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Joanna Rutkowska

by Adrian Kosmaczewski, 

In a key scene of the 2012 blockbuster James Bond film "Skyfall", MI6 quartermaster Q, played by Ben Whishaw, realizes too late that plugging a cable into the laptop of a notoriously skilled terrorist like Raoul Silva (one of Javier Bardem's most remarkable roles) was a terrible idea. After a few seconds of connection, the laptop infects the systems of MI6, releasing all physical doors and disabling all security guards, prompting Silva to escape and wreak havoc through the London Underground. A message appears on the laptop screen, taunting Q, reading "Not such a clever boy".

Federico Biancuzzi, Shane Warden, & Anders Hejlsberg

by Adrian Kosmaczewski, 

Among all the books featured in the Library section of this magazine, there is one that has been mentioned particularly often, again and again. We are talking about the excellent "Masterminds of Programming: Conversations with the Creators of Major Programming Languages" by Federico Biancuzzi and Shane Warden, published by O'Reilly in 2009. It is high time that we dedicated a full entry to this gem, focusing on one of the interviews in particular: that of Anders Hejlsberg.

Ulrich Drepper

by Adrian Kosmaczewski, 

This month's Vidéothèque movie provides a (very) short and simple introduction to the subject of memory architecture. But this is not, by far, the minimum any software developer should know about memory segmentation and management for their daily work; let alone computer scientists, or developers working in native code for embedded platforms, or even mobile applications. This is where this month's Library choice shines in full: we are talking of the most comprehensive article you will ever read about the subject of computer memory, by far, and it remains as relevant as it was at the time of its publication 18 years ago.

Charles Misner & Patrick Cooney

by Adrian Kosmaczewski, 

Given the pervasiveness and versatility of computers in our world of 2025 it is easy to ignore that 80 years ago they were initially conceived as what we would call today a calculator, specifically created to solve tedious mathematical problems. Of course, users of TikTok, Call of Duty, YouTube, Visual Studio Code, or even readers of this website through some web browser like Firefox are usually (and blissfully) unaware of the gazillion computations per second that it takes to produce everything you see on screen.

Josh Lockhart & Phil Sturgeon

by Adrian Kosmaczewski, 

The infinite flexibility of software is not without some major disadvantages. That is the main reason why we, software practitioners, crave so much any kind of information about "the best" or "the right" way to build, test, deploy, and maintain our systems. Yes, our craft is already complicated enough, and we are not even talking about the human complexities like office layouts, employment shenanigans, dress codes, and whatnot. In this occasion we are going to talk about a resource that fights, with facts and examples, the battle of excellency in the world of PHP.

J. C. R. Licklider & M. Mitchell Waldrop

by Adrian Kosmaczewski, 

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.

Vikram Chandra

by Adrian Kosmaczewski, 

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.

Raymond Chen

by Adrian Kosmaczewski, 

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.

David Rice

by Adrian Kosmaczewski, 

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.

Pastor Manul Laphroaig, T.G. S.B.

by Adrian Kosmaczewski, 

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.

Scott Meyers

by Adrian Kosmaczewski, 

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.

David Levy & Monty Newborn

by Adrian Kosmaczewski, 

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.

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