news
Programming Leftovers
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Shrivu Shankar ☛ Most Code is Just Cache - by Shrivu Shankar
It forces us to question the permanence of the current model. We often make the mistake of assuming software—as we know it today—is a permanent fixture of human productivity. But if you zoom out, the era of SaaS is a blink of an eye in modern history. It is easy to overestimate how core it is to the future.
In this post, I want to extrapolate these thoughts a bit and write out what could be the final stages of software.
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Abhinav Sarkar ☛ How I use Jujutsu
About three months ago I started using Jujutsu (JJ), a new Version Control System, for my personal projects. It took me a while to get used to it after more than a decade of using Git, but now I’m quite comfortable with it. Working with Jujutsu requires a shift from the mental model of Git. However, it is not as daunting as it may seem on the first day.
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R / R-Script
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Dirk Eddelbuettel ☛ Dirk Eddelbuettel: Rcpp 1.1.1 on CRAN: Many Improvements in Semi-Annual Update
Team Rcpp is thrilled to share that an exciting new version 1.1.1 of Rcpp is now on CRAN (and also uploaded to Debian and already built for r2u).
Having switchted to C++11 as the minimum standard in the previous 1.1.0 release, this version takes full advantage of it and removes a lot of conditional code catering to older standards that no longer need to be supported. Consequently, the source tarball shrinks by 39% from 3.11 mb to 1.88 mb. That is a big deal. (Size peaked with Rcpp 1.0.12 two years ago at 3.43 mb; relative to its size we are down 45% !!) Removing unused code also makes maintenance easier, and quickens both compilation and installation in general.
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Standards/Consortia
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Rui Carmo ☛ How Markdown Took Over the World
Anil Dash’s essay on how Markdown conquered everything is a good reminder that most “standards” don’t win because they’re perfect — they win because they’re good enough, easy to use, and easy to remember.
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Rui Carmo ☛ Markdown
Markdown is a text-to-HTML idiom, conversion tool and all-out ecosystem for web writers, content editors and… AI, allowing you to write using an easy-to-read, easy-to-write plain text format, then convert it to structurally valid (X)HTML.
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