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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. 679 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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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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Multiple programming languages vulnerable to DoS via hash algorithm collision
oCERT-2011-003 multiple implementations denial-of-service via hash algorithm collision
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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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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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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…
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"Another World" (game) Code Review
I spent two weeks reading and reverse engineering further the source code of Another World ("Out Of This World" in North America). I based my work on Gregory Montoir's "binary to C++" initial reverse engineering from the DOS executable. I was amazed to discover an elegant system based on a virtual machine interpreting…
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John Resig: JavaScript as a First Language
At Khan Academy we’ve been investigating teaching Computer Science to students in some new and interesting ways. The most interesting aspect of which is that we’re likely going to be teaching them JavaScript as their first language.
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All Programmers Are Self-Taught
When I was a teenager I played high caliber baseball. I’m competitive to a fault and when I decide I want to be good at something, results usually follow. Now I’m a third year undergrad…
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ISO C is increasingly moronic
Varnish is a powerful, flexible HTTP accelerator that speeds up web applications by caching content and optimizing delivery.
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Building StatHat with Go
How StatHat uses Go, and why they chose it.
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How games cheat to help players
If we’ve done our jobs right, Wind-up Knight is a fairly simple game. There are only four inputs, and only two are ever needed simultaneously. Sir Sprint, our heroic spring-loaded knight, runs forward automatically, removing the need for a classic directional pad or analog stick. The challenge is derived from careful…
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