Free/libre/open source software
Computer Floss
Delightful digital distractions in free/libre/open source software.
Featured writing
Selected from the original Computer Floss posts and publication pages, with the old sidebar clutter removed.
A little adventure with Haskell and Go
I recently decided to brush up on my functional programming skills. My day job increasingly involves building and operating large-scale distributed systems and I became interested in the intersection between this and...
Software sucks - put simply
Be very worried. Software is eating the world, and it sucks. This is a quote from a great article called Why the Great Glitch of July 8th Should Scare You by Zeynep Tufekci . You should go and read it (but finish this...
Why choose Python for teaching?
I recently read a tweet by a computer science educator claiming the superiority of a particular programming language for teaching purposes (Pascal, if you must know). Now, I don’t really go for religious wars — each to...
Partnering with Agile Workers
More exciting news. Mirko Böhm, co-founder of Agile Workers Software , has invited me to become a partner in the company. I’ve gladly accepted. Agile Workers is a cool, new Berlin-based start-up that offers a diverse...
Saros: Needs-based synchronisation and a greatly upgraded Whiteboard
I’ve been so extremely busy the last six weeks that I’ve had no time to blog. During that time a new release of Saros went out and I almost let it pass without telling you about it. Version 11.12.9 of our distributed...
Distributed Party Programming
Excerpt: "Writing software in a team is hard enough when everyone is within easy reach. Working with people based far away presents a whole new challenge. If you've ever tried distributed collaboration you'll already be...
About the site
Karl Beecher wrote Computer Floss while working across software engineering, teaching, research, and open source communities.
About Karl Beecher
Karl Beecher is a freelance consultant, teacher and writer who specialises in IT and computer science. He tries to straddle the line between industry and academia. In the past, he has worked as a software engineer, but...
Publications
A list of recent publications: Karl Beecher. Saros: An Eclipse Plug-in for Distributed Party Programming. Methods & Tools , Fall 2011, pp. 44–47, Martinig & Associates, ISSN: 1661-402X. Lutz Prechelt, Karl Beecher. Four...
About Saros
This page gives an introduction to the Saros project for any interested parties. It is a distillation of a number of resources, most of them available at the official Saros website . What is Saros? Saros is an Eclipse...