"I Contribute to the Windows Kernel. We Are Slower Than Other Operating Systems. Here Is Why."

Just found a very nice post over at HackerNews which apparently is from an engineer working at Microsoft, comparing the innovation speed of Linux and MS kernels. A must-read for techies: http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=74

x86 Assembly Primer for C Programmers

Some days earlier I stumbled upon a nice project from Ivan Sergeev which is sort of an open book about x86 Assembly for those who already program in C (or C++) to extend your skillz being a system programming ninja. Oh, and using Linux or at least a working GCC toolchain is an advantage here. And be warned though: This isn't an "x86 Assembly for Dummies"; a steep learning curve guaranteed.

As far as I know the whole thing only is available in PDF format over at his github hive. You can download it directly using this link. Be sure to check back for updates (or getting the provided examples).

Thanks Ivan, for this wonderful resource! Keep up the good work!

Xv6 - Unix-like OS in C for teaching purposes

Here's another one from my bookmark cruft: Xv6, a Unix v6-like OS rewritten from scratch (in C, with a little help of Assembly) to teaching operating systems: http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/2011/xv6.html

About Unicode and Character Sets

Just dug out some older blog article from Joel Spolsky which - in my eyes - really became a classic and a must-read for every programmer out there:

The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer Absolutely, Positively Must Know About Unicode and Character Sets (No Excuses!)

Don't know this one yet? Read it, you won't regret it! :-)

Paper.js Vs. Processing.js Vs. Raphael

Some while ago I toyed around with Raphael.js and was quite amazed by it -- today there's a nice article over at Smashing Magazine which compares the alternatives Paper.js and Processing.js to Raphael, check it out: Web-Drawing Throwdown: Paper.js Vs. Processing.js Vs. Raphael

Javascript compilation and obfuscation

As a C/C++ guy I'm used to some sort of type safety which Javascript unfortunately can't do out-of-the-box. To start a small new project of mine I was evaluating several mobile development frameworks (see my former post(s)) along with Javascript tools.

What most people (at least at the time of writing) do say is: Forget to try to obfuscate, hide and/or pseudo-encrypt your hardly-written Javascript code. If there's someone who wants to steal your code, then there will be way to do it, period.

But what's more about RTTI or type-safety in general? From former Javascript experiments I know that it's much more likely that some part of an application breaks because some object or variable is used in a different way it was meant to be.

To make it short: I still don't have the definite answer for it, but I found the Closure Compiler so far and it makes a rather good impression to me (besides some critism found on stackoverflow and others).

I really would love to get Javascript compiled (yes, I know, there's Google's Dart coming up!) ...maybe some Lint replacement(s) will help me out? Searching further ...