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The best things and stuff of 2011 by Fogus
Great things and people that I discovered, learned, read, met, etc. in 2011. No particular ordering is implied. Not everything is new.
New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 1,905 posts.
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nasal demons
Recognized shorthand on the Usenet group comp.std.c for any unexpected behavior of a C compiler on encountering an undefined construct. During a discussion on that group in early 1992, a regular remarked “ When the compiler encounters [a given undefined construct] it is legal for it to make demons fly out of your nose…
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Why do C++ folks make things so complicated?
This morning Miroslav Bajtoš asked "Why do C++ folks make things so complicated?" in response to my article on regular expressions in C++. Other people asked similar questions yesterday. My response has two parts: Why I believe C++ libraries are often complicated. Why I don't think it has to be that way. Why would…
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The lost Van Jacobson paper that could save the Internet
One of my heroes has always been Van Jacobson. His 1988 paper on solving TCP congestion is an enjoyable read, with cross-discipline appeal. The history of all this is fascinating, such as congestio…
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Hitchhiker's Guide to Python
I first heard about The Hitchhiker's Guide to Python at PyCodeConf a few months ago. It's a fantastic idea: open source, community-driven documentation on how to do Python right: everything from how to learn Python, to how to write idiomatic code, to how to distribute your projects, to surveys of best-of-breed open…
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How to Become a Must-Have
Most real startups don’t grow like this: Instead, most successful startups grow like this: Those initial loops are unsuccessful attempts to create a product people want to use. The problem is those…
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Bullshit
Everyone has their bullshit. You can simply decide whose you’re willing to tolerate.
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Darts, Dice, and Coins: A beautiful article on a beautiful algorithm
Earlier this year, I asked a question on Stack Overflow about a data structure for loaded dice . Specifically, I was interested in answering this question:
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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.
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The coming retail apocalypse: some axioms
Back to: Rudy #3: Looking For The Big Aha. | Forward to: Rudy #4. More on The Big Aha.
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Practical Garbage Collection - Part 1: Introduction
Introduction This is the first part of a series of blog posts I intend to write, whose aim will be to explain how garbage collection works in the real world (in particular, with the JVM). I will co…
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Old, but gold - "Strategy Letter I: Ben and Jerry's vs. Amazon"
Building a company? You’ve got one very important decision to make, because it affects everything else you do. No matter what else you do, you absolutely must figure out which camp you’…
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A Perl Regular Expression That Matches Prime Numbers
Take a look at this Perl regular expression: perl -lne '(1x$_) =~ /^(11+?)\1+$/ && print "$_ is composite"' This regular expression matches only the composite numbers (and doesn't match prime numbers). Can you figure out how it works? I'll give the explanation below but try to figure it…