Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Eye Of Minerva

Brutal death metal but they could have been playing wrong notes all night and I couldn't have told the difference.

Wednesday, April 20, 2016

Scala varargs and splats

Coming from a Python background, I got a lot of mileage out of the easy sequence parameter expansion pattern:

def foo(a,b,c): bar()
L = [1,4,"s"]
foo(*L)

This implicitly takes a sequence type (in this case, a list) and explodes its contents into the parameters a,b,c. (You have to watch out that the sequence  contains the right number of parameters, of course.)

In Scala, which I'm writing for my current job, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the same kind of functionality exists, as long as the function is declared varargs:

def foo(ts: T*)
L = List(t0,t1,t2)
foo(L :_*)

This is especially useful if, for example, foo() is defined in some Java library that doesn't do any kind of polymorphism well.

Apparently, the ":_*" type annotation on the end there is called the "splat operator" (much easier to pronounce), and it's a part of the Scala Language Specification.

Monday, January 4, 2016

Thursday, October 29, 2015

We Sold Our Souls To Metal Tour

Earth Side: Proggy all-instrumental trio (with canned vocals from, of all people, Bjorn Strid). Got skills, though their technical musicianship isn't quite there yet. I like the songwriting too, such as I can hear in this deafening mix.


Shattered Sun: Texas metalcore, a little like Threat Signal but with a more grinding guitar style. I have no idea what the keyboard player was there for.

Soilwork: needs no introduction


There was also this band called Soulfly that played last, but fuck those assholes.