Nat Torkington

Four short links: 27 December 2010

Compiling to Javascript, Lessons Learned, Idle Insights, and Visualizing Competition

by @gnat  | +Nat Torkington  | Comments: 127 December 2010

  1. emscripten -- LLVM to Javascript compiler. Any code that compiles to LLVM can run in the browser (Python, Lua, C++). LLVM is open source virtual machine that Apple bought into (literally, they hired the developer).
  2. 30 Lessons Learned in Computing Over The Last 10 Years -- Backup every day at the minimum, and test restores every week. I don't think I've worked at an organisation that didn't discover at one point that they couldn't restore from their backups. Many other words of wisdom, and this one rang particularly true: all code turns into shit given enough time and hands. (via Hacker News)
  3. What Your Computer Does While You Wait -- top-to-bottom understanding of your system makes you a better programmer.
  4. How to Visualize the Competition -- elegant graphing of strategy. (via Dave Moskovitz on Twitter)

Comments: 1

Greg Wilson [27 December 2010 03:36 AM]

emscripten is a nice hack, but I worry about debugging: if I write Python, it's compiled to JS, that JS runs in the browser, and something goes wrong, do I have a source-level debugger in Python that I can use to diagnose the problem? Or do I have to guess what might be wrong, tweak my Python (probably adding 'print' statements, just like 1975), regenerate my code, re-run it, etc.?