Author Archives: jcs

Sussman Explains the End of SICP

Posted on 2023-02-04 by jcs

If you’ve spent any time at all on Irreal, you know that I consider Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP) one of the best—arguably the best—books on computer science. It’s influence was tremendous and served as the backbone of … Continue reading →

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Literature Review With Org-ref

Posted on 2023-02-03 by jcs

If you’re a researcher or even a college student writing research papers, one of the arduous tasks waiting for you is the literature review. You probably start with a single paper and want to find related papers that address the … Continue reading →

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Code vs. Verbatim in Org Mode

Posted on 2023-02-02 by jcs

If you do even a little writing in Org mode, you’ve almost certainly needed to occasionally typeset a word or sequence of words in a typewriter font. This, at least for me, comes up in two ways: I want to … Continue reading →

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Org Plot Made Easy

Posted on 2023-02-01 by jcs

As long term Irreal readers know, I was trained as a mathematician and later became a computer software engineer so you’d think I’d be pretty good at generating plots: Nope. I’m terrible at it. My go to tool is Gnuplot, … Continue reading →

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Emacs: Everything’s a Buffer

Posted on 2023-01-31 by jcs

It’s a commonplace that one of the features of Emacs is that everything’s a buffer and that this is a feature. Marcin Borkowski (mbork) has a short post that demonstrates the power that this brings. The TL;DR is that he … Continue reading →

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The New Luddites: The New Frontier

Posted on 2023-01-30 by jcs

The New Luddites have discovered a new frontier: Digital Minimalism. The term is actually very specific for the new Luddites. It means replacing their smartphones with a “feature phone”—a phone that does little more than make and take phone calls … Continue reading →

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Units in Emacs Calc

Posted on 2023-01-29 by jcs

As many of you know, I’m a big fan of Emacs Calc and use it as my calculator of choice whenever I’m on my laptop. Calc has robust conversion capabilities—to convert miles to kilometers, e.g.—but it can be a bit … Continue reading →

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The Emacs Help System

Posted on 2023-01-28 by jcs

One of the really nice features of Emacs is its builtin help system, which often results in Emacs being described as the self documenting editor. Experienced Emacsers usually take it for granted but it’s really a wonderful thing. There’s no … Continue reading →

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Red Meat Friday: Exiting Vim (Again)

Posted on 2023-01-27 by jcs

One would think—I certainly did—that the “exiting Vim” meme has been exhausted by now and only invoked by the type of people who inspired the eternal September joke. But, it turns out, there is some new wine for the old … Continue reading →

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Layoffs Generally Don’t Make Sense

Posted on 2023-01-26 by jcs

Sadly, our industry is undergoing another of its periodic spasms of layoffs. Most of the major software companies—Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta and many others with the exception of Apple—have announced significant layoffs. Almost all of us have experienced this and … Continue reading →

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