- Plenty Of Fish Hacked
Once again a security researcher gets into trouble for reporting a vulnerability. Will people never learn? - Sourceforge Attack: Full Report
Speaking of security, here’s the full report of the recent Sourceforge hack. - Broken sticks puzzle, and a seemingly paradoxical ratio
A nice little math puzzle, solved with the help of Wolfram Alpha. - Die wahre Online-Revolution: Ungeduld
I often had the same thought about “Twitter revolutions”, but Georg actually bothered to sum it up and write it down (in German). - On Omar Suleiman
If you wnat to find out more about the Egyptian Vice President, this is an interesting profile of the man. - The Afghan Bank Heist
A very sobering article about the Afghan government’s involvement in large-scale corruption. - A tour of the Clojure landscape
I quite like this map of Clojure projects on GitHub. - How To Identify Good Clients
Good advice, not only for freelancers. - Adsense, no sense at all – what it’s like being sacked by a computer…
This is a bit older, but still a good reminder on why it’s dangerous to rely on something like Adwords for your income. - Sit. Stay. Parse. Good Girl!
A dog with a “vocabulary” of over 1000 words.
Review: Land of Lisp
Disclaimer: The awesome folks at No Starch Press were nice enough to provide me with a free copy of the book reviewed here, but what I’m about to write has not been influenced by this. I just wanted to get this out of the way…
Ever since I first learned about it, I was eagerly awaiting the release of Land of Lisp. If you have never heard about the book before, have a look at this promotional cartoon music video. Yes, that’s right, this book comes with its very own promotional cartoon music video!
Your reaction to this video is actually a pretty good indicator on wether or not you are likely to enjoy this book. If you can’t take the cartoons and strange humor, “Land of Lisp” will probably not be for you. If you do however, you’ll be relieved that the book is at least as awesome as the video and probably even more.
People believing that Lisp has been dead since the AI winter may be surprised by the release of new book on the language in 2010. They may however have missed the release of Peter Seibel’s Practical Common Lisp in 2005, which managed to expose the language to a wider audience again, a feat I think “LoL” might achieve too.
For me the best part about Conrad Barski‘s book is its very readable and entertaining style, combined with cartoons and the use of small games as demonstrations of the techniques introduced in the book. I think this is what makes “LoL” really stand out from the other Lisp books: it’s neither as academic as most of the texts focussed on Scheme (with The Little Schemer being an obvious exception), nor is it as dry as Seibel’s book (which otherwise is a pretty good read) or as dated as Paul Graham’s On Lisp which was written while Common Lisp was still in the process of being standardized. For many people “Land of Lisp” may very well be there first contact with the language, and I think with its funny and easy to follow style it may get quite a few people hooked.
The book is structured in 4 main parts, the first of which – called “Lisp Is Power” – serves as a general introduction to the language, explaing the basic syntax and so on. The second part (“Lisp Is Symmetry”) introduces the reader to flow control, data structures, input and output, lambda expressions and more. In the process you’ll write the first part of a game engine for text based games, a great little version of Hunt the Wumpus called “Grand Theft Wumpus” and “Orc Battle”, a small strategy game played in the REPL. The third part (“Lisp Is Hacking”) introduces us to the powerful and sometimes disputed “format” and “loop” commands, as well as streams. Game-wise you’ll encounter a little simulation of an evolving world as well as “Attack of the Robots”, a retro game where your aim is to get rid of some robots by making them collide with each other. The last part (“Lisp Is Science”) introduces functional programming techniques, macros, DSLs and laziness. Besides finishing the text adventure started in an earlier chapter, you’ll also write “Dice Of Doom”, a Dice Wars clone that’s the most complex program of the whole book. Last but not least there’s an epilogue, where the author gives a brief overview of several important topics that got little or no exposure up to that point, like CLOS or the condition system.
As a final summary I’d say that “Land of Lisp” is a truly great achievement. It’s fun to read and does a good job of introducing the reader to the most important concepts of Lisp, by giving a taste of the language’s power, without being overwhelming. For more experienced Lispers this might make the book significantly less interesting, since some really nifty things only get mentioned in the epilogue. If you are among them, Seibel’s book is probably what you want to read (if you haven’t already, which would be surprising). I’d also advise you to not get too excited about the “game development” part of the book, except for the last one all the games are rather minimal and simple, so don’t expect writing 3d shooters or anything like that. They are however awesome examples of the concepts introduced in the individual chapters and way more fun than the contrived examples one finds in way too many programming books. For new Lispers or people who need to brush up on their Common Lisp skills (e.g. when migrating from some other Lisp) this comes highly recommend, but even more senior Lispers might want to get a copy, even if it’s only for the odd cartoons.
Information Overload 2011-01-30
- Chicks Who Rip: Amy Chen
Every initiative that wants to get more women into programming should get our support as male developers. It’s frickin 2011, can we get over gender stereotypes and finally accept female steel-workers and male nurses? - Mauritius: A Glimmer of African Freedom
We don’t get good news about Africa often enough, so when they are there, we should share them despite the slightly liberterian undercurrent. - Cool maps: Measuring growth from outer space
Interesting idea: measuring economic with satellite images analyzing light distribution in a country. - Bringing Balance to the Force
Since I like balanced and balancing opinions, I also like Uncle Bob’s post on software craftsmanship. - Frauen sind auch nur Männer
Is the real difference between men and women just a resulted of being trained in stereotypes? That’s what it looks like (in German). - Never Use a Warning When you Mean Undo
Even though I’m no designer, I have a soft spot for articles on UI/UX design and this one is no exception. - News Desk: Mubarak and the Generals
What role will the army play in the current Egyptian protests? - How the Internet went out in Egypt
If you want to explain to non-techy friends how Egypt “turned off the internet”, this is a good resource. - Political Flags of Extremism
Comprehensive collection of flags of far right and extremist groups. Also has a second part. Contains interesting information on some pretty obscure groups. - The Inside Story of How Facebook Responded to Tunisian Hacks
Facebook’s role in the Tunisian revolution. More interesting for understanding how Facebook was used by the Tunisians than for the technical content, but still…
Information Overload 2011-01-23
- All-Seeing Blimp Could Be Afghanistan’s Biggest Brain
The US military has plans to deploy a giant blimp over Afghanistan. While kinda cool from a technological perspective, this is also quite scary. - I Can Crack Your App With Just A Shell
If you like OSX, assembler and security, you’ll probably find this interesting. Also contains hints for developers on how to make their apps harder to crack. - The China Paradox
All the paradoxes are exactly what makes China so interesting. I still find it to be a baffling place, even after 5 years of Sinology at uni and having lived there for a year. - Key figures in new Tunisia government
Short biographies of some of the key figures of the new Tunisian government. Interesting side note: Slim Amamou, Secretary of state for sport and youth is a member of the Tunisian Pirate Party. - How Facebook Ships Code
Very interesting insights into Facebook’s developer driven culture. - Natur aus der Fabrik
Since we all should be more aware of what we put into our bodies, here’s an article about modern milk production (in German). - A manifesto for the simple scribe
25 commandments for journalists by Tim Radford. - The decline effect and the scientific method
The scientific method also has to hold up to scientific scrutiny. - State of the World 2011: Bruce Sterling and Jon Lebkowsky
I know I’m a bit late to the party, but maybe this is useful for people who missed it the first time around. Includes lots of good links. - Update on Internet censorship in Iran
From the Tor blog.
SICP 1.12, Kind Of…
When working through SICP while you are tired, you might end up solving the wrong problems. This happened to me today with exercise 1.12, which asks the reader to “[w]rite a procedure that computes elements of Pascal’s triangle by means of a recursive process”. I somehow missed the “computes elements” part, and instead wrote a program which generates Pascal’s triangle up to a certain row. Anyway, here it is as a reference for the next guy who can’t read:
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