The Insider News

Fabulous Adventures In Coding[^]:

Sometimes the compiler can know via "static" analysis (that is, analysis done knowing only the compile-time types of expressions, rather than knowing their possibly more specific run-time types) that an "is" operator is guaranteed to produce a particular result. But before we get into that, let's briefly review the meaning of "is" in C#.

furbo.org[^]:

Today we released an update for xScope that supports the Retina display. This update was harder than most. The 68k to PowerPC, Carbon to Cocoa, and PowerPC to Intel transitions were no walk in the park, but this update really kicked my butt. Here’s hoping that sharing some of the things I learned along the way will help you with your own Retina work.

Jason Mooberry[^]:

Last week at Vimeo we had a challenge. Build a better query string parameter sorter for a Varnish plugin. The gauntlet was thrown down at 5pm on a Friday and by 2am Friday night we had our first contender. I arrived home to see the code and decided to throw my hat into the ring. I had made some attempts at c plugins for php but never really got anything off the ground. The K&R book had been a fascination for me but now it was time to put it into practice.

Hacker School[^]:

Abstraction layers are great tools for building things, but they can sometimes get in the way of learning. My goal in this post is to convince you that in order to rigorously understand C, we must also understand the assembly that our C compiler generates. I'll do this by showing you how to disassemble and read a simple program with GDB, and then we'll use GDB and our knowledge of assembly to understand how static local variables work in C.

Ars Technica[^]:

Inspired by the low-cost computing power of the Raspberry Pi, a team at the University of Southampton has used the ARM-based Linux computer-on-a-board as a building block for a low-cost supercomputer—racked and stacked using Lego blocks. And they’ve published a step-by-step guide for anyone interested in creating their own Raspberry Pi high-performance computing “bramble."

The Industry[^]:

Today Apple announced the iPhone 5, with a new thin design, larger screen, and faster processor. It wasn’t much of a surprise primarily due to all the leaked parts, but as with all of Apple’s products, it made a big splash. Here are some first impressions from the point of a designer and web developer.

TidBITS[^]:

Without some details about the 160 attacks on “critical infrastructure” in 2011, it’s impossible to evaluate whether the solution is stronger hardware, better training, or advanced deep-breathing relaxation techniques. Some Internet attacks are the equivalent of knocking on a door and trying the handle to see if it’s unlocked. These might be targeted against millions of computers in numeric sequence, and happen to include “critical infrastructure” only by accident.

Dave Bost[^]:

A common dream of most developers is to develop a game. Game development can be very intimidating to jump into straight away. The hardest decision is to determine what kind of game you’re going to create – what’s the backstory, who are the actors, what’s their purpose, what does success look like, and so on. One of the more popular casual game types and one not to intimidating for new game developers to jump into is the Tower Defense game genre.

Macdrifter[^]:

I'll skip the rumor mongering that lead to the NFC speculations and get straight to it. I'm glad Apple is not using NFC in the new iPhone. My iPhone already has one of the best data transmission options available, a retina display and a high resolution camera. NFC is solving the wrong problem. Here's the real problem: how do we communicate data a short distance as quick as possible with the least effort?

The Code Project[^]:

Welcome to our continuing series of Code Project interviews.