Category Archives: Programming

Pointers

Posted on 2022-05-05 by jcs

One of the hardest things to learn in C—indeed, many say it’s the acid test for a good C programmer—is pointers. Here’s an amusing cartoon (via Karl Voit) that explains it as well as any other explanation I’ve seen. Pointers … Continue reading →

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Hints For Writing Unix Tools

Posted on 2022-04-25 by jcs

Marius Eriksen has a useful post for those not afraid to leave the comfort of the GUI for the command line. It’s long been noted that the ability of Unix to compose tools into pipelines is extraordinarily powerful and makes … Continue reading →

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REPLs and Interactive Programming

Posted on 2022-03-28 by jcs

Mikel Evins has a post from back in December of 2020 that recently popped up in my feed for some reason or another. It’s an interesting post about one of my favorite programming topics: interactive programming. In it, Evins examines … Continue reading →

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Scheme as a Prototyping Language

Posted on 2022-02-26 by jcs

The other day I saw a link to this short essay on using Scheme as a prototyping language by Jonathan Sobel. The TL;DR is that Sobel was taking an Algorithms class and was assigned a project to implement the fast … Continue reading →

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Reasons for Clojure

Posted on 2021-04-15 by jcs

Irreal regulars know that I’ve been exceedingly wishy-washy about learning Clojure. Every time I see a video from Zamansky or someone else using it, I get excited about learning and trying it out. Other times, I get hung up on … Continue reading →

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Clojure and Scheme Compared

Posted on 2021-03-06 by jcs

As I’ve said before, I’m sometimes tempted to take up Clojure but have always been put off by its reliance on the JVM. Last year, Mike Zamansky posted a couple of videos (1, 2) on using Clojure for the Advent … Continue reading →

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Designing with Finite State Machines

Posted on 2021-02-22 by jcs

I’ve written before (see here and here for example) of my enthusiasm for using finite state machines (FSMs) in my design and coding. I had a C-based template that I used over and over. To implement a new state machine … Continue reading →

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Using Emacs & Org in College (Programming) Assignments

Posted on 2021-01-24 by jcs

If you’re an experienced Emacser, the idea of using Emacs everywhere—including for school assignments—is second nature. Of course, not everyone is an experienced user. Some, like Seshal Jain, discover Emacs in the course of their studies and evolve their workflows … Continue reading →

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REPLs

Posted on 2021-01-03 by jcs

Mikel Evins has a lovely post that considers interactive programming and REPLs. As many of you know, I love interactive programming and am a huge fan of it. I like how you can try out bits of code and feel … Continue reading →

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Threading Macros in Elisp

Posted on 2020-12-10 by jcs

As I’ve mentioned in some recent posts, Mike Zamansky is making his annual pilgrimage to the Advent of Code Website to try his hand at the problems. This year—so far, at least—he’s been using Clojure to solve the problems. I … Continue reading →

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