Bookmarked links

I got sick and tired of googling for the same terms over and over again, so here I have collected a number of influential and important programming blog posts, articles and references which I find myself coming back to frequently.

Steve Yegge's Execution In The Kingdom Of Nouns.

P.J. Eby's Python is not Java, Java is not Python either, and Python interfaces are not Java.

How to ask smart questions, and
Short, Self-Contained, Correct Example.

Unix as an IDE, IDE culture versus the Unix philosophy and Java shop politics.

Chris Smith's article What To Know Before Debating Type Systems, and a mirror in case it disappears again.

Raymond Hettinger's super considered super, and a counter-view super considered harmful.

Three examples of PyPy being as fast as, or faster than, C:

• a carefully crafted example;


• realtime image processing;


• string processing;


• plus an unrelated discussion on what it takes to be faster than C.

Tav made an admirable, but ultimately failed, attempt to secure the Python interpreter:

• the challenge;


• the second attempt;


• the final update.

Ken Thompson's classic essay Reflections On Trusting Trust (pdf).

Why monkey-patching is destroying Ruby.

PHP, a fractal of bad design.

Unicode:

• Joel Spolsky's essay on Unicode;


• Ned Batchelder's pragmatic Unicode presentation;


• Fixing Unicode problems after they occur;


• UTF-8 everywhere.

Jack Diederich's talk Stop Writing Classes (video), also found here. And Armin Ronacher's counter-view, Start Writing Classes.

Paul Graham's famous essay on Blub languages.

Nick Coghlan on why most suggested changes to Python go nowhere, and a discussion on the speed with which Python changes.

Floating point issues:

• What every scientist should know about floating point;


• Why computers can't do maths;


• Bruce Dawson on floating point;


• A collection of William Kahan's papers on floating point issues.

XKCD on people being wrong on the Internet, and little Bobby Tables.

Making wrong code look wrong and code smells. How to write unmaintainable code, and Confessions of a terrible programmer, and signs that you are a bad programmer.

Architecture Astronauts:

• according to Joel Spolsky;


• according to Jeff Atwood.

Two more classic essays from Joel Spolsky: Back To Basics and Leaky Abstractions.

David Beazley's Curious Course on Coroutines.