TL;DR: ChatGPT is a LISP REPL. Inspired by a recent post where the author used ChatGPT as a virtual machine, I wanted to learn if ChatGPT can be a useful LISP interpreter. To my surprise, ChatGPT understands LISP remarkably well. … Read more
Introduction Starting in Boost 1.81 (December 2022), Boost.Unordered provides, in addition to its previous implementations of C++ unordered associative containers, the new containers boost::unordered_flat_map and boost::unordered_flat_set (for the sake of brevity, we will only refer to the former in the … Read more
An Inside Look at MS-DOS The design decisions behind the popular operating system Tim PatersonSeattle Computer Products1114 Industry Dr.Seattle, WA 98188 The purpose of a personal computer operating system is to provide the user with basic control of the machine. … Read more
Richard Feynman shares notes on the board with undergraduates in the 1960s. Credit: AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives, Physics Today Collection One of the most unusual artifacts at the Niels Bohr Library & Archives in College Park, Maryland, is a … Read more
In the late summer of 1993, I had dinner with Jack Healey, the Executive Director of Amnesty International at the time and a great friend of mine. I told him I wanted to get a reporter inside the IRA — the Irish Republican … Read more
This essay explains how Git works. It assumes you understand Git well enough to use it to version control your projects. The essay focuses on the graph structure that underpins Git and the way the properties of this graph dictate … Read more
I worked for Google for about three and a half years as a video producer. I was fired because I raised alarm about a doomsday cult that dominated my former team there. I first joined Google in 2017 as part … Read more
In 1982, a British insurance broker named Doug Milne set out in search of new markets. His speciality was kidnapping and ransom insurance, known in the industry as K&R. Milne enrolled in a Spanish-language course in London, and a month … Read more
👋 Hi, this is Gergely with a bonus, free issue of the Pragmatic Engineer Newsletter. If you’re not a full subscriber yet, you missed the deep-dive on Dealing with a low-quality engineering culture at Big Tech, one on Remote compensation … Read more
MIAMI BEACH—The thing about bitcoin, the man at the back of the convention center wanted me to know, was that once you understood it, it changed everything. It seeped into every aspect of your life: personal, political, financial. Bitcoin was … Read more