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  Smuggling data in pointers

While reading up on The ABA Problem I came across a fantastic hack.  The ABA problem, in a nutshell, results from the inability to atomically access both a pointer and a "marked" bit at the same time (read the wikipedia page).  One fun, but very hackish solution is to "smuggle" data in a pointer.  Example:#include "stdio.h"void * smuggle(void * ptr, int value){  return (void *)( (long long)ptr | (value & 3) );}int recoverData(void * ptr){  return (long long)ptr &...

   C,Pointer,Bit,Data,Atomic,Smuggle     2011-11-14 08:15:59

  Hackers vs. Coders

Photo Credit: Pranav MistryBeing a good hacker is an invaluable skill. But is being a coder the same as being a hacker? Is it possible that coders are at a creative disadvantage to hackers who don’t know how to code?Here’s a story that helped me see the difference.I was recently invited to mentor at Startup Weekend. On Friday night, we gathered to eat pizza, pitch ideas, create teams and discuss launch plans. At the end of the day, everyone was feeling great about what theyââ...

   Hacker,Coder,Comparison,Innovation     2011-05-11 02:11:09

  Do you have this kind of comments in your source code?

Writing runnable code is the essential skill of a programmer, writing understandable comment is also a skill a programmer should acquire. There is some famous saying that bad comment is worth than no comment. Usually your code will be maintained by other people, if you provide them some difficult to understand or misguided comments, this will be nightmare to them. While at some other time, programmers may put some funny comments in their codes which may make others laugh. Today we...

   COMMENT,HUMOR     2016-08-01 10:25:14

  Tips for a better first-time hackathon experience

Here are a few things you can consider. These are by no means the only way to go about hackathons, just what's worked for me.ProjectI strongly strongly recommend doing something you haven't done before. Even if you're going into a hackathon with the intention of winning, trying something new is always fun and will keep you engaged throughout the event. Jump into mobile development, try hardware hacking, write a compiler, whatever; it's always fun to try out new things.Sticking to things you're c...

   hackathon     2014-03-31 07:25:09

  Automate Everything

Performing manual, repetitive tasks enrages me. I used to think this was a corollary of being a programmer, but I’ve come to suspect (or hope) that this behaviour is inherent in being human. But being able to hack together scripts simply makes it much easier to go from a state of rage to a basic solution in a very small amount of time. As a side point, this is one of the reasons that teaching the basics of programming in schools is so important. It’s hard to think of any j...

   Automate,Email,Repeative     2012-02-07 06:21:19

  Forgotten TODOs: ideas for contributing to open-source projects

I often talk to students that want to contribute to open-source projects, but just don't have an idea what to work on. Here's a tip if you're in a similar situation (e.g. you want to apply for GSOC) : 1 git clone repository_url_of_some_open_source_project target_directory 2 grep -RIn TODO target_directory/* So, find the URL of the repository project you want to contribute to, checkout the repository using git/mercurial/svn and then find all the TODOs in the source code using grep. The -RI...

   Open source,constribution,TODO,participation     2012-03-03 22:30:28

  Learning Is More Important Than Knowing

Although DuckDuckGo's success is based more on ideology than technology, you'd have to be a pretty arrogant technologist to not appreciate and be impressed with what this small team (for a long time, 1 person) has accomplished. And while DuckDuckGo teaches us a number of valuable lessons (about business, and privacy), to me, the most important, is that good programmers should be measured by what they can learn, not what they already know. Gabriel Weinberg, DuckDuckGo's creator, has been wo...

   Learning,Knowing,Google,DuckDuckGo     2012-04-18 07:17:53

  The Greatest Hacks of All Time

Reader's advisory: Wired News has been unable to confirm some sources for a number of stories written by this author. If you have any information about sources cited in this article, please send an e-mail to sourceinfo[AT]wired.com. In 1972, John T. Draper discovered he could make free long-distance phone calls using a whistle from a Cap'n Crunch cereal box. The whistle emitted a 2,600-hertz tone that got him into the internal authorization system at the phone company. With another noi...

   Hack,Greatest,All time     2012-02-29 05:05:42

  Dart is to JavaScript as C# is to C++

Given the background of Lars Bak, the Google engineer whose V8 JavaScript interpreter upended Firefox's claim on speed, it was reasonable to suspect Google's new Web development language might look a lot like Smalltalk. But that might have taken the Web in a strange and different direction. Today, on the day of a Web developers' conference in Denmark, Google and members of the Chromium open source development team raised the curtain on Dart, the company's bid for a new and somewhat more str...

   Dart,Google,JavaScript,Virtual Machine,Chromium     2011-10-21 08:40:09

  5 Modern Strategies to Improve Your Hiring Process

Without even a pinch of doubt, the labor market across the globe has turned highly competitive. So, there goes a rat race where the best recruiters vie to hire the most potential candidates. Let's say you need to hire Java developers. Certainly, your hiring challenge would be to find applicants with niche skills. Sadly enough, the traditional hiring methods are detrimental to getting the creme of the talent pool. It's time-consuming and involves a lot of manual and paperwork, wherein there are c...

   HIRE,JAVA,DEVELOPERS     2017-06-28 00:15:48

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