Patrick Fox's Articles
This section contains an assortment of articles about whatever I felt like writing about at the moment. Mostly stuff about software development, but sometimes other crap too.
Artificial Intelligence Is Silly Nonsense!
Artificial intelligence is a fairy tale. It will never be accomplished because it is simply impossible. Not because of it’s complexity or resource requirements, but because the basis of the very thing artificial intelligence tries to emulate is not real.
How to Make GRUB and Console Screen Resolution Permanent on Solaris 11.4.x
This article explains how to change the screen resolution for the GRUB and console screens, and how to make those changes permanent so they don’t get reset to the default each time the grub menu is regenerated.
How to Install WiFi Support on Solaris 11.4.42 (CBE)
Oracle removed all wifi support from Solaris prior to the release of 11.4.42 (the so-called “Common Build Environment” or “CBE” release). In this article I explain how to install full wifi support to Solaris 11.4.42 using only the official packages provided with Solaris (i.e. no third-party packages required).
Banned from Starbucks for Being Too Considerate
I recently had a series of pleasant interactions with a lovely young lady that works at the Starbucks a block from my home. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, her manager told me she said I’ve been making her feel uncomfortable and he ordered me to not talk to her, not interact with her.
So I started going to another Starbucks, because I did not want her to feel uncomfortable.
Today, I went into that Starbucks to quickly grab a Grande Pike on my way home. Two security guards approached me and told me I’m banned from the entire building because they received a complaint from “an employee of Starbucks”.
C++ Exception Handling and It’s Effect on Real World Performance, Part III
In this installment, we look at the performance affects of throwing exceptions from object oriented code (namely, virtual functions), because any real world C++ code is likely going to use virtual functions frequently. And virtual functions tend to preclude the same compiler optimizations that throwing exceptions does.
And, once again, we find that throwing exceptions from virtual functions DOES NOT have a notable impact on runtime performance.
The Problems with Current Interview Practices; Why You Can’t Find Good Senior Developers
I review the current, trendy practices used in interviewing software developers and show why they’re actually making it harder for companies to find good software developers and engineers.
C++ Exception Handling and It’s Effect on Real World Performance, Part II
In this installment, we look at the effect on runtime performance, of actually throwing exceptions. We compare test cases of throwing exceptions at various frequencies/intervals; using various compiler optimization settings. And again, we find that in a real-world scenario throwing exceptions simply DOES NOT significantly affect performance.
C++ Exception Handling and It’s Effect on Real World Performance, Part I
An analysis of whether using exception handling in C++ actually affects runtime performance.
It does not! It may, however, interfere with the compiler’s ability to perform certain compile-time optimizations.
Java Buffered Socket IO, Memory Usage, and Performance in Scalable Server Systems
An analysis of the performance and scalability of using buffered socket IO in a server implemented in Java.
Java vs. C++ for Server Development – Still Not Good Enough!
In order to determine the viability of Java for developing server applications, I’ve implemented a basic, functionally equivalent server in both Java and in C++. In this article, I compare the runtime performance of the two servers to showing that the Java version took over times the CPU usage and over 11 times the memory to handle the same workload.