I'm from a C background with a hefty dose of Python, mostly on linux systems.

My preferred mode of delivering software is as a single executable file. I hate having to explain to users that they have to install a half-dozen support libraries. (This is less painful on modern ...

Things we need to be able to use Scala on Debian (everything below will likely work on Ubuntu as well):

• Scala itself, of course. apt-get install scala will pull in a bunch of packages -- all the java stuff, etc. However, note that sbt will happily pull down whatever version of ...

(I started this post about halfway through the Year of New Programming Languages, and wrapped it up in December.)

At the midway point I was most excited by Common Lisp, but with doubts I'd be using it for anything real. By the end of the year my favorite new ...

Learning a new programming language each month this year was an ambitious goal. I didn't quite make it -- other things got in the way. I did manage to dip my toes into some interesting languages, learn some new things, and find a couple of candidates for diving deeper into ...

I've had a couple of friends ask me if there's any way I could read family photos off a dying hard drive. Obviously, the best way to do this is to have a backup: then you can throw out the hard drive (use an electronics recycler) and restore ...