Category Archives: Programming

When Your git Server Dies

Posted on 2014-01-11 by jcs

I’ve written before about how I use git to keep my two main machines in sync. The other day the linux server that I kept the repositories on died. I had turned it off for a few seconds to deal … Continue reading →

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Unicode Representation in Emacs Strings

Posted on 2014-01-10 by jcs

Xah Lee posted a useful fact that I’m sure I knew but had forgotten or at least not internalized. The tip is how to encode unicode in Emacs strings. Given that Emacs supports Unicode and, indeed, uses UTF-8 as its … Continue reading →

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Optimizing Lisp

Posted on 2014-01-09 by jcs

Over at the Lisp Subreddit, they have a pointer to an interesting 2006 paper on How to make Lisp go faster than C by Didier Verna. One of the persistent myths about Lisp is that it’s slow. That comes from … Continue reading →

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Slime Moving to Github

Posted on 2014-01-07 by jcs

Xach is reporting that Slime is moving to Github. That’s great news but mostly it’s good news for Xach who no longer has to deal with CVS to get the latest version of Slime for Quicklisp. For the rest of … Continue reading →

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How To Reallocate Memory

Posted on 2014-01-06 by jcs

Chris Taylor has a nice post on reallocating arrays. The problem is a common one: you initially allocate an array (or other data structure) and later want to make it larger. In C, for example, you would use the realloc … Continue reading →

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Popup Windows in Emacs

Posted on 2014-01-02 by jcs

Kris Jenkins has a nice post on using the popup package to pop up help windows in Emacs. He shows a tiny amount of Elisp that pops up the system help for the symbol at point. It would be easy … Continue reading →

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LispStick!

Posted on 2013-12-27 by jcs

If you’re a Windows user and want to try Lisp, getting started can be a bit of a hassle. Now Patrick Krusenotto has come to the rescue with LispStick!, a Zip file that has everything you need to get started. … Continue reading →

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Git Bisect

Posted on 2013-12-23 by jcs

Over at randyfay.com, Randy Fay has a great screencast on debugging with git bisect. If you’re not familiar with git’s bisect command, the idea is to find the git commit that introduced an error. The process is basically a binary … Continue reading →

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Uncommon Lisp Functions

Posted on 2013-12-14 by jcs

Over at WordPress on cneufeld.ca, Christopher Neufeld is writing a nice series on the less familiar Common Lisp functions. The idea is to give Lisp beginners an idea of how to leverage the power of some of the less commonly … Continue reading →

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Newlines in Lisp Mode

Posted on 2013-11-08 by jcs

I was lurking in a Twitter conversation between Jean-Philippe Paradis and Xah Lee and learned something new and useful. If you’re using Paredit mode, as you should be, there is a difference between 【Return】 and 【Ctrl+j】. I have 【Return】 set … Continue reading →

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