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  Notes on Programming in C

Introduction       Kernighan and Plauger's The Elements of Programming Style was an important and rightly influential book.  But sometimes I feel its concise rules were taken as a cookbook approach to good style instead of the succinct expression of a philosophy they were meant to be.  If the book claims that variable names should be chosen meaningfully, doesn't it then follow that variables whose names are small essays on their use are even better?  Isn't MaximumV...

   C,Notes,Tips     2011-12-09 07:55:47

  Functional Programming Is Hard, That's Why It's Good

Odds are, you don’t use a functional programming language every day. You probably aren’t getting paid to write code in Scala, Haskell, Erlang, F#, or a Lisp Dialect. The vast majority of people in the industry use OO languages like Python, Ruby, Java or C#–and they’re happy with them. Sure, they might occasionally use a “functional feature” like “blocks” now and then, but they aren’t writing functional code.And yet, for years we’v...

   Functional Programming,Hard,Difficult,Reason to learn,Good     2011-10-18 02:55:38

  Why, oh WHY, do those #?@! nutheads use vi?

Yes, even if you can't believe it, there are a lot fans of the 30-years-old vi editor (or its more recent, just-15-years-old, best clone & great improvement, vim). No, they are not dinosaurs who don't want to catch up with the times - the community of vi users just keeps growing: myself, I only got started 2 years ago (after over 10 years of being a professional programmer). Friends of mine are converting today. Heck, most vi users were not even born when...

   Linux,Vi,Vim,Advantage,History     2012-02-05 07:21:17

  SQL Injection through HTTP Headers

During vulnerability assessment or penetration testing, identifying the input vectors of the target application is a primordial step. Sometimes, when dealing with Web application testing, verification routines related to SQL injection flaws discovery are restricted to the GET and POST variables as the unique inputs vectors ever. What about other HTTP header parameters? Aren’t they potential input vectors for SQL injection attacks? How can one test all these HTTP parameters and whic...

   Code security,SQL injection,HTTP header     2012-04-05 11:42:04

  How I Learned to Program

Programming is, without a doubt, the most mentally rewarding thing I've ever done. Programming taught me that life should be fun, filled with creativity, and lived to the fullest. Programming taught me that anything is possible; I can do anything I want using only my mind. Programming also taught me that learning is fun. It showed me that the more you know, the more power you have. Programming showed me that a life filled with learning is a life worth living. Programming revealed to me wh...

   Programming,Tips,Write,Practice,Interest     2012-02-04 21:37:12

  JavaScript Attack/Defend

As developers and designers we work hard to build visually attractive, fast and easy to maintain applications. Our goals are to make sure the applications we build stick to users and keep them coming back for more. Security is not always at the forefront of our minds. No one intentionally builds insecure software but often a lack of security knowledge leads developers to build vulnerabilities into their applications. In this article we are going to examine two web security attacks, how they are ...

   JavaScript,Attack,Defend,Security,Cross site     2011-10-13 13:09:11

  Making Sites Shine with @font-face

Like many of my web designer brethren, I’m a bit of a typographic geek. And like many web designers, I’ve been frustrated (to say the least) about the historical state of web typography.At first, we were limited to a common, but very small set of “web safe” fonts. Anything beyond those fonts, we had to rely on images. Images for text not only meant we had to create and maintain dozens (if not hundreds) of images, but it introduced accessibility issue...

   HTML,Font face,Font family,Demo,Example     2011-08-19 08:16:29

  Thoughts on Python 3

I spent the last couple of days thinking about Python 3's current state a lot. While it might not appear to be the case, I do love Python as a language and especially the direction it's heading in. Python has been not only part of my life for the last couple of five years, it has been the largest part by far. Let there be a warning upfront: this is a very personal post. I counted a hundred instances of a certain capital letter in this text. That's because I am very grateful for all the opport...

   Python,Python 3,Feature,Drawback,Embrace     2011-12-07 08:46:47

  HTML5 and Accessibility

Accessibility for people with disabilities is a legal responsibility in many countries. It's also the right thing to do, and one of the characteristics distinguishing professional developers from the WWWs: WYSIWYG-wielding wannabes. But for many, accessibility has been a somewhat black art, requiring adding extra stuff to your code like alt text, table summaries, ARIA information that can be difficult to test by developers who are not assistive technology users themselves.The arrival of HTML5 ha...

   HTML5,Accessibility,Video,Music,Canvas     2011-08-19 08:13:44

  Ruby is beautiful (but I’m moving to Python)

The Ruby language is beautiful. And I think it deserves to break free from the Web. I think the future of Ruby is firmly stuck in Web development, though, so I’m going to invest in a new language for data analysis, at least for now. This is a look at the fantastic language I came to from Java and a look at a possible candidate. (Update: I’ve since written a followup.)Java to RubySix years ago, I added Ruby to my technical arsenal. I learned C++ and Java in high school, and I p...

   Ruby,Java,Python,Comparison,Advantage,Ruby vs Python     2011-11-01 07:18:11

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