A remarkable paper just uploaded to arXiv: *proving* that refactoring tools don't break C code!
miniblog.
Source-level coverage metrics are really hard in the presence of a JIT. Here's pypy's solution: https://morepypy.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/making-coveragepy-faster-under-pypy.html (cf -Og in gcc)
Restyled my blog to be text-first and mobile friendly: https://www.wilfred.me.uk/ There's a wealth of good theme options when you use Jekyll.
Demoing unfinished software is really difficult. It's easy to show the happy case working well, thus misleading how much work still remains.
What happens when anyone can code? We’re about to find out https://www.digitaltrends.com/features/what-happens-when-anyone-can-code/ (includes a cute demo of making a fruit-based pong clone)
Metaprogramming for madmen https://fgiesen.wordpress.com/2012/04/08/metaprogramming-for-madmen/ (how .kkreiger used partial evaluation to get down to a 96K demo)
Many tiling WMs have quite a learning curve, but they are increasingly necessary on modern, large monitors. Overlapping windows are awkward.
Deuce is an elegant editor design. No distinction between editing a function and editing call sites across files!
Terra https://terralang.org/ lets you define Lua scripts that generate code in a compilable Lua subset. Cf a preprocessor. Mind-bending.
On Sufficiently Smart Compilers: https://osa1.net/posts/2015-08-09-sufficiently-smart-compiler.html (staged execution, partial evaluation, and how modern CPUs resemble JITs)
What takes more keystrokes in a language? Public visibility (Rust), private visibility (Python, Clojure) or neither (Go). Defaults matter.
The level of optimisation going into Rust's regex implementation is extremely impressive:
Wow, pypy now has a reverse debugger! https://morepypy.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/reverse-debugging-for-python.html (also a nice demo of how RPython facilitates experiments)
When class is a reserved word, it's common to see klass as a var name. Amusingly, rustc has krate variables too!
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