Published in ITNEXT·PinnedRISC vs CISC Microprocessor Philosophy in 2022A new look at the RISC vs CISC debate by framing it as a debate on how to spend a limited transistor budget to achieve performance. — PEOPLE LIKE to think about the distinction between RISC and CISC processors as being about some specific set of features or some magical limit on number of instructions or transistors. Few Instructions Doesn’t Mean RISC Let us get some very obvious misconceptions out of the way. Because RISC stands for Reduced Instruction Set Computer, there are a lot of people who think a RISC processor is simply a CPU with few instructions. If that was the case then the 6502 processor would have been one of the most RISCy processor ever with mere 56 instructions. Even the Intel 8086 would count as a RISC processor…Risc15 min read
2 days ago“Europe has had no major technical innovations the last 60 years”Has Europe stood still since the invention of steam engines and spinning jenny? A critical look at popular myths around innovation in Europe. — THIS STORY was inspired by the frequent American claims and assumption that pretty much everything that belongs to the modern world was invented in the US and that Europe is a technological backwater. So let us actually look at some inventions and innovations which has come out of Europe in…Technology7 min read
Jun 20Did Slavery Benefit the US Economy?Did the Southern states trail the North because slavery is bad for the economy? — WHEN writing about why Nordic countries still trail the US in GDP per capita I pointed to slavery as one of the factors. …Slavery11 min read
Jun 19If Social Democracy Is So Great, Why Is the US Richer Than Nordics?A look at the reasons for the higher American GDP per capita — WHEN preaching the virtues of social democracy, there is always some libertarian or neoliberal who will champion the virtues of capitalism by pointing out the fact that on average Nordic countries have lower GDP per capita than the US. …Nordics10 min read
Jun 19How Was The “Pieces of Eight” Coin Cut into Bits?Have you ever wondered why the Spanish silver dollar was called pieces of eight? — The Spanish colonial empire controlled the massive Potosí silver mine in Bolivia, which produced most of the silver in the world. Here the Spanish minted a silver dollar, which became known as “pieces of eight” in the English-speaking world. The name came from the fact that one Spanish silver dollar (Peso) was worth eight reals.History4 min read
Jun 18Why I still Recommend the Julia Programming LanguageDoes Yuri Vishnevsky have valid criticism of Julia? — I HAVE been asked to respond to criticism Yuri Vishnevsky raised in his article “Why I no longer recommend Julia”. As a big fan of Julia and author of Julia as a Second Language I feel a certain obligation to take the criticism of Julia serious. I think Yuri makes…Julialang7 min read
Published in ITNEXT·Jun 17Golang Generics For Non-BeginnersGet up to speed with generics in Go — I AM NOT going to try to teach you generics in this story, but instead assume you know about generics, parameterized types or template-based programming already. This shows the basics of Go Generics. Type parameters are constrained by interfaces. That means you can demand that your type parameter T implements…Golang3 min read
Published in ITNEXT·Jun 16Version 1.18 Refresh for Go ProgrammersBeen away from Go programming for a while? Let us look at stuff you may have forgotten. — I JUMP between languages and when I come back to one I have not used in a while there are certain things I have not forgotten while other things are easier to forget. …Golang14 min read
Jun 16USA and Norway Price and Income ComparisonsA quick and dirty comparison of salaries and cost of various consumer goods and services — A LOT OF people visiting Norway get sticker shock because our prices tend to be quite high. Many Americans ask questions about salaries, spending power, prices and taxes. This is just a quick and dirty comparison I made based on current exchange rate 16th of June 2022. The Norwegian currency…Norway3 min read
Jun 11SwedenGate in Norwegian MediaHow has Norwegian media covered SwedenGate? — BECAUSE MY native Norway is so close culturally to Sweden we have naturally followed the “SwedenGate” story. Even the biggest newspapers such as VG have covered the story. …Sweden8 min read
