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  The Wasteful Legacy of Programming as Language

A few years ago I visited a friend who is a graduate student in linguistics. After some time he asked me if I was aware of the work by Chomsky on formal languages. I told him that yes, Chomsky work was a basis for much of the developments in theoretical computer science. More than that, I was glad to learn that there was something technical that I could share and discuss with other people in linguistics. At the time I found this was just a great coincidence. It was only recently, though, t...

   Programming language,Human language,Chomsky     2011-11-28 10:36:34

  JavaScript Is Not A Language

Recently people presented arguments for and against using CoffeeScript. I felt the argument against was pointless and obviously wrong, but I couldn't figure out why, and I thought the counterargument for was kind of toothless and irrelevant. I've figured out the real issue.The real argument for CoffeeScript is that JavaScript is not really a language.Years ago I read something which explained, in my opinion, why Lisp has never achieved the mainstream adoption its passionate advocates belie...

   JavaScript,Not a language,CoffeeScript,Model     2011-12-29 08:46:15

  About tmpfs

tmpfs is another confusing name in Linux kernel, its implementation is in mm/shmem.c, shmem has no relation to tmpfs at first glance although we know tmpfs is based on memory. We can understand why we use this name by seeing where this is used. In a desktop Linux system, tmpfs is loaded usually: % grep tmpfs /proc/mountsdevtmpfs /dev devtmpfs rw,seclabel,nosuid,relatime,size=1958956k,nr_inodes=489739,mode=755 0 0tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs rw,seclabel,nosuid,nodev,relatime 0 0tmpfs /run tmpfs rw,seclab...

   tmpfs,Linux,file system     2013-06-14 12:10:56

  Program Or Be Programmed

On Thursday night I gave a talk at NYU Poly and in the Q&A a young man asked me for advice for "those who aren't technical". I said he should try to get technical. The next morning I met with a bunch of Sloan Business School students doing a trek through NYC. A young woman asked me the same question. I gave her the same answer.I don't mean that everyone should become a software engineer. I do mean that everyone should understand software engineering (or whatever technical...

   Program,Technical,Basic knowledge     2011-11-10 10:31:02

  errGroup in GoLang explained

Today, let's talk about the usage and applicable scenarios of errGroup, which is often used. Why is it useful? Generally, when we use goroutine, we cannot return a value. If you want to pass out the result of the goroutine execution, you usually have to use the channel. The errGroup package is suitable if you want to know when the goroutine you opened encounters an error during execution and stop working, and I need to know the error value. errGroup usage The package needs to be downloaded and i...

   GOLANG,ERRGROUP,WAITHROUP,CONCURRENCY     2023-05-27 23:58:20

  gethostbyname vs getaddrinfo

getaddrinfo is slower than ping when resolving domain names. I think ping uses gethostbyname to resolve a domain name. The question becomes whether getaddrinfo is slower than gethostbyname. After testing with both functions, we find that getaddrinfo is really slow compared to gethostbyname. By strace tracking,  we find getaddrinfo will communicate with DNS server 10 times and gethostbyname will communicate with DNS server communication twice.gethostbyname is an old way to resolve domain nam...

   C++,network,DNS     2012-08-15 14:06:34

  On being happy

For the whole past night I lay awake without sleeping a minute, mostly because I am still fully jet-lagged from the move to Europe yesterday. For some reason, the one thought that entered my mind was one about what it means to be happy. Yes, of course, being on an exciting startup journey, there are other goals which are more in the foreground. There is creating a product users love, getting funding or earning enough money to sustain yourself. Whilst I greatly enjoy this product and user fo...

   Happiness,Attitude,Steve Jobs     2011-12-26 08:59:08

  Google is missing in the photo with Chinese president Xi Jinping

Chinese president Xi Jinping has started his formal visit to US on 22nd September. The first stop is Seattle where Microsoft and Amazon headquarters are located. On 23rd September (Wednesday), Xi Jinping attended a forum named "The 8th US-China Internet Industry Forum" in Seattle.  On this forum, president Xi expressed the attitude of Chinese government to Internet. He advocated to build an peaceful, secure, open and collaborative Internet environment so that every country can benefit from ...

   NEWS,GOOGLE,CHINA,XI JINPING     2015-09-24 03:54:18

  A Quick Look at the Services Offered by RDBMs vs. NoSQL

The world of IT has to deal with the issue of data storage. The reason for this is that there is plenty of data produced and created daily on the internet and on various business applications. In the past, RDBMs or Relational Database Management Systems were used for storage. Even though they are still used today, there are other offerings that present competition and anyone wishing to purchase data storage systems needs to make comparisons.  One such competing system is NoSQL or Not Only ...

   NOSQL,DATABASE,RDMS,DATABASE SUPPORT     2015-11-06 04:52:54

  System programming is still there

System programming is the practice of writing system software. System software lives at a low level, interfacing directly with the kernel and core system libraries. Your shell and your text editor, your compiler and your debugger, your core utilities and system daemons are all system software. But so are the network server, the web server, and the database. These components are entirely system software, primarily if not exclusively interfacing with the kernel and the C library. But nowadays more...

   System programming     2014-02-27 05:46:48