Jack Fisher

Useful, Interesting, and Entertaining Links

General Favorites

• 20 Things I've Learned in my 20 Years as a Software Engineer
  Useful software engineering advice & context.
• All Programming Is Bookkeeping
  On the importance of counters and assertions to ensure consistency in software.
• GCK's File Signatures Table
  Gary C. Kessler's extensive list of "magic numbers" used to identify file types.
• How do we evaluate people for their technical leadership?
  A discussion of the problems with measuring technial leadership "impact".
• Encyclopedia Titanica
  A compendium of articles and data on history's most famous shipwreck.
• Exploring The Waste Land
  An interactive, annotated edition of T. S. Eliot's epic poem.
• Falsehoods Programmers Believe about Names
  An inexhaustive list of incorrect assumptions that can foul up the handling of names in software.
• Please Put Units in Names — or Use Strong Types
  On the importance of making units obvious in function design.
• Programming Is Mostly Thinking
  Design versus fabrication in writing software.
• Simple Heraldry, Cheerfully Illustrated
  Scans of Iain Moncreiffe and Don Pottinger's out-of-print book on heraldry.
• Storytelling with Data
  Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic's blog on effective data visualization.
• Symphony of Science
  John D. Boswell's collection of autotuned science songs.
• Your Calendrical Fallacy Is...
  An inexhaustive list of incorrect assumptions that can foul up the handling of dates and time in software.

Film and Television

• Cinephilia & Beyond
  A formidable collection of compiled film criticism and production artifacts.
• Invasion of the Aspect Ratios
  A discussion of the ambiguity and contention that surrounds certain films' purportedly "intended" aspect ratios.
• James Bond: 50 Years of Main Title Design [Archived copy]
  A comprehensive tour of James Bond title sequences from Dr. No (1962) through Skyfall (2012).
• Kubrick and His Ratios
  An in-depth look at the relative merits of Stanley Kubrick's films in their various available aspect ratios.
• Metropolis and the Framerate Issue
  A discussion of the possible exhibition framerates for Fritz Lang's Metropolis.
• Typset in the Future: Typography and Design in Science Fiction Movies
  Does exactly what it says on the tin.
• A pair of pages on tardis prop design in Doctor Who:
  • The Mind Robber (mostly classic series props)
  • Pull to Open (a dazzlingly detailed account of the new series props)

Programmer Humor

• David Morgan-Mar's Esoteric Programming Languages and Sorting Algorithms
• Miracle sort algorithm
• My Conversation with "Eugene Goostman," the Chatbot That's All Over the News for Allegedly Passing the Turing Test
  Scott Aaronson demonstrates the flaws in a chatbot, the contest it won, and the sensationalized news coverage of the same — by conversing with it.
• PHP musings: If PHP Were British and PHP Sadness
  The latter isn't really humor per se, but bits are funny in their absurdity.
• Quantum bogosort algorithm
• Yak Shaving