programming

/programming418

The intersection of: hardware, software, languages, and systems.

https://www.jmeiners.com/lc3-vm/

Neat page on learning virtual machine fundamentals
Share your shell shortcuts
Teach Yourself Scheme in Fixnum Days

https://docs.scheme.org/tyscheme/

a lovely web site
Is this the best channel to discuss the design of new programming languages?

I was just kicked out of a subreddit I had helped build for years for trying to spark people to build new languages for diff/patch. I need a new PL watering hole!

https://x.com/breckyunits/status/1841990744237818031
i have little mnemonics that i've collected over the years that include:

css/margin values: pump up the bass & turn down the treble -> TRBL

dstat args: see ya later, nerd! -> dstat -cnrd

whatcha got?
I'm moderately tempted to read this

https://www.amazon.com/Inside-Windows-NT-Helen-Custer/dp/155615481X

I stopped using windows when I was 12 but it seems fun to explore the big ideas in NT.
I enjoyed this read / critique on E2EE systems:

https://www.devever.net/~hl/webcrypto
A New Way to Program in 1 Minute
What if GDPR mandated that cookies be a browser-level permission instead of a site-implemented permission modal?

Sure, the "approved uses" would still need to be done at the site level, but the "how do I just decline all?" UX problem & enforcement of it would be a lot simpler and safer and easier on sites & users.
In your opinion, what makes someone proficient in an aspect of programming? More precisely, what makes you think "I'm confidently knowledgeable about xyz"?
So much alpha in using a language with these safety properties.
Lately, I’ve been really enjoying the labs of the "great" course from CMU - "Introduction to Computer Systems". The quality of the material makes me wonder how much effort was put into this course! Cheers to the faculty for nurturing this great educational experience!
In regular programming, zero is false and anything else is true.

In ZK cryptography, zero is true and anything else is false.
Did you know that generative pretraining units were originally used for graphics?
There's a fascinating analogy between coding in python using hyper-optimized vectorized libraries (numpy, cupy, torch...), and living in Singapore.

In python, whatever you're not vectorizing takes the longest, even if it's utterly trivial. Literally picking merkle branches out of a pre-built tree is taking me longer than an entire fast fourier transform.

In Singapore, whatever you get from international brands (as opposed to eg. hawker centers) is the most expensive, even if it's utterly trivial. I've literally had meals where the starbucks green tea I had right after a hawker center meal cost more than the meal.
/programming
There are 4294967295 hard problems in working with the mersenne31 field: non-pure library functions that look like pure functions, naming things, and off by 4 errors.
The differences between the APIs of numpy, cupy and torch are so fascinating....

```
>>> import torch as np
>>> np.arange(10)
tensor([0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9])
>>> a = np.zeros(20)
>>> a[19:-1:-2] = np.arange(10)
```

Torch doesn't let you have ranges that go backwards 🤣

Would love more consistency