1
Hunting Down My Son's Killer
To find it, a team of scientists at Duke University used whole-exome sequencing (a protein-focused variant of whole-genome sequencing) on me, my wife and my son.
Matt Might
I'm a computer scientist that became passionate about precision medicine in a quest to diagnose my son Bertrand .
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Visit matt.might.net → On Hacker News Apr 2010 – Jan 2025
Software Engineering 18Life, Learning & Writing 11Career & Management 8Math & Algorithms 7Tools & Productivity 6Programming Languages 6
2
What every computer science major should know (2011)
Given the expansive growth in the field, it's become challenging to discern what belongs in a modern computer science degree.
3
Resolutions for programmers
It’s important for programmers to continuously challenge themselves in order to avoid creative and technical stagnation.
4
SSH tricks
This post is part of my “Unix fundamentals” series. Recent posts in this series include settling into Unix , standalone lexers with lex , and sculpting text with regex, grep, sed and awk .
5
The Illustrated Guide to a PhD
There's a bit more below, but I also wrote a follow-up 5 years after the illustrated guide which may be of interest -- HOWTO: Get tenure .
6
Translating math into code with examples in Java, Racket, Haskell, Python (2011)
These structures are so universal that most research papers in the theory of computation, programming languages and formal methods present concepts in terms of discrete mathematics rather than code.
7
The illustrated guide to a Ph.D.
There's a bit more below, but I also wrote a follow-up 5 years after the illustrated guide which may be of interest -- HOWTO: Get tenure .
8
How to Get Tenure
Even before I got tenure, folks have told me they’re “looking forward to an academic advice post on tenure.”
9
My PhD advisor rewrote himself in bash (2010)
The point of these scripts is not to ban all use of constructs like the passive voice. (When it comes to writing, there are exceptions to every "rule.")
10
26 Programming Languages in 25 Days
Since making a sudden leap from computer science to academic medicine about seven years ago, I haven’t programmed as much.
11
Advanced programming languages (2009)
Students often ask for a recommendation on what language they should learn next. If you're looking for a job in industry, my reply is to learn whatever is hot right now: C++, Java and C#--and probably Python, Ruby, PHP and Perl too.
12
Easy Ways to Fail a Ph.D.
I'm supervising a lot of new grad students this semester, so for their sake, I'm cataloging the common reasons for failure.
13
26 programming languages in 25 days, Part 2: Reflections on language design
I recently wrote about completing Advent of Code 2022 using a different programming language (or two) every day for 25 days.
14
How to send and reply to email
Many of the tips below are already widely followed in academia, where debate and discussion over email have been taking place for decades.
15
Hacking strength: Gaining muscle with least resistance
Then, after realizing I was too weak to lift my son and his wheelchair in and out of the car, I spent just over a year gaining strength and muscle.
16
Shell programming with bash: by example, by counter-example
As an interactive shell, bash is a terse language for initiating and directing computations.
17
Relational shell programming
Unix is a bestiary of ad hoc databases: comma-, colon-, tab- and space-separated tables. Think of /etc/* or /var/log/* , or of columnar commands.
18
End artificial scarcities to increase productivity
My colleagues and I realized this over beer: dry erase markers cost almost nothing, yet a lecture hall never contains functioning dry erase markers.
19
Continuations by example: Exceptions, time-traveling search, threads, and more
Continuations are the least understood of all control-flow constructs. This lack of understanding (or awareness) is unfortunate, given that continuations permit the programmer to implement powerful language features and algorithms, including exceptions, backtracking search, threads, generators and coroutines.
20
Hello, Perceptron: An introduction to artificial neural networks
Generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Midjournery are able to replicate (and often exceed) human-like performance on tasks like taking exams, generating text and making art.
21
Implement a programming language from scratch
Implementing a programming language is an experience no programmer should go without; the process fosters a deep understanding of computation, and it's fun!
22
Low-level web programming in Racket and a wiki in 500 lines
Racket provides a simple yet flexible web framework for serving dynamic web content.
23
Tips for work-life balance
My reply crossed the threshold for a blog post, so I'm posting it here to be consistent with my own principles on academic blogging .
24
Sculpting text with regex, grep, sed, awk, emacs and vim (2012)
Unix is an alliance of loosely structured text files bound together and governed by scripts. Unix is the United Confederation of Strings:
25
JavaScript: Warts and workarounds
One's sentiment toward JavaScript flips between elegance and disgust without transiting intermediate states.
26
Compiling to λ-calculus
Though it contains forms only for function applications, variable references and anonymous functions, it is equivalent to a Turing machine.
27
Books and papers every graduate student should read
These recommendations are sorted from general to specific: from resources for any kind of graduate student to resources for graduate students in my own field, static analysis.
28
Lambda-style anonymous functions for C++ in less than 500 lines of code
I prefer functional languages like Scheme, Scala or Haskell over C++ for most tasks. So, when I'm forced to program in C++, I write functional C++.
29
What is static program analysis?
The halting problem asks whether the execution of a specific program for a given input will terminate.
30
How to compile with continuations
In terms of unreasonable effectiveness, the transformation to continuation-passing style (CPS) ranks with the Y combinator .