Week 310 - Interesting links

The Case for Slow Programming

While I have some sympathy with the idea of the Slow Programming movement, I’m not convinced that slowing down the release cycle is a good tactic. To my mindm, thoughtful, careful design is not incompatible with making small incremental improvements to the code.

I’m also unconvinced of the author’s implied rejection of collective code ownership. Although admittedly difficult to achieve in practice, it is possible to establish a shared thoughtful, careful design approach across a team. Via Chris Roos. — JM

RTL-SDR

This may be old news to people, but I was intrigued to discover this open-source software-defined radio which is designed to work with the Realtek RTL2832U chipset found in low-cost DVB-T TV tuner dongles.

My specific interest is in seeing whether I can build a cheap AIS receiver. Typically these cost a few hundred pounds, but I’m hoping I can get something like this running on a Raspberry Pi for not too many pennies. — JM

OpenCPN

While I was investigating the idea of building an AIS receiver, I came across this impressive-looking open-source chart plotter and navigation software. I’m thinking about trying to get it up and running on a cheap laptop or tablet. — JM

Faster Builds with Container-Based Infrastructure and Docker

We use Travis CI for both client & open-source work and we’ve definitely noticed a significant improvement in performance after these changes. Via Seb Jacobs. — JM

co-op v2?

I’m not entirely sure that I understand what Richard Pope is getting at here, but I think he’s right that there is something interesting in the decentralized nature of the Bitcoin blockchain. Via Chris Roos. — JM

Map the Banks

Financial institutions are required by law to produce a mountain of data, but little meaningful analysis has been done on it.

This OpenCorporates project aims to tackle the problem in order to provide greater transparency into the finance sector and they are looking for developers to take on missions to build scrapers. — JM

credEcardplus

This e-Money payment card by Contis seems to offer an individual sort-code and account number which was something we struggled to find during our Credit Union project. What’s more it looks as if they are already partnering with credit unions. Via Adam Hosker of Bespoke Finance. — JM