Programming
Excel, Damn You: "1/2"+1=45660
A deep dive into Excel's bizarre date and time quirks, tracing how a simple formula like '1/2'+1 yields 45660 due to legacy date serial numbers and a deliberate bug inherited from Lotus 1-2-3.
Programming
13 Laws of Software Development
A practical guide to thirteen well-known mental models every developer and engineering manager should know — from Parkinson's Law and Brooks's Law to Hyrum's Law and Goodhart's Law. These aren't absolute rules, but powerful frameworks for navigating real project complexity.
Programming
The Main Secret Behind Programming Language Success
A satirical investigation into why truly successful programming languages seem to share one surprising trait among their creators. Spoiler: it involves facial hair.
Programming
Simplifying Is Hard: A Story of Failure
An astrophysicist builds a symbolic algebra system in Lisp to simplify 100,000-term equations generated by numerical simulation code — and documents every wrong turn along the way.
Programming
The Go Scheduler: The Most Detailed Guide in Plain Language
A deep dive into how the Go runtime scheduler works — from the fundamental problem of OS threads all the way to work stealing, the network poller, and asynchronous preemption — built up step by step so that every design decision makes intuitive sense.
Programming
On the Mathematical Abilities of Students, or How to Teach an Overloaded Brain
A university professor examines the alarming decline in students' cognitive abilities and abstract thinking, driven by digital dependency and information overload, with evidence from France, the US, and practical recommendations for mental fitness.
Programming
Everything in Software Is Messed Up and Getting Worse
A frustrated developer's rant about modern software bloat — comparing 20 years of hardware performance gains with the ever-increasing resource demands of operating systems, web frameworks, and Electron apps.
Programming
You're Writing Animals Wrong
A humorous take on animals as poorly designed software platforms, cataloging their biological quirks as bugs, architectural flaws, and undocumented features through the lens of software development.
Programming
Don't Tease the Programmer
A humorous collection of 'harmful advice' poems in the style of Grigory Oster, describing behavioral anti-patterns that drive programmers crazy — from useless bug reports to pointless meetings and constant interruptions.
Programming
How I Looked for a Job, or How Not to Conduct Interviews
A web developer recounts his experience attending 17 job interviews in a single week and shares lessons about what companies do wrong when hiring programmers.
Programming
Graphical Password Vulnerability
A mathematical analysis of Android's graphical pattern lock security, calculating all 389,488 possible combinations — only to discover that a determined spouse can bypass even the most mathematically secure password.
Programming
RIP Dennis Ritchie
A tribute to Dennis Ritchie, creator of the C programming language and co-author of Unix, who passed away in October 2011, as announced by his friend and colleague Rob Pike.