A magazine about programmers, code, and society. Written by and for humans since 2018.
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.
By Adrian Kosmaczewski, September 2nd, 2024
Every so often this magazine drifts away from the coverage of classic programming titles because its main objective is to stretch the brains of software practitioners towards other areas of knowledge, such as design, sociology, or science. Business books are one such area, and we should be covering more of those. But today we will talk about one that could rightfully be called the most important business book of the 21st century so far.
By Adrian Kosmaczewski, August 5th, 2024
It would be unwise and useless to try to summarize in a thousand words the immense contributions of Sir Charles Antony Richard Hoare, also known as Tony Hoare (I suppose we are all good friends in this industry) or, with a more Tolkien feeling, as C. A. R. Hoare. I will settle for "Sir Tony Hoare" in this article; familiar yet respectful enough.
By Adrian Kosmaczewski, July 1st, 2024
Back in the 1980s and 1990s, one of the most appropriate locations in Buenos Aires to find international magazines was the quintessential Calle Florida. In those huge newsstands next to the corner with Avenida Corrientes one could find incunabula ranging from the September issue of Vogue to the latest edition of Paris Match. Among those, every so often my programmer self would jump in joy to find some lost computer magazine; and by far the one that made me the happiest to unearth was, without any doubt, Dr. Dobb's Journal.
By Adrian Kosmaczewski, June 3rd, 2024
Most software developers are ejected from academia into the jaws of the business of software with little preparation. Of course, they are equipped with good enough knowledge about some more or less relevant programming language, and maybe some algorithm, hopefully including the venerable linked list reversion, indispensable to pass the dreaded coding interview. But not much more.
By Adrian Kosmaczewski, May 6th, 2024
Few ecosystems react as viscerally and as brutally to "bad" visual design than whatever Apple has brought into the world. From the first Macintosh to the latest Vision Pro, the whole idea of making apps for Apple platforms involves, hopefully sooner than later, a severe and serious evaluation of style along with functionality.