Author Archives: jcs

Xah’s JavaScript Tutorial

Posted on 2014-07-13 by jcs

Many of us have benefited from Xah Lee’s Emacs Lisp tutorial. I found it very useful for learning the Elisp library and idioms. Now Lee has put together a JavaScript tutorial. When I was learning Elisp, I had the advantage … Continue reading →

Posted in Programming | Tagged | 1 Comment

14 Great Programmers

Posted on 2014-07-12 by jcs

Over at NetworkWorld they have an interesting article featuring the 14 greatest living programmers. I was a bit surprised that DMR wasn’t on the list but then I remembered the part about living. Also, oddly, you and I aren’t on … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment

Bad Spellers and Typists Rejoice

Posted on 2014-07-11 by jcs

Some people are bad spellers or at least consistently have trouble with certain words. Others can spell but are poor typists and constantly mistype words. Some, I suppose, fall into both categories. If any of this describes you, don’t despair: … Continue reading →

Posted in Programming | Tagged | 1 Comment

Literate Programming and Your Emacs Configuration

Posted on 2014-07-10 by jcs

My init.el isn’t very organized. Partly, that’s because I like having a single file rather than the multitude of special configuration files that many of my Emacs heroes prefer. But even given that it’s a single file, it’s not really … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Proced

Posted on 2014-07-09 by jcs

The invaluable Mickey has an excellent post up on proced, a ps/top-like utility built into Emacs. If you find yourself using top and ps—and what serious developer doesn’t?—you’ll love having the functionality built right into Emacs. One more reason not … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment

Kitchin on Org-mode

Posted on 2014-07-08 by jcs

John Kitchin is on a roll. Just the other day, I wrote about his org-ref project and the really great work he is doing in introducing his students to reproducible research via Emacs and Org-mode. Now, he has a new … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Automating Git Bisect

Posted on 2014-07-07 by jcs

I’ve written a couple of times about Git bisect. It’s a way of finding the commit that introduced an error. It works by (essentially) doing a binary search on the commit history. Now, Curtis Poe over at Ovid shows us … Continue reading →

Posted in Programming | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Reflections on Trusting Trust

Posted on 2014-07-06 by jcs

A reference to Ken Thompson’s fantastic paper Reflections on Trusting Trust popped up yesterday on Hacker News. I’ve written about this paper before but it deserves a periodic mention. If you haven’t read this paper before, I urge you in … Continue reading →

Posted in Programming | Tagged | Leave a comment

A Medical Decision Tree

Posted on 2014-07-05 by jcs

Back in March, I wrote about Edward Frenkel and his explanation of the purported backdoor in the Dual_EC_DRBG random number generator. I also mentioned his book Love and Math: The Heart of Hidden Reality. Now Zygmunt Zając over at FastML … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment

Guess Who Those Targeted Individuals Are

Posted on 2014-07-04 by jcs

The Targets Here in the U.S., today is independence day. It’s a day to celebrate our forebears’ refusal to submit to what they considered unjust treatment at the hands of their government. One of their major complaints was general warrants: … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment