De Programmatica Ipsum
De Programmatica Ipsum
Adrian Kosmaczewski
De Programmatica Ipsum is a monthly magazine about programming and society published since 2018. No AI content, no ads, no paywall, full RSS feed, 100% supported by our readers.
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Imagine a world in which two people take the best ideas from programming languages, and create an interpreter for their own programming language. Then they demonstrate that most of the features in that programming language—indeed, in all...
On page 138 of the second edition of his 1971 book, “Categories for the Working Mathematician”, American mathematician Saunders Mac Lane inadvertently coined one of the most famous memes ever made around programming. It is there,...
Welcome to the 92nd issue of De Programmatica Ipsum, about Linux. In this edition: Graham reports on the state of GNU Hurd with very good news. Adrian untangles the Linux distro jungle and helps you choose the best one for your needs. In...
Those of us who have been extremely online for a very long time will remember that Linus Torvalds announced his Linux kernel to a usenet newsgroup (or “froup”, as the internet lexicon had it at the time) for the Minix operating system....
The Non-Aligned Movement was born in 1961, during the most dramatic period of the Cold War, in opposition to the nuclear escalation threats between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Countries from what it is now known as the “Global South” got...
Paraphrasing Apple and their famous advertising campaign, we can safely say that Finnish movie director Hannu Puttonen (1960–2023) was very interested in the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the...
Many autobiographies of famous people involve a certain amount of ghostwriting, if the subject and alleged author is not a professional writer. An actual writer listens to their stories, interviews them, maybe gets them to draft some...
There was a time before eBooks, when developers had to buy actual massive paper editions of the most precious titles in their craft, and in some case, they had to carry them around, either for work or (also possible) for pleasure. In...
Welcome to the 91st issue of De Programmatica Ipsum, about Entertainment. In this edition: Graham reviews the beautiful art taking place in the demoscene. Adrian argues that we are just blinded by entertainment. In our Vidéothèque...
You are deep into fixing a bug where the customer wants to view entries in a report in a different order, but calling the method to sort the array turns on the sprinkler system in your on-premise server room for reasons that nobody can...
The first issue ever published of Byte Magazine, visible and available on the Internet Archive at the time of this publication, features a bold claim on the cover: “Computers–the World’s Greatest Toy!” Said issue also dealt with the more...
The opening frames of “The Art of the Algorithms” sets the scene perfectly: a chip tune plays as greeting text scrolls in a waving motion across the screen, reminiscent of a 1980s cracktro. Then, we get a proper title sequence, as...
The year is 2026, and we take computer-generated movies for granted: Pixar, Illumination, DreamWorks, and a myriad of smaller studios delight us every year with more and more technical and storytelling prowess. Heck, we even have...
A superficial view of the videogames sector gives the impression that its employees and customers—the players of the games—are treated much better than at any time in history. Physical media, including EPROMs in cartridges, CD-ROMs, and...
Precisely as this issue lands on your browser or e-book reader, “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” is hitting theaters and receiving (at the time of this article) a rather tepid reception from audiences and critics. A feature film inspired...