Author Archives: jcs

Niklaus Wirth and Compiler Construction

Posted on 2018-04-05 by jcs

Many years ago, I did a stint as a compiler writer. I don’t do that anymore but I’ve continued practicing what I learned by implementing several little languages for various tasks. Mostly, I’ve leveraged lex and yacc for those chores … Continue reading →

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An Application of Org-element

Posted on 2018-04-04 by jcs

The other day, I saw this query on the reddit Emacs subreddit. I already have solutions for this type of problem but I’m always interested in the how people use Org mode to record and report data so I followed … Continue reading →

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SBCL 1.4.6

Posted on 2018-04-03 by jcs

Most of my Lisp programming lately has been in Emacs-lisp so it’s been a few months since I’ve used Common Lisp. The other day, though, I noticed that Version 1.4.6 of Steel Bank Common Lisp (SBCL) had just been released … Continue reading →

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C++ and Pointers

Posted on 2018-04-02 by jcs

The other day, I wrote that C++ is not my favorite language and that it’s eliminated most of what’s useful about C while retaining most of C’s disadvantages. Then I saw this post, which says that the 2018 C++ committee … Continue reading →

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Back to RSS

Posted on 2018-04-01 by jcs

Lately, I’ve noticed a renewed interest in RSS. The reasons for that are not hard to understand. As yesterday’s post made clear, social media has become a toxic wasteland interested only in collecting the intimate details of our lives and … Continue reading →

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Enough Is Enough

Posted on 2018-03-31 by jcs

I’m not on Facebook. I’ve never been on Facebook. At first it was simply a matter of not being a 14 year old junior high schooler. Later, even adults started hanging out there but I still thought it was silly … Continue reading →

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A C++ Configuration for Emacs

Posted on 2018-03-30 by jcs

If you’ve been around for a while, you know that I don’t think very much of C++. It has all the disadvantages of C while managing to lose what makes C worthwhile. Others disagree, of course, and in any event … Continue reading →

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The Right Tool for the Job

Posted on 2018-03-29 by jcs

On the The Unix Heritage Society mailing list, someone started a thread commemorating the death of John Backus, who, in addition to inventing the Backus-Naur form, lead the team that developed the original FORTRAN. Someone else made a disparaging remark … Continue reading →

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Programmers and Hardware

Posted on 2018-03-28 by jcs

The other day I followed a reddit link to a blog post about forking on GitHub. I didn’t find the post that interesting but I did find one of the comments on reddit provocative. Chrisgseaton takes exception to the notion … Continue reading →

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Emacs Über Alles

Posted on 2018-03-27 by jcs

I’ve written before about EXWM and its use as a window manager for systems running on X Windows. The basic idea is that Emacs becomes your windows manager and other applications run in an Emacs buffer. That’s a boon for … Continue reading →

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