Songs in (computer) code (you can also see the Twheat seperated from the Tw-chaff over at Favrd)
posted by melorama on Aug 20, 2009 - 32 comments

"The avionics system in the F-22 Raptor, the current U.S. Air Force frontline jet fighter, consists of about 1.7 million lines of software code. The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter...about 5.7 million lines of code...Boeing’s new 787 Dreamliner...about 6.5 million lines of software code. These are impressive amounts of software, yet if you bought a premium-class automobile recently, it probably contains close to 100 million lines of software code."
posted by mr_crash_davis mark II: Jazz Odyssey on Feb 4, 2009 - 64 comments

What real-life bad habits has programming given you? "This has actually really happened to me. I was trying to hang a glass picture frame on the wall and accidentally dropped it. And in the shock of the moment, I loudly yelled 'Control Z!' Then the glass hit the floor and smashed."
posted by grumblebee on Jan 30, 2009 - 170 comments

Getting to the source of 5 beautiful lines of Quake 3. Rys Sommefeldt traces the history of a very quick (and now infamous) inverse square-root function used in Quake 3. (via) [more inside]
posted by spiderskull on Feb 8, 2008 - 60 comments

"This is the story of when I re-wrote the Lotus Notes Formula Engine.... So here was I was, offered this position that I clearly wasn't qualified for. I had no experience with language runtimes or compilers, I knew very little about C and didn't know anything about C++, I had never dealt with platform byte ordering and packing and all the other issues associated with writing something for eight different operating systems, I had never even used proper version control. But none of that mattered to me. It seemed to me like an amazing opportunity and I would be doing exactly the kind of stuff I enjoy most..."
posted by grumblebee on Nov 24, 2007 - 64 comments

lolcats are great but now they can code!
posted by jeffburdges on May 29, 2007 - 69 comments

Time commenting could be time coding. Day in, day out, you pull off star moves: gnarly algorithms, wicked refactorings, stunning optimizations. Why should you stop and explain? Yes, you've got plodders on your team, but hey — youAreAStar and yourTimeIsExpensive. Time spent explaining, documenting, commenting — dude! — that's time you could be using to crank out yet more mind-altering code. Welcome The Commentator.
posted by Lectrick on Aug 2, 2005 - 24 comments

DailyWTF is a "Programming Bloopers" repository and forum, collecting, dissecting and making good fun of badly written code. Programmers can appreciate their fellow coders' strange or plainly funny problem solving techniques. Sometimes programmers will square the wheel while reinventing it. Or take the best practices to the insanity level.
Some programming knowledge required.
posted by nkyad on Apr 27, 2005 - 21 comments

The Daily WTF features braindead code samples. High-larious to a nerd like me.
posted by sonofsamiam on Oct 15, 2004 - 41 comments

CSS on Demand allows users to set several preferences for how they want to see your site, rather than just using one of your themes via a switcher. Kind of like Matt lets you do here.
Perl. Free. Try it out.
posted by Su on Jan 28, 2003 - 15 comments

CodeDoc, a new exhibition at Whitney Artport, forces us to view the scripts and codes that generate software art before seeing the “art.” The other aspect of the curatorial premise: each artist's code must create art that connects three points in space.
[via rhizome].
posted by hama7 on Sep 23, 2002 - 12 comments

While poking around today, I found a link to Treefold, which isn't all that impressive in and of itself. The reason for my interest was that it's the first use I've come across of the Proce55ing language, which is a sort of continuation of John Maeda's teaching language, DBN(Design by Numbers). While still not ready for general release, it's grown a lot since the last time I looked at it.
posted by Su on Sep 10, 2002 - 11 comments

Competition to "reverse engineer" mystery program.
Another cool thingy from the HoneyNet Project; they're inviting people to convert a binary file into its original source. So, who's participating?
posted by arnab on May 3, 2002 - 2 comments

Reassembled. Assembler is back -- at least, in its latest, frozen form. Score one for indie content makers. (thanks to Zeldman; his exit page notes the new URL.)
posted by moz on Jul 27, 2001 - 4 comments

Disassembled. Assembler.org ("making art with machine code") is no more. Quoth the Zeldman: "Lately we feel like Smokey the Bear - and the forest fires are winning."
posted by fraying on Jul 6, 2001 - 74 comments

Weird Programming Languages All the info you wanted to know about obscure programming languages
posted by stevridie on Jul 5, 2001 - 16 comments

Article on New Scientist about "software that turns everyday language into computer code".
posted by paladin on Apr 5, 2001 - 19 comments

XHTML is in the spotlight. The specs were announced months ago, and on December 19th the w3 reccommended it as the new web language.
posted by tomorama on Dec 23, 2000 - 5 comments

Is computer code a form of expression and therefore protected by the First Amendment? That's something being considered in the MPAA's case against Eric Corley and DeCSS.
posted by scottandrew on Jul 26, 2000 - 6 comments