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colmmacc's profile
Colm MacCárthaigh
Colm MacCárthaigh
Colm MacCárthaigh
@colmmacc

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Colm MacCárthaigh

@colmmacc

AWS, Apache, Crypto, Irish Music, Haiku, Photography

Seattle
notesfromthesound.com
Joined April 2008

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    1. Colm MacCárthaigh‏ @colmmacc 23 Jul 2019
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      If you're just learning to program, do this early. Even "Hello World" can have a test, and it's kind of a travesty that programming books and tutorials don't do this! If you're into your career, think about taking a time period, maybe one day every week, just for writing tests.

      3 replies 0 retweets 24 likes
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    2. Colm MacCárthaigh‏ @colmmacc 23 Jul 2019
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      If you begin or lead a project; spend a lot of your time on how to make integrating and writing tests easy and even pleasurable. There is *nothing* that pays off more in my experience ... and it's a great way to really differentiate and develop yourself too.

      1 reply 2 retweets 23 likes
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    3. Colm MacCárthaigh‏ @colmmacc 23 Jul 2019
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      Write unit tests, write integration tests, write regression tests, get into formal verification, make tests super fast, integrate them into your build or continuous deployment system.

      2 replies 3 retweets 29 likes
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    4. Colm MacCárthaigh‏ @colmmacc 23 Jul 2019
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      Remember that tests are the hallmark of professionalism. For software developers, they are the equivalent of double checking if the bolt is tightened.

      1 reply 3 retweets 33 likes
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    5. Colm MacCárthaigh‏ @colmmacc 23 Jul 2019
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      Next tip: Think in data structures! It can be too easy to fall into a trap of becoming a programmer that works in a specific programming language, or to rely on copy and paste, or StackOverflow. It's more than worth the push through to really understand what's under the hood.pic.twitter.com/0dPWbR0yOB

      2 replies 0 retweets 24 likes
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    6. Colm MacCárthaigh‏ @colmmacc 23 Jul 2019
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      That means learning about data structures and algorithms, which is hard! But it's easy to begin ... learning how arrays work is a start. And hashes, and trees, and more. It's incredibly exciting stuff when you get into it.

      1 reply 1 retweet 15 likes
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    7. Colm MacCárthaigh‏ @colmmacc 23 Jul 2019
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      Here's a really simple example from s2n; using arrays to parse and emit base64. https://github.com/awslabs/s2n/blob/master/stuffer/s2n_stuffer_base64.c … See how much cleaner that is than something that uses a lot of "if"s?

      1 reply 0 retweets 20 likes
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    8. Colm MacCárthaigh‏ @colmmacc 23 Jul 2019
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      Get into the habit of being able to break problems down into data structures. As if data structures and algorithms are lego blocks. Programming languages are just an implementation detail, not actually the real programming.

      1 reply 2 retweets 24 likes
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    9. Colm MacCárthaigh‏ @colmmacc 23 Jul 2019
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      O.k. item THREE ... learn functional programming. So you are simultaneously very unlikely to use functional programming "for reals" in a paying job, and yet knowing it can expand and change your whole approach.pic.twitter.com/Yptxsx2iTP

      3 replies 1 retweet 19 likes
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    10. Colm MacCárthaigh‏ @colmmacc 23 Jul 2019
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      FP is great for stretching your mind and helping you form deeper abstractions around code. The idea that functions are data ... awesome. Recursion. Immutability. Declarative programming styles. Composition. We are spoiled with riches!

      1 reply 2 retweets 19 likes
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      Colm MacCárthaigh‏ @colmmacc 23 Jul 2019
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      Every big program I've designed has been heavily informed by these concepts. The core memory management of I/O of s2n uses all of these ideas .. even though it's written in C. https://github.com/awslabs/s2n/blob/master/docs/DEVELOPMENT-GUIDE.md#a-tour-of-s2n-memory-handling-blobs-and-stuffers …

      10:47 AM - 23 Jul 2019
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      • Girish Rao (((PabloColazurdo))) Pirmin Schmid DaMantalBwoy electricsheepco Erik Paulson Vincent Lu
      1 reply 0 retweets 15 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. Colm MacCárthaigh‏ @colmmacc 23 Jul 2019
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          Read SICP, learn about Erlang, look at FP features in Javascript and Rust. All super super worth it.

          1 reply 4 retweets 27 likes
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        3. Colm MacCárthaigh‏ @colmmacc 23 Jul 2019
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          O.k. item FOUR ... check everything and bail on bad. What do I mean by this? I mean every time you call a function, a library routine, or whatever ... check for errors! don't mask exceptions. Anticipate "that shouldn't happen" errors.

          1 reply 2 retweets 16 likes
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        4. Colm MacCárthaigh‏ @colmmacc 23 Jul 2019
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          If there are invariants that should hold in your program, check those too! You can pretty much never check things too much. And if things don't add up .... bail! Be very very defensive in your programming.

          1 reply 1 retweet 8 likes
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        5. Colm MacCárthaigh‏ @colmmacc 23 Jul 2019
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          This also relates to a simple programming tip. It can be easy to fall into a pattern of ... if (condition1 == good) { ... if (condition2 == good) { ... if (condition3 == good) { do_something(); but this is bad and becomes dangerous.

          1 reply 2 retweets 10 likes
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        6. Colm MacCárthaigh‏ @colmmacc 23 Jul 2019
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          Instead do: if (condition1 != good) { bail(); } ... if (condition2 != good) { bail(); } if (condition3 != good) { bail(); } usually makes context much clearer, avoids nesting confusion, and builds in that pattern of bailing!

          1 reply 1 retweet 48 likes
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        7. Colm MacCárthaigh‏ @colmmacc 23 Jul 2019
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          o.k. last piece of advice and it is ... don't write "what" comments, write "why" comments. If you have to comment on what your program is doing, then the code itself was not readable! Instead use comments to provide context.

          1 reply 2 retweets 29 likes
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        8. Colm MacCárthaigh‏ @colmmacc 23 Jul 2019
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          Use readable variable names that are nouns and meaningful function names that are verbs. The code doesn't have to be poetry, but it can absolutely be easy to follow. Give your future self an easier time. Code is written to be read.

          1 reply 3 retweets 18 likes
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        9. Colm MacCárthaigh‏ @colmmacc 23 Jul 2019
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          Very very rarely there is code that can't be easily read; if you're using bitwise operators as part of cryptography or compression or something, for example. Comment those with a "WTF is this doing" ... be very very verbose. But that's the only exception I've found!

          1 reply 2 retweets 9 likes
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        10. Colm MacCárthaigh‏ @colmmacc 23 Jul 2019
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          Which brings me to the $1000 programming contest! 3 prizes: $500, $300, $200 for the most readable, easy to follow, tested, Apache Software License 2.0'd, implementation of @lemire's nearly division-less RNG.https://lemire.me/blog/2019/06/06/nearly-divisionless-random-integer-generation-on-various-systems/ …

          4 replies 35 retweets 71 likes
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        11. Colm MacCárthaigh‏ @colmmacc 23 Jul 2019
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          I hope he doesn't mind because I didn't ask! I've chosen @lemire's algorithm because it is awesome and ground breaking, very short, and intrinsically hard to follow if you're not into the math.

          4 replies 1 retweet 7 likes
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        12. Colm MacCárthaigh‏ @colmmacc 23 Jul 2019
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          His blog post contains a 14 line implementation in C, and there's also a paper getting into it: https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.10941 , so there's great material to start from. But how can we make it more readable and easy to follow for a beginner or non-math-expert? how can we test it?

          1 reply 1 retweet 20 likes
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        13. Colm MacCárthaigh‏ @colmmacc 23 Jul 2019
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          Have at it and give it a go! Any programming language you like. Apache Software License so that it can be included in other things. Closing date: September 1st 2019.

          2 replies 1 retweet 5 likes
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        14. Colm MacCárthaigh‏ @colmmacc 23 Jul 2019
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          Message me a gist, or a link, or send me an e-mail, whatever works ... and we can talk readability and testing about it too!

          1 reply 1 retweet 5 likes
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        15. Colm MacCárthaigh‏ @colmmacc 23 Jul 2019
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          For further reference: here's my rejection sampling RNG implementation with more comments than code. https://github.com/awslabs/s2n/blob/master/utils/s2n_random.c#L182 … End of thread!

          5 replies 1 retweet 14 likes
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        16. End of conversation

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