Rob Janssen

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10 Technical Papers Every Programmer Should Read (At Least Twice)

Inspired by a fabulous post by Michael Feathers along a similar vein, I’ve composed this post as a sequel to the original. That is, while I agree almost wholly with Mr. Feather’s1 choices, I tend to think that his choices are design-oriented2 and/or philosophical.

Dynamic contagion, part one

This is part one of a two-part series on dynamic contagion. Part two is here. Suppose you're an epidemiologist modeling the potential spread of a highly infectious disease.

Dynamic contagion, part two

This is part two of a two-part series on dynamic contagion. Part one is here. Last time I discussed how the dynamic type tends to spread through a program like a virus: if an expression of dynamic type “touches” another expression then that other expression often also becomes of dynamic type.

How to Implement Color Search

We have just launched a theme store for our users and we wanted to make it easy to find themes by color. When you are looking for a suitable web form design theme to match your website design, searching based on colors simplifies the process.

The Worst Programming Language Ever

There's something good you can say about every programming language. But that's no fun.

2d Visibility

This algorithm can also calculate what areas are lit given a light source. Run once per light, we can build a light map showing which areas are lit up. What if we put 24 lights into the above maze? See the light map. The roguelike community has collected several algorithms, especially for grids.

The Performance Cost of Integer Overflow Checking

How much overhead should we expect from enabling integer overflow checks? Using a compiler flag or built-in intrinsics, we should be able to do the check with a conditional branch that branches based on the overflow flag that add and sub set. Code that looks like

Why I never blame open source projects

Every now and then I get to read someone’s bad thought towards a given open-source framework. When I started programming Struts web framework was at its prime, everybody loved it. But then, little by little people started blaming it and then hate followed.

Programmer Knowledge

What is the half-life of programmer knowledge? It is quite common with claims that the half-life is something like 5 years. In other words, half of what you know about programming will be obsolete in 5 years.

The "Caller Is Always Right" software principle (or why we should have more viking hygiene behavior in software development)

When I was a kid and learnt about the vikings for the first time, I also heard about their "alleged disgusting hygiene behavior".

This Read-It-Later-list is just that, bookmarks of stuff I intend to read or have read. I do not necessarily agree with opinions or statements in the bookmarked articles.

This list is compiled from my Pocket list.