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CLIs are reified UIs
Many of the advantages of Command Line Interfaces can be attributed to the fact that they reify the user interaction: the interaction itself is made into something that’s visible and can be interacted with.
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Dijkstra's Mozart
Approximately two years before his death, Edsger Dijkstra was interviewed by the Dutch television program Noorderlicht. On that occasion he made an interesting comparison between two programming styles, which he characterized as Mozart versus Beethoven.
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Ship of Theseus
The ship of Theseus is an ancient thought experiment that poses some questions about the nature of identity of changing objects. In this article we examine the real life implications of this riddle on modeling the world in computer programs.
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Git is ignorant by design
This article explores a very particular problem of Git, namely its ignorance, in some detail.
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Don't say “Homoiconic”
When asked what’s so great about Lisp, many aficionados will say that the language is Homoiconic, and that this property gives it certain magical advantages over other languages. When asked what homoiconic means, however, the answer is often much less clear.
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Homoiconicity revisited
In which we explore the possible meaning of “Homoiconic” by ignoring all pre-existing definitions and providing one of our own.
Musings
Articles of a more philosphical nature. Also known as rants or ramblings.