Atemporal Blog Posts

These are some interesting posts and links I've found around the web. I believe they are quite interesting and nice reads, so if you have the time, I encourage you to check some out.

Algorithms

• Image Dithering: Eleven Algorithms and Source Code. What does it mean and how to achieve it?
• Idempotence layer on bloom filters. What are they and how can they help?
• Huffman coding. This encoding is a simple yet interesting way of compressing information.
• Wave Function Collapse. Bitmap & tilemap generation from a single example with the help of ideas from quantum mechanics.
• Regular Expression Search with Suffix Arrays. A way to efficiently search large amounts of text.

Culture

• Why Westerners Fear Robots and the Japanese Do Not. Explains some possible reasons for this case.
• How To Ask Questions The Smart Way. Some bits of hacker culture and amazing tips on how to ask a question.
• XML, blockchains, and the strange shapes of progress. Some of history about XML and blockchain.
• Legion of lobotomized unices. A time where computers are treated a lot more nicely.
• The Expression Problem and its solutions. What is it and what can we do to solve it?
• The Inspection Paradox is Everywhere. Interesting and very common phenomena.
• An experimental code editor for writing algorithms. Contains several links to different tools for reverse debugging.
• What Are Capabilities? Good ideas with great security implications.
• Contempt Culture. Or why you should not speak crap about your non-favourite programming languages.
• Well-Kept Gardens Die By Pacifism. Risks any online community can run into.
• It's Nicky Case! They make some cool things worth checking out, I really like "we become what we behold".

Debate

• Open Source is awful. Has some points about why is it bad and how it could improve.
• Pink Lexical Goop: The Dark Side of Autocorrect. It can shape how you think.
• Idiomatic or idiosyncratic? Can porting code constructs from other languages have a positive effect?
• In-depth: Functional programming in C++. Is it useful to bother with functional concepts in a language like C++?
• Notes on structured concurrency, or: Go statement considered harmful.
• C Is Not a Low-level Language. Could there be alternative programming models designed for more specialized CPUs?

Food for Thought

• 1/0 = 0. Explores why it makes sense to redefine mathemathics under some circumstances, and why it is possible to do so.
• For mathematicians, = does not mean equality. What other definitions does the equal sign have?
• Cached Thoughts. How is it possible that our brains work at all?
• Software disenchantment. Faster hardware and slower software is a trend.
  • Software Engineering Is Bad, But That's Not Why. This post has some good counterpoints to Software disenchantment.
• What Color is Your Function?. Spoiler: can we approach asynchronous IO better?
• I'm harvesting credit card numbers and passwords from your site. A word of warning when mindlessly adding dependencies.
• Everything Is Broken. Some of the (probable) truths about our world.
• Reality has a surprising amount of detail.

Funny

• We Use BobX. BobX.
• The Inner JSON Effect. For some reason, custom languages are in.
• Exponential Backup. Far better than git.
• ITAPPMONROBOT. Solving software problems with hardware.
• A Tapestry of Threads. More threads must mean faster code, right?
• A Brief Totally Accurate History Of Programming Languages. Don't take offense for it!

Graphics

• Visualizing Projections. Small post about different projection methods.
• Inigo Quilez :: fractals, computer graphics, mathematics, shaders, demoscene and more A lot of useful and quality articles regarding computer graphics.

History

• What Did Ada Lovelace's Program Actually Do?. And other characters that took part in the beginning's of programming.
• In defence of swap: common misconceptions. Swap is still an useful concept.
• The Graphing Calculator Story. A great classic Apple tale.
• How Lisp Became God's Own Programming Language. Lisp as a foundational programming language.

Motivational

• Fire And Motion. What does actually take to get things done?
• The Parable of the Two Programmers. This tale is about two different types of programmer and their respective endings in a company, illustrating how the one you wouldn't expect to actually ends in a better situation.
• Conversations with a six-year-old on functional programming. Little kids today can be really interested in technological topics.
• How Many Hours a Day Should You Practice?. While the article is about music, it applies to any other areas.
• Suffering-oriented programming. A possibly new approach on how you could tackle your new projects.
• Things You Should Never Do, Part I. There is no need to rewrite your code.

Optimization

• What Every C Programmer Should Know About Undefined Behavior #1/3. Explains what undefined behaviour is and why it makes sense.
• Labor of Division (Episode I). Some tricks to divide without division.
• A Great Old-Timey Game-Programming Hack. Abusing instructions to make games playable even on the slowest hardware.
• Scalable Event Multiplexing: epoll vs kqueue. How good OS primitives can really help performance and scability.
• Command-line Tools can be 235x Faster than your Hadoop Cluster. Or how to use the right tool for the right job.
• When FFI Function Calls Beat Native C. How lua beat C at it and the explanation behind it.
• Gallery of Processor Cache Effects. Knowing a few things about the cache can make a big difference.