Understanding modern technology by learning about old technology — If you study the operations of a modern microprocessor, you might notice similarities between it and old mechanical calculating devices such as the Arithmometer if you squint hard. To be more specific, what we call the Arithmetic Logic Unit (ALU) in a microprocessor has many similarities with old mechanical calculators…

A look at how mechanical computation devices deal with negative numbers — Binary digital computers represent negative numbers using something called two’s complement. The reason is simple: Memory cells can store zeros and ones, but not a negative sign. But instead of explaining two’s complement, I am going to explain ten’s complement to you in this story. Why? …

Thoughts on the relationship between the leading characters of Better Call Saul — I just finished binging the Breaking Bad spinoff Better Call Saul. I just got to say, “Wow!” This show is television history. What a masterpiece by Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould. What is embarrassing to me is that I originally gave up on the show after just viewing 4–5 episodes…

Why Elon Musk cannot work his magic with Twitter — Let us be real: Elon Musk is a really smart guy. The success he has had in revolutionizing the rocket industry and the EV industry doesn’t just happen out of pure luck. Those achievements have made many people elevate Elon Musk to technology leader Demi-God. …

What building a toy assembler in Zig and Go taught me about each language — The title of this story was supposed to be “Why I have given up on Zig,” but instead Zig ended up impressing me more than I expected, while Go disappointed me. That experience illustrates well my relation with Zig over the last two years: I have a real problem deciding…

Things easy to remember when revisiting the Zig programming language — About two years ago, I took the Zig programming language for a spin and wrote a few articles about it. Today I am firing up an old Zig project again and writing down my experience getting back into Zig. This is a useful test in my opinion because it helps…

A look at how multiple dispatch distinguishes Julia from all other programming languages — Multiple dispatch is the killer feature of the Julia programming language, but unfortunately, few developers have even heard about multiple dispatch. Fewer still know what it is or how it works. That isn’t surprising given that very few languages support multiple dispatch and those who do tend to do a…

Since North Dakota was settled by primarily by Scandinavians, then why aren’t the Dakotas culturally similar to Scandinavia? — A gentleman once asked me why the Dakotas are not similar to Scandinavia, given that so many of the inhabitants in North and South Dakota come from Scandinavia. I thought that was an interesting question worth writing an article about. …

Zig lets you run code during compilation. What are the implications? — Compile-time computing was pioneered by the Lisp programming language in the 1960s. Compile-time computing means that the code you later compile isn’t just what you wrote down. What you compile later is also code that is “written” by your code. Code generating code. While a common feature in dynamically typed…