miniblog.

Jul 15, 2016
Facebook's warning against socially-engineered XSS is neat. It's a shame it's necessary though.
Photo
X / ?
Jul 15, 2016
Neat fact about lisp's equality functions: eq, eql, equal, equalp: the longer the name, the more values that they consider equal.
Jul 15, 2016
However, we shouldn't shame users for being git novices. "Always rebase/squash/amend!" is intimidating when learning branch basics. 2/2
Jul 15, 2016
I'm generally persuaded that "hiding the sausage making", ie rewriting history, is the best way to use git. Readable history counts. 1/2
Jul 15, 2016
Generally, merging single-commit PRs is much nicer without merge commits. However, I miss the PR reference when looking at history.
Jul 14, 2016
Announcing Refine, an interactive list editor for Emacs!
GitHub - Wilfred/refine: interactive value editing in emacs lisp
GitHub - Wilfred/refine: interactive value editing in emacs lisp
interactive value editing in emacs lisp. Contribute to Wilfred/refine development by creating an account on GitHub.
Jul 12, 2016
I'm giving up on "best tweets first". I like the idea in principle, but I'm just not getting much variety in my feed.
Jul 11, 2016
I still have yet to use EIEIO, the CLOS implementation in #Emacs lisp. I've only seen one project use it in the wild. Am I missing out?
Jul 11, 2016
An Ethereum soft fork, to prevent DAO money being taken, would permit a DoS: https://hackingdistributed.com/2016/06/28/ethereum-soft-fork-dos-vector/ (the system complexity here is huge)
Jul 11, 2016
A remarkable paper just uploaded to arXiv: *proving* that refactoring tools don't break C code!
Renaming Global Variables in C Mechanically Proved Correct
Renaming Global Variables in C Mechanically Proved Correct
Most integrated development environments are shipped with refactoring tools. However, their refactoring operations are often known to be unreliable. As a consequence, developers have to test their code after applying an automatic refactoring. In this article, we consider a refactoring operation (renaming of global variables in C), and we prove that its core implementation preserves the set of possible behaviors of transformed programs. That proof of correctness relies on the operational semantics of C provided by CompCert C in Coq.
Jul 11, 2016
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)
PyPy Status Blog: Making coverage.py faster under PyPy
Jul 10, 2016
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.
Wilfred Hughes::Blog
programming, language design, and human factors
Jul 10, 2016
Demoing unfinished software is really difficult. It's easy to show the happy case working well, thus misleading how much work still remains.
Jul 10, 2016
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)
What happens when anyone can code? We’re about to find out
What happens when anyone can code? We’re about to find out
Drag-and-drop programming tools like Ready could teach anyone to code, and make creating apps as easy as creating a newsletter or website. And in creation, there’s power.
Jul 10, 2016
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)
Metaprogramming for madmen
Metaprogramming for madmen
This post is part of the series “Debris: Opening the box”. Okay, previous posts from this series aimed to actually convey useful technical information: assuming you actually want to wri…
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