Tom Oakley's Articles

How to set up Mercurial on Windows 16 January 2008: Mercurial is an excellent lightweight distributed revision control system that makes software development (and web development!) easier. Even though it is used by organisations with large projects such as the Mozilla Foundation, OpenSolaris and OpenJDK, it is not obvious how to set it up on Microsoft Windows. This article attempts to lead a new user through the necessary steps to get Mercurial working.
What has George W. Bush done for us? 02 October 2004: In Monty Python's The Life of Brian, Reg asks "What have the Romans done for us?". With George W. Bush campaigning for another term in office, it's the right time to ask what he has done for us, the citizens of the world.
Reasons to learn Java 10 September 2004: Programming languages seem to be cropping up everywhere. A few years ago virtually all widely used programs were written in C. Now there's C++, C#, Java, Python, Perl, PHP, VisualBasic and so on. Tom Oakley discusses why Java might be a good choice for many applications.
United States' hypocrisy? 10 November 2002: Throughout 2002, the United States mobilised political and military personnel in a bid to attack Iraq. Tom Oakley takes each accusation that the US has made against Iraq and compares it to recent US conduct.
Open source alternatives to Microsoft products 15 October 2002, updated 9 March 2008: There are many free open source programs that can be used to replace proprietary Microsoft products. This document outlines some major classes of software and list open source alternatives.
What's the difference? 10 May 2002: There are many words that are used interchangeably when they have distinct meanings. Due to the frequency with which I was asked "What's the difference between...", I have written down what I think are the most common examples.