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LLVM Code Generation in HHVM
One of the most common questions we get about HHVM is why we don’t use LLVM for code generation. The primary reason has always been that while LLVM is great ...
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Scott Aaronson on Google’s new quantum-computing paper
MIT professor Scott Aaronson discusses new Google experiments that suggest the D-Wave computer exploits quantum phenomena.
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Small Introduction to Markov Chains
Introduction A Markov Chain is a set of transitions from one state to the next; Such that the transition from the current state to the next depends only on the current state, the previous and future states do not effect the probability of the transition. A transitions independence from future and past sates is called…
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The 68000 Wars, Part 2: Jack Is Back
Jack Tramiel, the computer executive most likely to be compared to Darth Vader. I wonder why?
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When Greedy Algorithms Are Good Enough (2014)
Greedy algorithms are among the simplest and most intuitive algorithms known to humans. Their name essentially gives their description: do the thing that looks best right now, and repeat until nothing looks good anymore or you’re forced to stop. Some of the best situations in computer science are also when greedy…
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A Short Course in Thinking About Thinking (2007)
A SHORT COURSE IN THINKING ABOUT THINKING Edge Master Class '07 DANIEL KAHNEMAN Auberge du Soleil, Rutherford, CA, July 20-22, 2007 AN EDGE SPECIAL PROJECT
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Critical fix for a potential data corruption issue in PostgreSQL 9.3 and 9.4
The PostgreSQL Global Development Group has released an update with multiple functionality and security fixes to all supported versions of …
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Windows 10 to be a recommended update in early 2016
Windows 10 has been a great journey so far. Following the plan we originally outlined in June, more than 110M devices have upgraded. If you’re already running Windows 10 – thank you! Our aspiration is for customers to choose Windows, and to love Windows. Our early data shows customers from France to Brazil to China
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Python is the new BASIC
The above is the Hello World program for Java, arguably one of the most popular programming languages. Encapsulated in the above three lines are several different concepts ranging from static functions to return types to stdout and to the entirety of object oriented programming in general.
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Don't test with SQLite when you use Postgres in Production
Yesterday, I was looking for some help trying to have a clean way to roll back database transactions at the end of a test in a Python TestC...
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Another Theory to Explain 10X Programmers
a blog post by @azwinkau
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The strange economics of open-source software
I always use the names of economists for my machines' hostnames. keynes, friedman, marx, fisher, ricardo. So every so often the strange economics of open-source software hits me. Today it is almost taken for granted that the source code for most software is freely available. This is a profound and remarkable change…
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Why My MOOC Is Not Built on Video
A MOOC professor takes a contrarian view and creates a MOOC without relying on videos, and makeing the claim that they are not necessary for a meaningful online learning experience.
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Data is at the heart of search, but who has access to it?
In my February 23 blog post, I gave a brief overview of how search engines have evolved over the years and how today’s search engines learn from past searches to anticipate which results will be mo…
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The Death of the Von Neumann Architecture
Lots of exciting new things were announced at the latest Apple WWDC this week, but hidden amongst the big announcements was an extension of something that's been bothering me for a while.
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Physical Intuition, Not Mathematics (2011)
“What we call Man's power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.”
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Lisp for the Web, Part III
This piece is about how to build a modern web application with Common Lisp in the backend, from scratch.
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How MTV's “16 and Pregnant” May Have Reduced Teen Pregnancy
Apparently MTV broadcasts a show called "16 and Pregnant," in which each show tracks a pregnant teen-ager through the final months of pregna...
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The Apprentice Programmer (2013)
I dropped out of school when I was 16 years old. School was not for me. To me, computers were so much more interesting. Right or wrong, I felt like I wasted my time there and my real education was starting when I came home. I lost respect for the institution and of course this meant that I no longer bothered to put any
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Frameworks are for hacks, libraries for seeds
I find that I operate in one of two modes when I’m writing software. I’m either approaching a project as a quick hack or as developing software . As much as anything else, this affects how I approach the project and what kinds of results that I get.
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The Simulated Annealing Algorithm
Simulated annealing is a method for finding a good (not necessarily perfect) solution to an optimization problem. If you're in a situation where you want to maximize or minimize something, your problem can likely be tackled with simulated annealing.
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Self hosted C – breakdown
I did it. It wasn't easy, but I did it. My C Compiler can compile itself. Even though it still has holes in functionality and obvious bug...
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Signalfd is useless
UNIX (well, POSIX) signals are probably one of the worst parts of the UNIX API, and that’s a relatively high bar. A signal can be sent to your program at any point when it’s running, and you have to deal with it somehow. Traditionally, there are three ways …
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On Go, Portability, and System Interfaces
I've been noticing more and more lately that we have a plethora of libraries and programs written for Go, which don't work on one platform o...