Skorks

Here's a post about the difference between a computer scientist, a programmer and a developer. Did I hear someone say all were the same? Then you probably are a developer ;)

Emacsen

Following all the parentheses in Lisp sometimes freaks me out and I promise you more often than not the key bindings end up confusing the hell out of my hemispheres. But for someone who shifted from vim to emacs solely for gud I manage pretty well. Here's a nice blog all about emacs-fu.

P.S.

I hear there is talk of 'one editor to rule them all'.

Trust Issues

This post is to collect together two halves of an interesting problem; one half of which I've known for sometime.

Ken Thompson's seminal Reflections on Trusting Trust is well known; David A. Wheeler's dissertation on countering the trusting trust attack using Diverse Double Compiling. An early discussion on the concept and related material.

Git it yet?

Rule #1: Use version control.
Rule #2: Always use version control.

It regularly saves my skin, and you end up with far fewer backups scattered across your disk. Choosing the right tool for the right job is as important as getting the job done. My personal favorite: Git.

Git is a version control tool originally written by Linus Torvalds for Linux. It can take a little getting used to if you are coming from cvs land. But once you get used to the way things work in the git world, you'll appreciate the power that comes with. Here's something I came across on the Ycombinator: Scott Chacon's advanced git tips.