Monthly Archive for May, 2009

Yet Another Transition

After 4 happy years of coding in compiled languages of C and C++, the time has come to make a transition to the interpreted language of Java. The change is more of an imposed one than desired. And I am not getting drawn into the subject of compilers vs. interpretors, mainly because of my lack of experience with the latter category.

Starting the next week, I shall join the FICO, Bangalore. I am quite excited about the oppurtunity as I have received excellant inputs from my seniors and their friends regarding the kind of work that people do over there. Also I need a change from an university-like environment.

Now at Fair Isaac, apparently, people prefer Java over C++. Navin sir said that there are a group of people using C++, but the bulk of libraries and code is in Java. So it will be easier if I switch over to Java than C++, though it shouldn’t be a lot tougher sticking with it. And after giving it a thought, I have decided to learn Java. Learning a new programming language is all about going through its libraries and adapting them. It should be an easy enough task. Also since I have a basic understanding of objects, classes, inheritance and theior abstract nature, it should be easy enough.

The only thing I shall miss are the pointers. Sadly Java does not allow pointer access to programmers like the C does. I do not know the reason behind this restriction, but it sure makes me sad. Of late, most of my variables were being referenced by address and I was really getting into the habbit of using pointers. They make complicated things so easy to manage.

And then another thing is the usage of WIndows. I would really prefer Ubuntu for coding. I do not thing there should be any problem with using ubuntu. I just do not want to START to TURN OFF windows :P .

Popularity: 2% [?]

Installing Amarok 1.4 in Ubuntu Jaunty

Don’t like Amarok 2? Despair not, because there is a way to get back your Amarok 1.4 in Ubuntu Jaunty. Basically, you need to find a mirror of Amarok 1.4 and just install from there. One of those is mentioned below. This is all you have to do :

Add the repositories for Amarok 1.4 to your sources.list file:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/bogdanb/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/bogdanb/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

Add the key:

sudo apt-key adv –recv-keys –keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com \
0x1d7e9dd033e89ba781e32a24b9f1c432ae74ae63

And then finally, update your sources, remove Amarok 2 and install 1.4

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get remove amarok
sudo apt-get install amarok14

That’s it. You are done. You have successfully installed Amarok 1.4 in Jaunty. Have fun.

Popularity: 8% [?]