Deconstructing K&R C (2010)
Learn C The Hard Way (LCTHW) is a practical book teaching real world useful C using the same proven Learn The Hard Way method. LCTHW teaches real robust C coding and defensive programming tactics on real hardware rather than abstract machines and pedantic theory. The book emphasizes breaking your code on purpose, and…
Tests Are Overhyped
Let me lead off by saying that I don’t think tests are bad. I really don’t. But here’s the thing: I don’t care what your test-code ratios are. You know what the best test-code ratio is? Whatever you need to make sure your crap works while still getting product out the door.
Running a software team at Google
I'm often asked what my job is like at Google since I left academia. I guess going from tenured professor to software engineer sounds like ...
Hey programmers, we need to talk
This article is now in Russian! Hey guys. Thanks for coming to this meeting on such short notice. There’s coffee in the back. Did somebody spot the token recruiter yet? And show him the door?…
Native equivalents of jQuery functions
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It is ridiculously easy to refactor Go
I discovered a profound outcome of Go's support for static type checking and duck typing: It is ridiculously easy to refactor Go.
Introducing Chronos: A Replacement for Cron
Chronos: A Replacement for Cron By Florian Leibert, Harry Shoff, & Andy Kramolisch Chronos is our replacement for cron. It is a distributed and fault-tolerant scheduler which runs on top of Mesos …
How Gmail’s Image Caching Affects Open Tracking
Browse how-to articles on starting, running, and marketing your business, plus thought-provoking podcasts and films to inspire your inner entrepreneur.
How I work with Postgres – psql, My PostgreSQL Admin
On at least a weekly basis and not uncommonly multiple times in a single week I get this question: @neilmiddleton I’ve been hunting for a nice PG interface that works within other things. PGAdmin kinda works, except the SQL editor is a piece of shit Sometimes it leans more to, what is the Sequel Pro equivilant for…
Americans Disapprove of Government Surveillance Programs
More Americans disapprove (53%) than approve (37%) of the government program that obtained telephone call logs and Internet communication records. Americans are split on whether leaker Edward Snowden did the right or wrong thing.
Building Clojure Services at Scale
At SoundCloud I’ve been experimenting over the last year with how we build the services that power a number of heavily loaded areas across our …
Ludde's FPGA NES
I was a bit bored during Christmas, so I decided to construct a whole Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in an FPGA . An FPGA is a progra...
The code culture problem
A personal blog about the craft of engineering, tech work, personal philosophy, and life.
The lie of the API
Really, nobody takes your website serious anymore if you don’t offer an API . And that’s what everybody did: they got themselves a nice API . An enormous amount of money and energy is wasted on developing API s that are hard to create and even harder to use. This is wonderful news for developers, who get paid to build…
Drone ‘Nightmare Scenario’ Now Has A Name: ARGUS
The PBS series NOVA , “ Rise of the Drones ,” recently aired a segment detailing the capabilities of a powerful aerial surveillance system known as ARGUS-IS, which is basically a super-high, 1.8 gigapixel resolution camera that can be mounted on a drone. As demonstrated in this clip , the system is capable of…
Don't Support Information Architects
Last week Information Architects (iA) released Writer Pro, a follow-up to the company’s popular text editor, iA Writer. By far, their most heavily touted new feature is Syntax Control. Oliver Reichenstein, iA’s director, promised in a blog post to vigorously protect this new feature: Syntax Control is a solid…
How Browsers Store Your Passwords (and Why You Shouldn't Let Them)
Introduction In a previous post , I introduced a Twitter bot called dumpmon which monitors paste sites for account dumps, configuration fi...