«Parlo sempre di me perché non voglio convincere nessuno, non ho il diritto di trascinare gli altri nella mia corrente, non costringo nessuno a seguirmi e ciascuno si fa l'arte che gli pare, se conosce l'euforia che saetta fino agli strati astrali e quella che si addentra nelle miniere fiorite di cadaveri e di fertili spasimi. Stalattiti: cercarle dappertutto, nei presepi ingigantiti dal dolore, con gli occhi bianchi come le lepri degli angeli.» -- Tristan Tzara /Colonna sonora: ``Former Ghosts - Dreams''/ ``Unix for Poets'', Kenneth Ward Church --------------------------------------------------------------------- Un tutorial su come utilizzare Unix per processare il linguaggio naturale. Veramente ben scritto e completo di esempi ed esercizi e illuminante anche per chi mastica Unix da decenni! ``Purposes, Concepts, Misfits, and a Redesign of Git'', Santiago Perez De Rosso, Daniel Jackson ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- «Git is a widely used version control system that is powerful but complicated. Its complexity may not be an inevitable consequence of its power but rather evidence of flaws in its design. To explore this hypothesis, we analyzed the design of Git using a theory that identifies concepts, purposes, and misfits. Some well-known difficulties with Git are described, and explained as misfits in which underlying concepts fail to meet their intended purpose. Based on this analysis, we designed a reworking of Git (called Gitless) that attempts to remedy these flaws. To correlate misfits with issues reported by users, we conducted a study of Stack Overflow questions. And to determine whether users experienced fewer complications using Gitless in place of Git, we conducted a small user study. Results suggest our approach can be profitable in identifying, analyzing, and fixing design problems.» ``Life As A Developer: My Code Does Not Work Because I Am A Victim Of Complex Societal Factors That Are Beyond My Control'', James Mickens ----------------------------- «What are the best practices for shipping high-quality software?" This question is an example of a question that I will not answer in my talk. Instead, I will describe why any software project that contains more than 10 lines of code is guaranteed to fail. Using my fragmentary knowledge of the laws of thermodynamics, I will explain why code is like a proton that must ultimately turn into a crystal or, uh, whatever it is that thermodynamics says will happen. I will demonstrate how unit tests, functional programming, and UML diagrams fail to address the primary source of software failure (namely, that software is an inherently bad idea because our brains evolved to hunt giant sloths with primitive stone tools, and MongoDB only partially resembles a giant sloth). I will conclude the talk by luring a group of agile programming experts into a large cardboard box using a collection of buzzwords like "evolutionary development" and "cross-functional team;" once captured, they will be forced to implement obscene, poorly-specified COBOL algorithms as I laugh maniacally and disable my compiler warnings.» ``A history of storage media'', Kiran Bhattaram ----------------------------------------------------------------------- «This article is a very selective history, focusing on a handful of the earliest technologies that I find especially interesting: 1. Punch cards, one of the earliest forms of computer data, used for weaving patterns and census data! 2. Williams-Kilburn tubes, the first electronic memory, where bits were stored as dots on the screen! 3. Mercury delay lines, two-foot-long tubes of hot mercury, which stored bits as pulses of sound!» ``What Makes a Program Elegant?'', Robin K. Hill ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- «A subfield of philosophy is aesthetics, in which we attempt to understand beauty. Is beauty universal? Does it make us better people somehow? Why do we focus on beauty and not ugliness? A ready application of this question to computer science addresses program elegance. Most programmers, or so I believe, would agree that some programs are elegant, and that elegant programs are better than others, and experienced programmers, or so I believe, generally agree on which programs are elegant.» ``Why we care about long uptimes'', Chris Siebenmann ------------------------------------------------------------------------- «Here's a question: why should we care about long uptimes, especially if we have to get these long uptimes in somewhat artificial situations like not applying updates? [...] My answer is that long uptimes demonstrate that our systems are fundamentally stable. If you can keep a system up and stable for a long time, you've shown that (in your usage) it doesn't have issues like memory leaks, fragmentation, lurking counter rollover problems, and so on. [...] And that's a good thing (and not always the case).» ``Please Explain'', Bertrand Meyer -------------------------------------------------------------------- Capire l'H-index non è semplicissimo... da un'umile studente potrebbero quindi sorgere diversi dubbi! ``Memo to the DOJ: Facial Recognition's Threat to Privacy is Worse Than Anyone Thought'', Dave Maass -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Riflessione sul riconoscimento facciale negli USA e soprattutto sul fatto che tutto ciò è al momento non regolamentato. ``Abstract Art'', Jorge Cham ---------------------------------------------------------------- Possibile spiegazione sull'etimologia del termine `abstract'!