Links

Articles

In no particular order, a list of things that I found helpful in learning the things I know today. Hopefully, somebody else may find them useful in their own education.

• Beginners resources. A neat reference for people who want to learn about programming, but don’t know where to start.
• Unicode and character sets. This is, like, super important.
• Comparing Floating Point Numbers. This article series was pivotal in me learning what floating point numbers even are, let alone how to compare them.
• Beej’s Guide to Network Programming. A truly wonderful resource for learning networking. It’s based on C, but the Socket API is pretty consistent everywhere (especially in Python).
• Intro to MIPS Assembly. Although I later learned this in EECS 314 (Computer Architecture), I first learned MIPS assembly from this great guide.
• Implementing Regular Expressions: A series of articles by Russ Cox. I consider this to be some of the best practical information out there about implementing regular expressions, that is still firmly rooted in theory.
• Python Challenge. This is an excellent puzzle/riddle set for Python programmers.
• TI-Basic Developer. At one point, this was one of my main programming resources! Of course, it was for a graphing calculator.
• The Lost Art of Structure Packing. A really useful overview of how the C compiler lays out variables in memory.
• Things Every Hacker Once Knew. Some really fun insights into the history of why things are the way they are now.
• Eudyptula Challenge. The challenge is now closed. I got in just under the wire. Hopefully it will reopen some day.
• Anatomy of a Program in Memory. This is the first in a series of articles describing how modern operating systems manage memory, at a fairly detailed level. Very useful.

Somewhat related, The Beginner’s Creed is an excellent attitude we all should have when learning new things. Learning is the most exciting thing we do in life, and we should never be afraid of being a beginner.

Books

Some books I recommend:

• The C Programming Language by Kernighan & Ritchie (of course)
• Linux Kernel Development, 3rd Edition by Robert Love
• Lions’ Commentary on UNIX 6th Edition by John Lions. This contains the complete source code for the UNIX operating system (well, the kernel) and a commentary of the whole darn thing. At only 9000 lines of C, I’ve seen (and probably written) many CRUD webapps with more code than UNIX had. I haven’t had the time to fully read this, but it’s on my to-do list.

Blogs

I’ve developed a real appreciation for blogging, both writing my own and reading those of my friends. So here is a whole directory of blogs from my friends at HacSoc you should check out!

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