There’s been talk about Code Katas for quite some time now. The lore on the internet states that the idea of a code kata, or practice exercises that a programmer can go through to hone their skills, was created within the book “The Pragmatic Programmer” by coauthor Dave Thomas (interestingly, he keeps a rather cool blog with various katas listed to help programmers). Katas are great ideas for application coders, so I figured they’d be great for embedded coders as well; as they say, practice makes perfect.

| Read the rest of this page …

After reading about it for years [CodingHorror] and using it as my exclusive merge/diff/file-verification tool at work for the last year, I finally caved in and purchased the magnificent piece of Windows (and Linux too if you would prefer) software called ‘Beyond Compare’ for my personal computer. Greatest $30 software development tool investment ever spent!

For those not in the know, this tool does file comparisons, directory diffing, merging of whole files or lines within files, copying of files between different directories, image comparisons with an XORed image to visual show pixel differences between images, it slices, it dices, and it takes away the hard water buildup in sinks (not really). See the developer’s (Scooter Software) website for all features and capabilities.

If this interested you, check out the 30-day trial to see if you like the tool for yourself.

Great movie. Great message. Go register to vote. Find out more about the candidates (Obama or McCain) and take a stance.