A magazine about programmers, code, and society. Written by and for humans since 2018.
By Adrian Kosmaczewski, July 7th, 2025
The writings of Jorge Luis Borges twist our perception of time and space. In between articles about Shaw, Chesterton, Wilde, and Coleridge, his 1952 book "Otras Inquisiciones" included an unexpected gem: a short story called "El Tiempo y J. W. Dunne". The question is, who was this John William Dunne and what does he have to do with time? Well, his name might be forgotten by contemporary audiences, but Dunne was the author of one of the biggest bestsellers of the first half of the twentieth century.
By Adrian Kosmaczewski, June 2nd, 2025
There are a lot of different things we could have talked about in the Library section of an edition dedicated to compilers; one obvious choice would have been to talk about the quintessential compiler theory book, the 1986 "Dragon Book" also known as "Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools" by Alfred V. Aho, Ravi Sethi, and Jeffrey D. Ullman. As excellent and Wikipedia-worthy as this one is, that is not the book we will talk about here.
By Adrian Kosmaczewski, May 5th, 2025
Most technical books I have read during my career have had a positive effect in me, in the sense that they brought me enthusiasm and eagerness to learn more, and to understand better the platforms, programming languages, and technologies I wanted to discover. This month's Library entry is probably the biggest exception to that rule; because as soon as I read it, I decided to drop out from the Windows galaxy altogether, and to never look back.
By Adrian Kosmaczewski, April 7th, 2025
Our biggest problem is not the lack of books explaining in detail the fragility of our software-driven world; it is the fact that nobody reads them. Of course, every so often one of those titles rises to the top of The New York Times bestseller list, some celebrity adds it to their list of favorite books, the author takes a year promoting the book in a few talk shows here and there, and might even give some sold-out conference talks outside their home country. They might even make a living out of said book. But as soon as a new shiny gizmo appears on the horizon, all the concerns raised by their work fade into obscurity, the state of the world degrades a bit more, and we are back in the starting blocks scratching our armpits and screaming like monkeys.
By Adrian Kosmaczewski, March 3rd, 2025
Paraphrasing a well-known software mogul who shall remain nameless in the pages of this magazine, insecure software is eating the world. The reasons of such sad state of things are varied and range from social to economic; the technological aspect is usually the one that concerns me the least. In this sea of unusable things and insecure networks, there is a “subculture” (a horrible word, but bear with me) of highly skilled individuals who teach each other how broken those things are. And yes, they have their own magazines to spread the word.
By Adrian Kosmaczewski, February 3rd, 2025
Around 20 years ago I found a job as a C++ developer. My new employer provided me the first day with a PDF file defining the very strict and mandatory set of guidelines to be followed for the production of code in the organization. These rules can be summarized as follows: do not use the Standard Template Library; do not use templates; and do not use multiple inheritance. If you are a C++ developer reading the previous phrase, I hope you can understand the dismay I felt while reading that. If you are not a C++ developer, suffice to say that to this day I do not understand why would anyone choose to use C++ without those features.
By Adrian Kosmaczewski, January 6th, 2025
The literature about and around chess is too long to enumerate in an article of a thousand words, and this is clearly not my intent. If you want to learn chess, there are so many good books around, it is hard to pick just one. There are, however, fewer books explaining the art of how to teach a computer to play chess; and the one chosen for this issue of the Library section does a magnificent job at precisely that.
By Adrian Kosmaczewski, December 2nd, 2024
The problem of teaching programming skills to new generations of software engineers is as old as the computers themselves. Each generation has tried to do it in a slightly different way, with various degrees of success. There is a lot of literature available online about the subject, and in this article we will point out papers and books that we found to be the most noteworthy. By no means this is an exhaustive list, but it features some interesting entries that might serve as a starting point for your own research.
By Adrian Kosmaczewski, November 4th, 2024
Let us agree on one basic principle, one that most regular readers of this magazine already know is a core tenet at its heart: the phrase "Human Resources" is atrocious. There is no other way to describe the appalling sentiment and the contempt brought into our minds as we read such a contraption. Even worse, the fact that some people voluntarily choose to wear it as part of their professional title is beyond our comprehension. If you do not agree with this idea, you might want to stop reading altogether.
By Adrian Kosmaczewski, October 7th, 2024
I am torn about this month's Library issue; I loved reading it, despite the many inaccuracies reported by third-party experts after its publication. The book in question is the "Histoire Universelle des Chiffres" ("From One to Zero: A Universal History of Numbers" in English) by Georges Ifrah, originally published in French, but also available in English and many other languages.