Holding a Program In One's Head

Girl with a Book by José Ferraz de Almeida Júnior

If you want to understand a programmer, read...

In August 2007, Paul Graham wrote...

"A good programmer working intensively on his own code can hold it in his mind the way a mathematician holds a problem he's working on. Mathematicians don't answer questions by working them out on paper the way schoolchildren are taught to. They do more in their heads: they try to understand a problem space well enough that they can walk around it the way you can walk around the memory of the house you grew up in. At its best programming is the same. You hold the whole program in your head, and you can manipulate it at will."

LA building's lights interfere with cellular network, FCC says

LA building's lights interfere with cellular network, FCC says

That's not all ...

Many types of electronic equipment found in homes and offices emit electromagnetic radiation, and clashes with outside radio signals once were more common. For example, when cellular add-on cards for laptops first came out, emissions from the CPU sometimes kept the radios from working, Marshall said. In addition, there used to be laptops that put off enough radiation to interfere with onboard navigation systems on planes, said analyst Craig Mathias of Farpoint Group.

In Bash, when to alias, when to script, and when to write a function?

When to write a script ...

• Scripts assemble software components (aka. tools, commands, processes, executables, programs) into more complex components, which may themselves be assembled into still more complex components.
• Scripts are usually made executable so they can be called by name. When called, a new subprocess is spawned for the script to run in. Copies of any exported variables and/or functions are passed by value to the script. Changes to those variables do not propagate back to the parent script.
• Scripts may also be loaded(sourced) as if they were part of the calling script. This is analogous to what some other languages call "import" or "include". When sourced, they execute within the existing process. No subprocess is spawned.

When to write a function ...

Ezra Klein... the future of journalism

(Photo: Christopher Anderson/Magnum Photos/New York Magazine)

What is the extraordinary Ezra Klein up to? Here, Let Ezra Explain

There are a lot of us... even old-timers like me, who can see that what  Ezra is doing is the future of journalism.

Mr. Klein grew up with The Internet. It's as familiar and natural to him as television is to the generation before him (mine). What makes him special, is that he has consciously chosen to mine "traditional" journalism for lessons that can be applied to the new medium. Why? It seems, Mr. Klein is never satisfied to accept that things "just are."

Ezra Klein appears to eternally ask, "Why are they?"