Programming Leftovers
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Julia Evans ☛ How git cherry-pick and revert use 3-way merge
Hello! I was trying to explain to someone how git cherry-pick works the other day, and I found myself getting confused.
What went wrong was: I thought that git cherry-pick was basically applying a patch, but when I tried to actually do it that way, it didn’t work!
Let’s talk about what I thought cherry-pick did (applying a patch), why that’s not quite true, and what it actually does instead (a “3-way merge”).
This post is extremely in the weeds and you definitely don’t need to understand this stuff to use git effectively. But if you (like me) are curious about git’s internals, let’s talk about it!
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Rlang ☛ Data Analysis in R for Becoming a Bioscientist
In the Department of Biology at the University of York in the UK, we teach Data Analysis in R from stage 1 to over 400 students. There are “Becoming a Bioscientist” modules in each of semester of the first two years.
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Ted Unangst ☛ write your own terminal
What’s next after you write your own text editor and mail client? How about a terminal? In fact, as a practice exercise or to learn some new skills, I’d say a terminal emulator makes for a much better target. It’s composed of many parts, but at an approachable level, making it easy to make tangible progress. In this way, I think it makes for a good introductory project. At the same time, there’s a very long tail of features that can be added to keep things interesting.
Compared to some other make your own projects, I think it’s possible to get a terminal up to self hosting status very quickly, after which one can whittle away at the rest. But the missing features don’t hamper progress, and one can get the satisfaction of using it for real. When I think about the experience of using my own text editor for anything but demo purposes, it does not spark joy.
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Lionel Dricot ☛ The gift of time
The time saved is multiplied by the number of users and quickly compound. They are saving time without the need to exchange their own time.
Free software offers free time, free life extension to many human living now and maybe in the future.
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Thorsten Ball ☛ Playful Programming
I had to smile right at the start when Andreas starts with a single file, only adds the necessary boilerplate to exit with code 0, adds it to the build system, compiles and runs – just to make sure it’s all wired up correctly and he’s ready to go. I’ve seen engineers run straight into multiple-modules land and write a bunch of code only to then realise that it doesn’t build and they will have to rewire the whole thing to make it work. Good move from Andreas right there.
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Rlang ☛ Simulating Phylogenetically Structured Networks*
In this context, phylogenetically structured models have thus revolutionized our understanding of ecological phenomena, by providing a framework to explore and interpret the patterns of species evolution, diversity, and interactions. This is especially relevant in Network Ecology, a branch of ecology interested in investigating the structure, function, and evolution of ecological systems using network models and analyses. Phylogenetic approaches have been incorporated into the study of ecological networks formed by interacting species, in order to describe distinct ecological phenomena, such as network assembly and disassembly (see a related post here), and its ability to cope with cascading effects such as species loss (see a related post here).
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Rlang ☛ Save ggplot Graphics at Intended End-use Dimensions and Resolutions for Best Results
Users of ggplot2 often run into issues with their saved graphics not having the expected resolution or font sizes. By default, when using RStudio, ggsave() saves graphics at the last dimensions of the plot preview pane and at screen resolution.
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GNU ☛ poke @ Savannah: Debuggers and Analysis Tools CfP @ FOSDEM 2024
Guinevere Piazera Larsen sent us the CfP for the upcoming Debuggers and Analysis Tools at FOSDEM 2024!: We are excited to announce that the call for proposals is now open for the Debuggers and Analysis Tools developer room at the upcoming FOSDEM 2024, to be hosted on Saturday, February 3rd 2024 in Brussels, Belgium. This devroom is a collaborative effort and is organized by dedicated people from projects such as GDB, SystemTap, Valgrind, GNU poke, Elfutils, binutils, Libabigail, and the like.
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TechTarget ☛ The growing link between microservices and WebAssembly [Ed: WebAssembly is an attack on the Open Web]
The microservices architecture has become popular, but it runs into complexity and cost challenges. Implementing WebAssembly can alleviate those worries.