I’m just back from giving a training at ElixirConf EU about advanced concurrency patterns in Elixir. I love Erlang’s process model to death. But I also love the things that the OTP team shipped in the past few years focused … Read more
Running web analytics is Standard Operating Procedure for any “real” project online. Just add Google Analytics—and watch the data flow. It’s univerally effortless and provides a near instant feedback loop. A totally normal, accepted tactic in the playbook for online … Read more
How many transistors are in Intel’s 8086 processor? This seems like a straightforward question, but it doesn’t have a straightforward answer. Most sources say that this processor has 29,000 transistors.1 However, I have traced out every transistor from die photos … Read more
With a mane of brilliant gray hair, large and penetrating eyes, a beatific smile, prolific interests in science, literature, and the arts, and a name linked to Albert Einstein—Satyendra Nath Bose was a legend in his own lifetime. In 1924 … Read more
The thesis of Desystemize, in one sentence: it takes a lot of work for a number to mean anything and we largely aren’t doing it. That’s a simplified version that leaves a lot to explore. There are domains where this … Read more
You probably recall from high school chemistry that atoms are made up of a nucleus containing protons and neutrons, surrounded by electrons. But how many of each? If you remember a little bit more from high school chemistry, you’ll recall … Read more
Suppose that you give me two ASCII strings having the same number of characters. I wish to compute efficiently the number of matching characters (same position, same character). E.g., the strings ‘012c’ and ‘021c’ have two matching characters (‘0’ and … Read more
When benchmarking software, we often start by measuring the time elapsed. If you are benchmarking data bandwidth or latency, it is right measure. However, if you are benchmarking computational tasks where you avoid disk and network accesses and where you only … Read more