tags/programming

James Davidson: git notes

Thu, 16 Sep 2010 21:54:00 -0700

The ProGit blog has a nice post on using the new git notes feature.

James Davidson: git send-email tricks

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 21:29:00 -0700

If you typically send patches to mail lists then Felipe Contreras' git send-email tricks blog post is definitely worth reading.

James Davidson: Highlighting Coding Errors

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 22:47:00 -0700

Dave Jones is a genius. Using mutt and your editor to highlight your coding errors -- he should have patented that one!

James Davidson: Emacs can do that

Sun, 03 Feb 2008 14:31:00 -0800

As an emacs user, I knew the butterfly command. I just don't find it that useful.

James Davidson: Why volatile is practically useless

Fri, 17 Aug 2007 11:47:00 -0700

In the C/C++ programming language, data can be given the volatile qualifier. Typically, people think this is sufficient to prevent code ordering problems. Well, volatile does not do that.

Linus provided a great explanation of the problem on the lkml today. Definitely worth reading. Also, you should read Linux Kernel Memory Barriers from the kernel documentation.

Update 2007-10-14: Also check out the LWN article The Trouble with Volatile.

James Davidson: Aliasing and pointer casts

Tue, 21 Nov 2006 14:52:00 -0800

If you've heard of pointer aliasing but have not fully understood what it means, read this great explanation by Krister.

James Davidson: CPUID specifications

Wed, 01 Nov 2006 00:00:00 -0800

Intel
AMD

Update 2009-10-12: Updated Intel document link

James Davidson: Hex Words

Wed, 30 Aug 2006 00:00:00 -0700

When you are programming it is often convenient to have 32-bit values that, when displayed in hex (base-16), spell words (e.g, 0xdeadbeef). These values are useful for signifying specific conditions either within a program's resident memory or in persistent storage.

I found a cool list of words that were pragmatically generated and expanded to include l337 spellings.

James Davidson: Debugging Memory Bugs

Wed, 21 Jun 2006 00:00:00 -0700

Ulrich Drepper has a blog entry about using the environment variable MALLOC_PERTURB_ to aid in the detection of typical memory usage bugs in programs.

Using this debugging feature is as simple as setting the environment variable and running the program you want to test. No recompiling required. Sweet!