Subject
12 entries
Programming Languages
Bookmarks
From Python to Rust: YouTube Playlist
A YouTube playlist teaching Rust to developers who already know Python — bridges concepts across the two languages rather than teaching Rust from scratch. Useful for Python engineers who want to understand Rust's ownership and performance model.
Will Crichton's Nota Research
Will Crichton's Nota project page — the research motivation and design thinking behind the Nota document language for interactive browser-based technical writing. Companion to the nota-lang.org specification site.
Nota: A Document Language for the Browser
Nota is a document language designed for the browser that lets authors write reactive, interactive documents with inline computation and bidirectional updates — imagine Markdown with embedded executable code that readers can modify. Will Crichton's project extending explorable explanations into a proper authoring language.
Crash Course on Notation in Programming Language Theory
Jeremy Siek's crash course on the mathematical notation used in programming language theory — inference rules, judgments, big-step and small-step semantics. Essential reading before tackling any PL paper.
The Homogenization of Scientific Computing: Why Python Is Eating Other Languages' Lunch
R-Bloggers post arguing that Python was converging on R and MATLAB's territory in scientific computing in 2014. The key insight: Python didn't win by being better at any one thing, but by being good enough at everything while sharing one ecosystem.
R vs Python — Round 1
The Swarm Lab's side-by-side comparison of R and Python on a data analysis task — first in a series. Both languages solve the same problem, revealing stylistic and ecosystem differences rather than a clear winner.
Python Displacing R As The Programming Language For Data Science
ReadWrite article on Python displacing R as the primary data science language — part of the 2013 wave of coverage tracking the Python/R competition. Python's software engineering strengths and growing ML ecosystem were tipping the balance.
How Python Became the Language of Choice for Data Science
Mikio Braun's account of how Python displaced MATLAB as the data science language of choice — tracing the inflection point to 2005 licensing changes and a pivotal NIPS satellite workshop. The story behind what's now taken for granted.
Sol: A Sunny Little Virtual Machine
Rasmus Andersson's Sol is an educational register-based virtual machine with cooperative multitasking — built to teach VM internals including schedulers, activation records, and coroutines. Small, clean, and unusually readable.
Winning Race Conditions: Rust (Early Series)
A 2012 blog series conclusion on Rust — written when Rust was pre-0.1, before memory ownership and the borrow checker had fully stabilized. A historical snapshot of Rust's early design exploration around safe systems programming and concurrency.
Not All Programmers Are Alike: A Language Rant
Scott Locklin's blunt 2012 rant arguing that different programmers have fundamentally different aptitudes and that functional/Lisp languages self-select for a specific type. The HN discussion was equally spirited. An honest engagement with the uncomfortable reality that not all programming taste is equal.
Typesafe Raises $14M to Commercialize Scala
Typesafe raised $14 million from Shasta, Greylock, and Juniper to build a commercial business around Scala, Akka, and the Play Framework. The company later renamed to Lightbend when the Scala-only bet broadened.