dive into mark

• Spring 1.3 is out. Download.
• The structure of content and metadata.
• Lambertin & Grotegerd (great CSS)
• The Animatrix.
• Doc Query in SQL.
• Storing Hierarchical Data in a Database. I need this for my photo gallery cross-reference.
• Python considered harmful.
• Bruce Eckel: Strong Typing vs. Strong Testing.
• Why Pascal is not my favorite programming language.
• Computers > Programming > Languages > Comparison and review. Look ma, an entire DMOZ category of flames and trolls.
• History of RSS from 0.90 to 1.0.
• A common syndication format? July 2, 1999, and still out of the loop on RSS 0.91. But it’s OK, we all stretch the truth a little on our resumes.
• Paul Ford: Software Story.
• Phil Ringnalda: RSS Reader tidbits.
• Leslie Harpold: Possible scenarios for heaven.
• Famous Gary Larson cartoon. First panel: a man talking to his dog. “What we say to dogs: ‘I’ve told you before, Ginger, stay out of the trash! Do you hear me, Ginger?’” Next panel: “What dogs hear: ‘Blah blah blah, Ginger. Blah blah blah blah, Ginger?’”
• What David Mertz says: Functional programming in Python becomes lazy: using combinatorial functions in the itertools module. What I understand: “Blah blah blah, Python, blah blah blah blah.”
• Andy Todd: Iterators and Databases.
• Simon Willison: Easier form validation with PHP.
• Project VII: Uberlink CSS Rollovers.
• Aaron Swartz: PowerPoint remix.
• Subflavour plug-in for Blosxom.
• Michael Barrish: Oars.
• And finally, my friend Clint has a lawn now.

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Six comments here (latest comments)

1. Preorder tree traversal is truly the king of hierarchical-data storing methods.

   As for the ‘indent level’ thing that’s mentioned in that article, it’s even easier than that; it can all be done in SQL. Just join your hierarchy table back onto itself:

   SELECT title, COUNT(*) AS level
   FROM tree
   LEFT JOIN tree AS treelevels
   ON (tree.lft between treelevels.lft and treelevels.rgt)
   GROUP BY TITLE

   It’s slightly tricky to understand, but trust me, it’s nifty.

   One thing that’s a bitch, though, which I mention purely in case anyone decides to convert their database holus-bolus and then gets caught out: it’s very tricky indeed to get the children ordered alphabetically. If you add ‘Green’ and then ‘Apple’ below ‘Fruit’, you’d better hope you never want to retrieve:

   Green / Apple / Red / Cherry / Yellow / Banana

   like that, because you’ll be bald in an hour, I swear.

   — Paul 

2. The “Python Considered Harmful” link is historically interesting.

   I read the post, vehemently disagreed with it, and then read the follow-ups. To my surprise, not a single response suggested using unit tests as a substitute for compile-time checking. I didn’t quite understand this until I looked at the top of the page and saw the year the thread occurred: 1999. These days, you wouldn’t be able to get away with that sort of question without at least ten people invoking Kent Beck.

   Then I realised how recent 1999 actually was.

   — Charles Miller 

3. Here is a method for trees in Sql posted on Ward’s Wiki that is very, very slick and efficient.

   http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?TreeInSql

   — Keith Wright 

4. I think we need another one of those meme-image banners, this one saying “No *I* co-authored RSS!”

   — xian 

5. I co-authored RSS, and so did my wife!

   — Brian 

6. http://diveintomark.org/images/noIcoauthoredrss.gif

   — Mark 

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