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Game servers: UDP vs TCP
When writing networked games, the question of UDP vs TCP will eventually come up. Typically you will hear people say things like: “Unless you’re doing action games, you can use TCP̶…
The inexplicable rise of open floor plans in tech companies
Update: I originally quoted the average price of office space as $36 / square foot / month, where ...
In Favor of Niceness, Community, and Civilization
[Content warning: Discussion of social justice, discussion of violence, spoilers for Jacqueline Carey books.] [Edit 10/25: This post was inspired by a debate with a friend of a friend on Facebook w…
You Got Your Web Browser in my Compiler
I recently discovered that Microsoft’s VC++ compiler loads mshtml.dll – also known as Internet Explorer. The compiler does this whenever the /analyze option (requesting static code analysis) is use…
Chicken Scheme internals: the garbage collector
Hi, I'm Peter Bex, a Scheme and free software enthusiast from the Netherlands. See my user page on the CHICKEN wiki or my git server for some of my projects.
Why Lisp is a Big Hack and Haskell is Doomed to Succeed (2011)
2013 Update: I was young and stupid when I wrote this. I fear that Haskell is doomed to succeed. — Tony Hoare I ♥ Lisp. I think it's t...
Class Hierarchies? Don't Do That
In theory , JavaScript does not have classes. In practice , the following snippet of code is widely considered to be an example of a “class” in JavaScript:
Why CoffeeScript Isn't the Answer
CoffeeScript is an open source project that provides a new syntax for JavaScript. I have to say that I have a lot of respect for CoffeeScript and it got a lot of things right. The “golden rule” of CoffeeScript is “It’s just JavaScript” . That means there is a straightforward equivalent to every line of CoffeeScript…
Signs you might be in "Survival Mode"
A list of early warning signs that a software team is in survival mode, such as constant urgency, missing context, no time to reduce risk and long stress.
Git Source Code Review
Since its release in December 2005, git has taken over the software industry. In combination with GitHub it is now a powerful tool to publish and share code: From big teams ( linux kernel , id Software , Epic Unreal ) to single individual ( Prince of Persia , Another world , Rick Dangerous ), many have adopted it as…
Strangecoin: a proposal for a nonlinear currency
In this post I sketch a proposal for a digital currency that works unlike other *coins that have recently become available. I'm calling it ...
Coffee and its Effects on Feature Creep (2011)
Starting in mid-2004 and until the end of 2006, I worked at a small DNS and DHCP software company called Nominum . These days Nominum offer...
Toward a better programming
When I built the original prototype of Light Table I didn’t have any grand purpose or goal in mind. I simply had some ideas on how programming could be better and I wanted to see how hard they would be to build. Until fairly recently, it never dawned on me that I’ve actually spent the past decade trying out ideas on…
Screw stigma. I’m coming out.
I’ve kept it to myself for years, but now I believe the only way to fight the stigma of mental illness is to talk about my own.
The Eighth Meditation on Superweapons and Bingo
Your life is the best story! Just start your blog today!
Threes: The Rip-offs and Making Our Original Game
It’s been a weird and awesome couple of months. Our expectations for our tiny game were well, fairly tiny. Basically, we hoped it’d do better than Puzzlejuice. It did. By a lot. It’s still hard to address the world’s response with something beyond a wide-eyed daze but essentially we couldn’t be more thrilled. Duh.
Tarsnap now accepts Bitcoin
There is a significant commonality between Tarsnap and Bitcoin — both rely crucially on strong cryptography, and anecdotally it seems that many Bitcoin users rely on Tarsnap to back up their "wallets" (I have no concrete data since I can't tell what data people are backing up ) — so it's not surprising that many…
After reviewing about 30 YC applications, here's some general advice
Demo day just wrapped up for Beacon. We feel pretty good about what we've done since starting YC in January. But it's been a long and winding road to get here. One of my cofounders (@dmitric) and...
Switch from Photoshop to Gimp: Tips From a Pro
Over six months ago, I stopped using Adobe Photoshop and switched to GIMP for all my personal photography projects. This wasn’t the impossible task that most people believe it is.
“The Mill” – It just might Work
The Mill is a new general-purpose high-performance processor design from out-of-the-box computing ( http://ootbcomp.com/ ). They claim to beat typical high-end out-of-order (OOO) designs like the Intel Haswell generation by crazy factors, such as being 2.3x faster while using 2.3x less power compared to a Haswell. All…