Tag Archives: Tech

🥩 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 →

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Programming Fonts

Posted on 2024-07-03 by jcs

Many, many years ago I adopted the Inconsolata font because it was one of the first widely available, free, antialiased programming fonts. In those days, I was still using Vim but when I moved to Emacs, I brought it along … Continue reading →

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Why SICP Matters

Posted on 2024-06-26 by jcs

All you Irreal oldtimers know that I’m a fanatical fan of Abelson’s and Sussman’s Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP). It is, I think, arguably the best computer science book ever written. You oldtimers also know how bitterly disappointed … Continue reading →

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The Hours That Programmers Keep

Posted on 2024-06-22 by jcs

An enduring stereotype about hackers—as opposed to those who program only as a day job—is that they get up at noon, start programming in the late afternoon, and keep programming for most of the night. Many of us, me included, … Continue reading →

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Lifehacker on Quitting Google

Posted on 2024-06-16 by jcs

As a public service message and a followup to my previous post on quitting Google, I offer this article from Lifehacker on quitting Google. Lifehacker is not quite a site for the average person but neither is it a nerd … Continue reading →

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Query: Disqus Markup

Posted on 2024-06-10 by jcs

Does anyone know what’s going on with Disqus markup? For as long as I’ve been using Disqus for Irreal’s commenting system, I’ve been able to respond to comments with text containing simple HTML markup such as <i>some text in Italics</i>, … Continue reading →

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De-Googling: My Secret Weapons

Posted on 2024-06-01 by jcs

Neeraj Adhikari has a nice post on one of my favorite crusades: banishing Google from my life. I’ve been pretty successful at this because of two thing: Emacs and macOS. Most longtime readers know that the Irreal empire mostly runs … Continue reading →

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The Origins of Unix and C

Posted on 2024-05-27 by jcs

F/OSS Comics has a cute cartoon about the origins of Unix and C. If you want a quick précis of the Unix and C histories, this is a good starting point. There are a lot of inaccuracies—at least as I … Continue reading →

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Readability And The Bureaucratization Of Google

Posted on 2024-05-23 by jcs

For a long time—in the early days—I thought of Google as the spiritual heir of the CSRC from Bell Labs. After all, Ken Thompson, Rob Pike, Russ Cox, and probably others landed there. And Google was doing some first rate … Continue reading →

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Wagging The Dog

Posted on 2024-05-20 by jcs

The world has gone mad. When I was a young programmer™, we strived to adjust our programs to reflect reality. If there was a mismatch, there was no doubt where the fault lay: the model was wrong and needed to … Continue reading →

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