Category Archives: Programming

How We Know C++ Is Too Complicated

Posted on 2026-01-04 by jcs

Although I am a huge fan of C and have written thousands—maybe millions—of lines of C code, I’ve never warmed up to C++. Every time I’ve had to write in it, I’ve ended up muttering things like, “this is a … Continue reading →

Posted in General, Programming | Tagged | Leave a comment

Swift Development in Emacs

Posted on 2025-11-08 by jcs

Here’s some good news for iOS/macOS developers who are also Emacs users. Until now, the only reasonable way to develop for iOS was to use Apple’s Xcode. Xcode is a perfectly good editor and has the necessary integration to make … Continue reading →

Posted in General, Programming | Tagged | Leave a comment

Checking For A Leap Year

Posted on 2025-05-16 by jcs

Wait! What? I’ve been programming most of my life and have a PhD in Mathematics but I’ve never seen this before. It’s about checking for a leap year. The first thing we all learn is that it’s a leap year … Continue reading →

Posted in Programming | Tagged | Leave a comment

An Application Of Bloom Filters At Google

Posted on 2025-04-12 by jcs

Joe Marshall, who is an old time Lisper now working at Google, has an interesting story about the use of Bloom filters at Google. The story begins when Marshall noticed an anomaly in the response time graph of one their … Continue reading →

Posted in Programming | Leave a comment

Twenty Years Of Git

Posted on 2025-04-09 by jcs

Wait. What? Git is 20 years old? How can that be? I’m sure it was just yesterday that Linus announced the Git project after his arrangement with Larry McVoy’s BitKeeper imploded. That’s a sad story in itself but this post … Continue reading →

Posted in Programming | Tagged | Leave a comment

Useful Latency Number For Programmers

Posted on 2025-03-25 by jcs

If you’ve been around Irreal for a while, you know that I like to read about the latency of various computer operations. I find it fascinating but one could say that the data is abstract and dismiss it as “interesting … Continue reading →

Posted in Programming | Tagged | Leave a comment

🥩 Red Meat Friday: Is C Useful For Understanding How Computers Work

Posted on 2024-07-12 by jcs

This post didn’t start as a Red Meat Friday item but as I worked on it, I got so exercised I decided it really should be one. For me, the question of whether C helps with understanding how computers work … Continue reading →

Posted in General, Programming | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Gotos Considered Maybe Not Harmful

Posted on 2024-07-01 by jcs

Way back in 1968, Edgar Dijkstra published a famous letter to the Communications of the ACM that explained why he felt the go to statement was being abused. Ever since then, lots of uninformed folks who haven’t bothered reading it … Continue reading →

Posted in General, Programming | Leave a comment

Debugging With Print

Posted on 2023-05-21 by jcs

Álvaro Ramírez has a guilty secret: he sometimes debugs code by inserting print statements into it. I was really happy to see his post because it’s a guilty secret that we share. Debuggers and similar tools are great and really … Continue reading →

Posted in Programming | Tagged | Leave a comment

Generating Documents Directly From Elisp

Posted on 2023-05-12 by jcs

I’ve had this in my blog queue since April but it’s too good to let it fall into the bit bucket. Álvaro Ramírez has a problem with his chatgpt-shell package. He has some documentation in the form of tables, which … Continue reading →

Posted in Programming | Tagged , | Leave a comment