Programming Leftovers
-
Hackaday ☛ Programming Ada: Atomics And Other Low-Level Details
Especially within the world of multi-threaded programming does atomic access become a crucial topic, as multiple execution contexts may seek to access the same memory locations at the same time. Yet the exact meaning of the word ‘atomic’ is also essential here, as there is in fact not just a single meaning of the word within the world of computer science. One type of atomic access refers merely to whether a single value can be written or read atomically (e.g. reading or writing a 32-bit integer on a 32-bit system versus a 16-bit system), whereas atomic operations are a whole other kettle of atomic fish.
-
Miguel Grinberg ☛ A Year In Review: Flask in 2024
I'm seeing a stream of "year in review" blog posts about all sorts of topics pop up to coincide with the start of 2025. I'm not sure if this is going to be a new tradition for me, but to follow this trend in this article I'm going to give you my review of the most interesting things that happened in the Flask ecosystem in 2024.
-
Tim Kellogg ☛ Normware: The Decline of Software Engineering
There’s a common refrain that “AI won’t replace software engineers”, often with the resolution, “you’ll be replaced by software engineers that use AI”, implying that AI will be used to make software engineers more productive and efficient. I argue that software engineers will be replaced by normies, non-engineers (accountants, lawyers, etc.) that are empowered to create their own software to solve their own problems.
I don’t think that we’re close to automating software engineering. But what if we simply didn’t need software engineers?
I envision a world where AI tools & no code tools enable normies to create, normware, software created by anyone to solve their own problems. To some extent, it’s been happening for decades. But now it’s possible to easily make good normware.
First, let’s start at the beginning.
-
The Register UK ☛ If Y2K happened today, it would be far, far worse
That said, the fact Y2K rose to little more than a footnote in the annals of the information age is largely due to the hard work and diligence of armies of IT professionals who spent years working out the best way to deploy a relatively simple fix to computers around the world. If not for the herculean effort with which they greeted a potentially sisyphean task, we might have been way worse off.
-
New York Times ☛ Inside the Y2K Crisis That Never Was, 25 Years Later
But Mr. Loeb soon learned that it had been “a serious problem, and how seriously it was taken by serious people.” Now an assistant professor of history at Purdue University, Mr. Loeb is writing a book on the Y2K experience.
The Times took the year 2000 software problem seriously too. From 1998 through the first few days of 2000, the newspaper published nearly 140 stories about Y2K, based on a count of articles in The Times’s archives.
-
Roman Kashitsyn ☛ Advent of Code 2024
Advent of Code (AoC) 2024 was my first advent of code. I chose OCaml to solve this year’s puzzles. I used it before on online judge websites (e.g., Hackerrank) and felt productive with the language.
This article describes solutions to the puzzles I enjoyed the most and reflects on OCaml’s pros and cons in the AoC context.
-
Seth Godin ☛ Winging it
It’s easy to misunderstand the idea of agile and the minimum viable product. We shouldn’t forget that the unspoken rule is: Don’t ship junk. We send a message to the market when we’re in such a hurry that we don’t put in the care and focus needed to do great work.
-
Quentin Santos ☛ Rust Gotcha: last() on DoubleEndedIterator
How do you efficiently get the last part of a space-separated string in Rust?
It will be obvious to some, but the obvious answer of s.split(' ').last() is wrong. The mistake is easy to make; I encountered it in a recent MR I reviewed, and I realized I used it in some of my own code.
Let’s see why.
-
Qt ☛ Qt Safe Renderer 2.1 Certified
We are happy to announce full certification of Qt Safe Renderer (QSR) 2.1 release. The main items to highlight are a much easier evaluation experience using i.MX8 QM board with a QBSP (Qt Board Support Package) specific to QSR. This allows to easily test QSR applications also in hardware in addition to desktop evaluation. Additionally Yocto GNU/Linux support has been added to the runtime with DRM graphics adaptation and event handler adaptation for POSIX. Please see the full list below.
-
Rust
-
Rust Weekly Updates ☛ This Week In Rust: This Week in Rust 580
Hello and welcome to another issue of This Week in Rust!
-