Monthly Archives: November 2014

That can’t possibly work.

A while back I was at a Facebook developer event, talking about techniques for analysing Objective-C. My summary of the problem was something like “it’s one of those things that works pretty well in the ivory towers of practice but … Continue reading

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Détournement and Recuperation

Letterists International probably invented the ideas behind free software and creative commons. They created the idea of détournement, in which existing mainstream logos and slogans were subverted for anarchist, satirical and other radical political purposes, like the picture of the … Continue reading

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Today’s surprisingly short workflow-improving win

When I have a TODO comment (or a #error in code, which is how I frequently do TODOs), I switched to writing the commit message I want to be able to use when I’ve fixed the TODO. Then I write … Continue reading

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Meritocracy is a myth. And our belief in it is holding back the tech industry from getting better. The intent to be meritocratic is not a myth, but we know what road is paved with good intentions. —from Tech’s Meritocracy … Continue reading

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http://computinged.wordpress.com/2014/11/13/why-nerd-culture-must-die-not-everyone-can-teach-themselves/ Truth.

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http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2687011 There’s no such thing as a General-purpose processor, and belief in such a device is harmful.

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Joe Armstrong thinks we don’t need modules in software. Instead, all functions should have unique names and be published in a global database.

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http://shape-of-code.coding-guidelines.com/2014/11/06/cobol-2014-perhaps-the-definitive-final-version-of-the-language/ Cobol now has function pointers :O

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Apple noticed there are programmers outside the valley If my summary sounds cynical, it’s because I’m cynical of the old Apple way where they only hired engineers who wanted to relocate within the shadow of (whatever the big thing in … Continue reading

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Up or to the right

Sometimes in describing a concept X in one domain, someone will ask “oh, is that like X’?” where X’ is the same concept or a very similar one, expressed in a different domain. The quick answer is “Yes”, but that … Continue reading

Posted in edjercashun | 2 Comments