Michael Fogus's Blog, page 7

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Lost mainframe games — Mythical and legendary old computer games that have been lost to the dustbin of history… or have they… apparently a version of “Wander” has been recently unearthed. Books for Inform Designers — Inform7 is one of the most fascinating programming languages that I’ve ever come across. This page lists a few […]

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In many ways Donald Knuth is held up as the standard for the “mythical mega-hacker” and while his contributions to computer science cannot be denied, the fact is that he approached programming in ways that many could identify with. Looking at the source listing for a compiler written when he was in his early 20s […]

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The Zen of Palm – Once upon a time there was a company called Palm that revolutionized the PDA industry by taking a step back an radically simplifying the user experience. This document outlines the philosophy of their approach and has some nuggets here and there that might be applicable to our modern sensibilities. Build.Bose […]

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The Expurgation of Maniac Mansion for the Nintendo Entertainment System by Douglas Crockford — Maniac Mansion is an all-time favorite, so this was a nicely nostalgic read for me. As it turns out the original designers of Maniac Mansion Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick have a new game coming out in the same style named […]

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John Carmack on Inlined Code Better Notes with Pandoc – I’m on an ever-fruitless quest for better note-taking schemes. The Perils of Semantic Coupling – Whenever Michael Nygard writes/talks about systems I read/listen. Lessons Learnt from the Self Archive – A fascinating dive into Self programming language discussion archives. The CDP-1802 Development System – The […]

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Diversity in tech is a hugely important topic and while more exposure is reaching the mainstream, a vast chasm still remains. The Big Lie: Tech Companies and Diversity Hiring highlights the disparity between the “good talk” of diversity hiring and the realities of actual hiring practices. Along this vein, On being a Black Man is […]

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Linkage is a weekly aggregation of curated information around the web. The smallest (possible?) BASIC computer – Built by Grant Searle with the wonderful 6809. The article includes both Z80 and 6509 versions. Searle’s website is chock full of retrocomputing goodness. A Glimpse into the Apollo Guidance Computer – a follow on to the guidance […]

Clojure/West 2016

For a while I considered the possibility of attending Clojure/West 2016, but frankly I’d grown tired of technical conferences. At one point in my life I loved every moment of every conference that I’d ever attended, but over time I’ve grown tired of the whole experience. First, I’m quite shy by nature and have never […]

The best things and stuff of 2015

Great things and people that I discovered, learned, read, met, etc. in 2015. No particular ordering is implied. Not everything is new. also: see the lists from 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011 and 2010 Great blog posts read 1,000 True Fans – an interesting look into a certain aspect of the long-tail (something I’ve been mulling […]

The 100:10:1 method: my approach to open source

For many years I was whole hog into the open-source movement and at the time I rarely wrote a stitch of code in my free time that didn’t find itself in a public Sourceforge/GCode/Github repo.1 However, over time I came to learn that the burden that came with publicly offering code to the universe, to […]