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  Unicode over 60 percent of the web

Computers store every piece of text using a “character encoding,” which gives a number to each character. For example, the byte 61 stands for ‘a’ and 62 stands for ‘b’ in the ASCII encoding, which was launched in 1963. Before the web, computer systems were siloed, and there were hundreds of different encodings. Depending on the encoding, C1 could mean any of ¡, Ё, Ä„, Ħ, ‘, ”, or parts of thousands of characters, from æ to å...

   Unicode,Encoding,Website,Percentage,Statustic     2012-02-07 06:19:34

  Python for the Web

Python is the best language in the world for interacting with the web, and I'm going to show you why.This article will give an extremely high level overview of how to use python for the web. There are many ways you can interact with the web using python, and this post will cover all of them. This includes python web scraping, interacting with APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) and running your own python web site using python server software. There are many ways to do all these thing...

   Python,Web,Interaction,Communication,Network     2011-10-19 14:19:11

  Translating math into code with examples in Java, Racket, Haskell and Python

Discrete mathematical structures form the foundation of computer science.These structures are so universal that most research papers in the theory of computation, programming languages and formal methods present concepts in terms of discrete mathematics rather than code.The underlying assumption is that the reader will know how to translate these structures into a faithful implementation as a working program.A lack of material explaining this translation frustrates outsiders.What deepens that fr...

   Math,Algorithms,Formula,Program,Python     2011-11-14 08:43:15

  Avoiding and exploiting JavaScript's warts

One's sentiment toward JavaScript flips between elegance and disgust without transiting intermediate states. The key to seeing JavaScript as elegant is understanding its warts, and knowing how to avoid, work around or even exploit them. I adopted this avoid/fix/exploit approach after reading Doug Crockford's JavaScript: The Good Parts: Doug has a slightly different and more elaborate take on the bad parts and awful parts, so I'm sharing my perspective on the four issues that ha...

   JavaScript,warts,Exploit,with,variable,this     2012-02-15 05:51:21

  Why learning Haskell/Python makes you a worse programmer

I've found, contrary to what you sometimes read, that learning Python and Haskell has not improved my programming using other languages. Haskell in particular, being so different from imperative languages, is supposed to give new insights into programming that will help you even when you are not using the language. My current experience doesn't exactly tally with this, and here is why:Demotivation.I find I think in Python, and even in Haskell to some extent, even though I have used Has...

   Python,Programmer,Bad,Bad programmer,Haskell     2011-10-29 07:13:44

  Learning Go

This year I'm going to try a new programming language - Go. I had this notion that compiled, type based languages are overly complex and reduces developer efficiency. However, after doing some reading about Go, it appeared to take a different path from the rest and felt like something worth trying. Acquainting a programming language is a journey. First few steps you take with it will define your perception about it. These first few steps went well for me with Go and it felt lik...

   Go,Google,Learning,Resource     2012-01-05 08:09:55

  Preprocessor magic:Default Arguments in C

This post is for programmers who like C or for one reason or another can't use anything else but C in one of their projects. The advantages of having default arguments is not something that needs convincing. It's just very nice and convenient to have them. C++ offers the ability to define them but C under the C99 standard has no way to allow it. In this post I will detail two ways I know of implementing default arguments in C. If a reader happens to know additional ways please share in ...

   C,Preprocessor,Default arguments     2012-02-19 06:17:04

  Top 15+ Best Practices for Writing Super Readable Code

Twice a month, we revisit some of our readers’ favorite posts from throughout the history of Nettuts+.Code readability is a universal subject in the world of computer programming. It’s one of the first things we learn as developers. This article will detail the fifteen most important best practices when writing readable code.1 - Commenting & DocumentationIDE’s (Integrated Development Environment) have come a long way in the past few years. This made commenting your ...

   Readable,Source Code,Refactor,Comment.OO     2011-04-11 02:20:08

  Taking C Seriously

Dennis Ritchie, a co-creator of Unix and C, passed away a few weeks ago, and was honored with many online tributes this weekend for a Dennis Ritchie Day advocated by Tim O’Reilly.It should hardly be necessary to state the importance of Ritchie’s work. C is the #2 language in use today according to the TIOBE rankings (which, while criticized in some quarters, are at least the best system we currently have for gauging such things). In fact, TIOBE’s pre...

   C,Efficiency,Memorization,Dennis Ritchie     2011-11-03 13:42:14

  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

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