Go is a return to C Go can best be understood as an improved implementation of C. From Wikipedia: Go is a statically typed, compiled programming language … with memory safety, garbage collection, structural typing,[6] and CSP-style concurrency. Compiled obviously means that before you run it, there’s a compiler that takes a look and makes…
…or, how to offend a lot of developers in a couple dozen paragraphs. [original publish date: 27-Jun-2008] Introduction I have not been and will never be a fan of strictly type checked languages. They are too fussy; I’ve spent too much time trying to wrestle the type system into submission. Types, to put it plainly,…
A quick follow-up to my post last week, “Why to Beat Wordle, or, How Information Theorists are No Fun At Parties,” which treats Wordle as an information theory problem. However, the analysis was incomplete, because I was unaware that Wordle has a Hard Mode. So, without a lot of preamble, because I wrote a Very…
The term “technical debt” is a useful one. Unfortunately, as with anything useful, it is overused and used sloppily. It’s also sometimes misused to disparage a historical decision somebody disagrees with. But more than that, I think it is broadly misinterpreted. The term is intended to help justify work that has no immediate customer benefit,…
On my last post I suggested we should be legitimately suspicious of our ISPs. One of my friends[1] asked, “Any thoughts on which VPN service to use?” If you’re not technical, VPN stands for “Virtual Private Network.” In brief, a VPN service encrypts all your traffic, including your domain name lookups[2]. Your encrypted request goes…
I’ve seen a lot of conspiracy theories that Facebook or Google are eavesdropping on our conversations. And there’s been a lot of mockery over the privacy concerns about people putting the Amazon Echo into their living room. But at the same time people seem totally fine with carrying a camera and microphone around with them…
Protect yourself! Follow the standard advice about phishing: Be suspicious of anyone who contacts you by phone or email and pushes you to act right away. Don’t click on links in emails. Make account changes by navigating directly to a site and log in there instead of going through an email link. Don’t return phone…
In 1987, when Steve White invented the Graphics Interchange Format, he named it after the “JIF” peanut butter that was popular then. He pronounced it the same way. It was an inside joke for techies; he frequently said that “Choosy developers choose ‘GIF’,” referencing a television commercial circulating at the time. People who knew what…
