem we would like to solve before leaping into the solution.

Dead Beef and DFU

Mon, 20 Oct 2014 11:07:00 -0400

Every time LabTool starts, it waits for the host computer to send it the firmware to execute.

Invariants For Binary Search, Part 1: A Simple Example

Thu, 16 Oct 2014 11:17:00 -0400

We can use an invariant to help us reason about a piece of code that many programmers find hard to get right by any other means.

Ada Lovelace Day: Celebrate Yourself

Tue, 14 Oct 2014 13:52:00 -0400

Honoring women in STEM

Embedded Memory Allocation

Mon, 13 Oct 2014 05:21:00 -0400

Possibly the worst sin of calling malloc is that it might take a very long time to complete.

Loop Invariants And Testing: Often Possible, Often Difficult

Mon, 06 Oct 2014 10:56:00 -0400

We can think of an invariant as being a claim or belief about the state of program that we expect to be true each time control reaches a particular point in the program.