The subjective charms of Objective-C
To argue that Objective-C resembles a metaphysically divine language, or even a good language, is like saying Shakespeare is best appreciated in pig latin. Objective-C is, at best, polarizing. Ridiculed for its unrelenting verbosity and peculiar square brackets, it is used only for building Mac and iPhone apps and would have faded into obscurity in the
https://www.osnews.com/story/142105/the-subjective-charms-of-objective-c/
Elliptical Python programming
One thing I love about Python is how it comes with its very own built-in zen. In moments of tribulations, when I am wrestling with crooked code and tangled thoughts, I often find solace in its timeless wisdom.
↫ Susam Pal
I can't program and know nothing about Python, but this still made me laugh.
https://www.osnews.com/story/142099/elliptical-python-programming/
The insanity of being a software engineer
Software gets more complicated. All of this complexity is there for a reason. But what happened to specializing? When a house is being built, tons of people are involved: architects, civil engineers, plumbers, electricians, bricklayers, interior designers, roofers, surveyors, pavers, you name it. You don’t expect a single person, or even a wh
https://www.osnews.com/story/142071/the-insanity-of-being-a-software-engineer/
Debugging Lotus 1-2-3 by fax
There isn't a lot to this story beyond the fact that in around 1990 I helped debug someone's Lotus 1-2-3 set up via fax. But it's a good reminder of how important the Zeroth Law of Debugging is (see below).
Without some sort of online connection with these folks, and with transatlantic phone calls being very, very expensive (I was in the UK, they were in the US) fa
https://www.osnews.com/story/142044/debugging-lotus-1-2-3-by-fax/
A 10x Faster TypeScript
To meet those goals, we’ve begun work on a native port of the TypeScript compiler and tools. The native implementation will drastically improve editor startup, reduce most build times by 10x, and substantially reduce memory usage. By porting the current codebase, we expect to be able to preview a native implementation of tsc capable of command-line typechecking by mid-2025, wit
https://www.osnews.com/story/141896/a-10x-faster-typescript/
C++ creator calls for help to defend programming language from ‘serious attacks’
Bjarne Stroustrup, creator of C++, has issued a call for the C++ community to defend the programming language, which has been shunned by cybersecurity agencies and technical experts in recent years for its memory safety shortcomings.
C and C++ are built around ma
zlib-rs is faster than C
I'm sure we can all have a calm, rational discussion about this, so here it goes: zlib-rs, the Rust re-implementation of the zlib library, is now faster than its C counterparts in both decompression and compression.
We've released version 0.4.2 of zlib-rs, featuring a number of substantial performance improvements. We are now (to our knowledge) the fastest api-compatible
https://www.osnews.com/story/141809/zlib-rs-is-faster-than-c/
Cassette: a POSIX application framework featuring a retro-futurist GUI toolkit
Cassette is a GUI application framework written in C11, with a UI inspired by the cassette-futurism aesthetic. Built for modern POSIX systems, it's made out of three libraries: CGUI, CCFG and COBJ. Cassette is free and open-source software, licensed under the LGPL-3.0.
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Hands-on graphics without X11 using NetBSD’s wscons
Now, if you have been following the development of EndBASIC, this is not surprising. The defining characteristic of the EndBASIC console is that it’s hybrid as the video shows. What’s newsworthy, however, is that the EndBASIC console can now run directly on a framebuffer exposed by the kernel. No X11 nor Wayland in the pi
https://www.osnews.com/story/141565/hands-on-graphics-without-x11-using-netbsds-wscons/
An operating system in 1000 lines
Hey there! In this book, we're going to build a small operating system from scratch, step by step.
You might get intimidated when you hear OS or kernel development, the basic functions of an OS (especially the kernel) are surprisingly simple. Even Linux, which is often cited as a huge open-source software, was only 8,413 lines in version 0.01. Today's Lin
https://www.osnews.com/story/141502/an-operating-system-in-1000-lines/
A twenty-five year old curl bug
When we announced the security flaw CVE-2024-11053 on December 11, 2024 together with the release of curl 8.11.1 we fixed a security bug that was introduced in a curl release 9039 days ago. That is close to twenty-five years.
The previous record holder was CVE-2022-35252 at 8729 days.
↫ Daniel Stenberg
Ir's really quite fascinating to see details like this
https://www.osnews.com/story/141320/a-twenty-five-year-old-curl-bug/
If not React, then what?
Rejecting an engrained practice of bullshitting does not come easily. Frameworkism preaches that the way to improve user experiences is to adopt more (or different) tooling from the framework's ecosystem. This provides adherents with something to do that looks plausibly like engineering, except it isn't. It can even become a totalising commitment; solutions to user problems out
Introduction to Bismuth VM
This is the first post in what will hopefully become a series of posts about a virtual machine I’m developing as a hobby project called Bismuth. This post will touch on some of the design fundamentals and goals, with future posts going into more detail on each.
But to explain how I got here I first have to tell you about Bismuth, the kernel.
↫ Eniko Fox
It's not eve
https://www.osnews.com/story/141185/introduction-to-bismuth-vm/
FLTK 1.4.0 brings Wayland support
FLTK 1.4.0 has been released. This new version of the Fast Light Toolkit contains some major improvements, such as Wayland support on both Linux and FreeBSD. X11 and Wayland are both supported by default, and applications using FLTK will launch using Wayland if available, and otherwise fall back to starting with X11. This new release also brings HiDPI suppor
https://www.osnews.com/story/141163/fltk-1-4-0-brings-wayland-support/
Startup’s “AI” tool spams GitHub repositories with bogus commits, without consent
Most of the time, products with "AI" features just elicit sighs, especially when the product category in question really doesn't need to have anything to do with "AI" in any way, shape, or form. More often than not, though, such features are not only optional an
Moving a game project from C to the Odin language
Some months ago, I got really fed up with C.
Like, I don't hate C. Hating programming languages is silly. But it was way too much effort to do simple things like lists/hashmaps and other simple data structures and such.
I decided to try this language called Odin, which is one of these "Better C" languages. And I ended up
https://www.osnews.com/story/141066/moving-a-game-project-from-c-to-the-odin-language/
What’s new in POSIX 2024 – XCU
As of the previous release of POSIX, the Austin Group gained more control over the specification, having it be more working group oriented, and they got to work making the POSIX specification more modern. POSIX 2024 is the first release that bears the fruits of this labor, and as such, the changes made to it are particularly interesting, as they will define the d
https://www.osnews.com/story/141000/whats-new-in-posix-2024-xcu/
Go Plan9 memo, speeding up calculations 450%
I want to take advantage of Go’s concurrency and parallelism for some of my upcoming projects, allowing for some serious number crunching capabilities. But what if I wanted EVEN MORE POWER?!? Enter SIMD, Same Instruction Muliple Data [“sim”-“dee”]. Simd instructions allow for parallel number crunching capabilities right down at the hardwa
https://www.osnews.com/story/140941/go-plan9-memo-speeding-up-calculations-450/
“Lost” 1983 programming language bought on eBay
A YouTube channel has resurrected a programming language that hadn’t been seen since the 1980s — in a testament to both the enduring power of our technology, and of the communities that care about it.
[...]
But best of all, Simpson uploaded the language to the Internet Archive, along with all his support ma
https://www.osnews.com/story/140866/lost-1983-programming-language-bought-on-ebay/
Tcl/Tk 9.0 released
Tcl 9.0 and Tk 9.0 - usually lumped together as Tcl/Tk - have been released. Tcl 9.0 brings 64bit compatibility so it can address data values larger than 2 GB, better Unicode support, support for mounting ZIP files as file systems, and much, much more. Tk 9.0 gets support for scalable vector graphics, much better platform integration with things like system trays, gestures, and so on,
