I recently discovered the Great Computer Language Shootout, a very cool collection of benchmarks for various programming languages. My one quibble is that it normalises the results to a ten-point scale, when a twelve-point would obviously be superior. Other than that, quite slick.
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Mark Pilgrim has written Dive into Python, a fine introduction to a fine programming language. Python’s a great language. The implementation could be a tad faster, but the syntax and libraries are just a joy to program in.
1 February 2018: updated URLs after Mark’s disappearance from the web
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Mark Pilgrim has written Dive into Python, a fine introduction to a fine programming language. Python’s a great language. The implementation could be a tad faster, but the syntax and libraries are just a joy to program in.
1 February 2018: updated URLs after Mark’s disappearance from the web
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MIT have put online the entire text of How to Design Programs, an excellent guide to software design.
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MIT have put online the entire text of How to Design Programs, an excellent guide to software design.
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Peter Norvig wrote an excellent article entitled Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years which faces the reality that no skill — particularly one so complex as programming.
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Peter Norvig wrote an excellent article entitled Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years which faces the reality that no skill — particularly one so complex as programming.
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An explanation of why emacs exists, notable for the optimism it contains:
The programmable editor is an outstanding opportunity to learn to program! A beginner can see the effect of his simple program on the text he is editing; this feedback is fast and in an easily understood form. Educators have found display programming to be very suited for children experimenting with programming, for just this reason (see LOGO).
Programming editor commands has the additional advantage that a program need not be very large to be tangibly useful in editing.
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An explanation of why emacs exists, notable for the optimism it contains:
The programmable editor is an outstanding opportunity to learn to program! A beginner can see the effect of his simple program on the text he is editing; this feedback is fast and in an easily understood form. Educators have found display programming to be very suited for children experimenting with programming, for just this reason (see LOGO).
Programming editor commands has the additional advantage that a program need not be very large to be tangibly useful in editing.
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I saw on Sci-Fi Hi-Fi that Dan Sugalski has written a wonderful series of introductory articles on somewhat advanced subjects. I don’t agree with all he writes, but it’s well worth reading.
07 February 2018: updated URL
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I saw on Sci-Fi Hi-Fi that Dan Sugalski has written a wonderful series of introductory articles on somewhat advanced subjects. I don’t agree with all he writes, but it’s well worth reading.
07 February 2018: updated URL
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Those who are old Mac hands like myself might recall an old abandoned Apple project of the mid-90s, Dylan. Mike Lockwood has an interesting tale of the layoff of the guys who developed it. ‘The kind of layoff that could only happen at Apple.’ The article’s worth reading solely for the screenshot of the Dylan IDE the guys were working on. A long time ago I read an article (which I can unfortunately no longer find) by a fellow who wrote that source code needed to be more than just files, but actual living data, which could be manipulated in various useful ways; it looks as though the Dylan guys might have been headed in that direction.
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