CODE [sic]

Updating libxmljs on node.js: or, how to suck less at Google v8

I just released the latest version of libxmljs for node.js http://github.com/polotek/libxmljs/tree/0.4.0. This is a major release that doesn't have many visible changes but lots of stuff happened under the hood. I figured it'd be good to describe some of my struggles with Google v8

Debugging Segmentation Faults

Previous versions of libxmljs were rife with segfaults that would pop up without warning. There are lots of reasons for this, but the most common had to do with not following best practices with the v8 API. V8 has this notion of Handles that are used to hold references to javascript objects in C/C++ space. Among other things, this design decision gives v8 a nice way to keep track of js references and clean them up at the appropriate time. A contrived example (assume v8 namespace).

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Creating a Blog I'll Actually Use

I have 3 blogs including this one.  And they're all being neglected.  The last post on any of them was 5 months ago.  There are lots of reasons why I don't write more.  Busy at work, social life, good old-fashioned laziness.  But there's only one that activates my programmer's itch.  My blog interface is just not user-friendly enough.

When I do get the urge to write, nothing derails it faster than getting irritated with the actual writing process.  Getting your thoughts onto paper should be the easy part.  The hard part is ensuring that those thoughts don't make you look like and idiot.

So this blog post serves 2 purposes.

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An Uneducated View of Checked vs. Unchecked Exceptions

Lately, I've been reading up on the raging debate surrounding exceptions and exception handling.  Specifically, how useful is it that languages like Java have checked exceptions that the caller is forced to handle?  Is it better to eliminate these and have only unchecked exceptions?

I don't write much Java.  I'm all about dynamic languages (hence the Uneducated tag).  But sometimes I have an opinion on things I don't know a whole lot about.  So here are my thoughts.

I ran across a proposal to eliminate checked exceptions in Google's experimental noop language.  I think this is a good forum to discuss the issue because the language doesn't have any baggage that comes with worries about backwards compatibility and that type of thing.  We can talk about the problem that checked exceptions try to solve and thus think of new ways to approach that problem.

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The Things I Will Need Before Abandoning Firefox

I should start by saying that Firefox has all but driven me away.  I can no longer ignore the way the performance has continued to deteriorate with successive versions.  I'm almost ready to switch to something else until they get their act together.  But the fact is that, for me, what Firefox offers is really hard to beat.

So this is my list of must-haves before I'll consider using another browser setup on a regular basis.  I'm a professional web developer, and like many people reading this, I'm also an internet junkie.  So this isn't going to be the typical feature set.

High Performance and Responsiveness

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