Loading the dice

A thoughtful algorithm/data structure post from Keith Schwartz on dice rolling, applicable to a broad range of simulations, using the Alias Method.

Linking profile to Google+

I've linked my Blogger profile to my Google+ account. Please comment if you have any thoughts on this, or if you see anything odd or missing as a result. Thanks!

Java server hiccups

Gil Tene at Azul has great insight into Java server performance gaffs. He calls them hiccups and provides tooling to find them.

Monad in Java

The shortest, clearest description of monads in Java I have read:

public class OptionalMonad {
    public static <T> Optional<T> unit(T value) {
        return Optional.of(value);
    }

    public static <T, U> Optional<U> bind(
            Optional<T> value,
            Function<T, Optional<U>> function) {
        if (value.isPresent()) return function.apply(value.get());
        else return Optional.absent();
    }
}

Thanks to François Sarradin in a very nice post.

Netflix circuit breaker

Ben Schmaus of the Netflix team posts a lovely description of the degraded service features of their API. The real life use case is compelling. The dashboard is just brilliant.