small string optimization

Nicholas Ormrod's CppCon 2016 talk on how Facebook optimizes std::string with its open-source replacement fbstring. It covers storage layout tradeoffs, small string optimization and memory allocation behavior.

Ruby developer Avdi Grimm gives a seven-minute tour of Pharo Smalltalk's development environment, focusing on tools like search-by-example and the integrated, live coding experience.

Aditya Siram argues that functional programming has much to learn from Smalltalk's interactivity, using Pharo and Squeak to show live, visual, explorable programming environments.

Noel Rappin's MountainWest RubyConf talk introduces Smalltalk to Ruby programmers. He compares the two languages' object models, blocks, 1-based arrays, simple syntax and live programming environment, and walks through sample code.

Sixty Symbols interviews Nottingham cosmologist Tony Padilla, who says string theory deserves to be taken seriously. He explains how strings emerged from the equations rather than being invented.

A Computer History Museum demonstration with Dan Ingalls of Smalltalk-76 running on a Xerox Alto, recorded in 2017. He shows the live environment and discusses the system.

A roughly two-hour demonstration by Dan Ingalls of Smalltalk running on the Computer History Museum's restored Xerox Alto. It shows the integrated environment and language designed at Xerox PARC as personal dynamic media.

Stephen Kell's Strange Loop talk argues that C and Unix already contain Smalltalk-like dynamism and introspection that can be exposed. He presents his liballocs research on bridging dynamic and compiled languages.

Morphcat Games explains how they fit Micro Mages, a full-featured NES game, into 40 kilobytes. It covers compression of sprites and level layouts and other space-saving tricks.

Matt Godbolt, creator of Compiler Explorer, tours surprising optimizations modern compilers perform, such as turning loops into closed-form sums and using popcount instructions. He explores what the compiler does behind the scenes.

Andrei Alexandrescu's ACCU 2016 talk previews material from his book on writing fast code, with a focus on optimization techniques such as sentinels and faster search.

Alan Kay's tribute to Ted Nelson at the Intertwingled festival, presented using a revived Smalltalk-78 system running on emulated 1970s Xerox PARC hardware. It shows live, user-programmable software from that era.

David Schachter describes how he made a data-collection Python program run 114,000 times faster, drawing on decades of experience. The talk covers pipelining, cache effects and other optimization lessons.

Chandler Carruth's CppNow 2013 keynote on how C++ builds complex software from simple emergent structures, and how compilers optimize them through inlining and value semantics.

Smalltalk pioneer Dan Ingalls presents the Lively Kernel at JSConf US 2012, a live, direct-manipulation programming environment running in the browser. He shows drag-and-drop building of live objects on the web.

A one-minute satirical clip of a person trying to pass as a normal guy with the line "Did you see that ludicrous display last night?". It parodies awkward small talk about sports.

A very short clip titled Criminal Conspiracy Notes, apparently the scene from The Wire in which Stringer Bell scolds his associates for taking written notes at a meeting.

A short IBM behind-the-scenes documentary on how researchers moved individual atoms to make the world's smallest movie. It introduces the scientists and their work on atomic memory and data storage.

Emery Berger explains why performance is hard to measure and deliver on modern hardware, showing how code layout and alignment can swamp optimization effects. He presents Stabilizer for statistically sound evaluation and Coz, a causal profiler.

A full upload of Alan Kay's 1987 talk, with demos of several Smalltalk-era software systems and ideas about visual, kinesthetic and symbolic reasoning. It includes a Smalltalk program written by a 12-year-old and footage of the Rand tablet.

Chandler Carruth's CppCon 2014 talk on writing fast C++, explaining why data structure choice and memory layout matter more than clever algorithms. It covers why standard containers like unordered_map perform poorly on modern CPUs.

Andrei Alexandrescu's CppCon 2019 talk revisits sorting, showing how branchless tricks, hybrid strategies and a cost metric can speed up std::sort-style algorithms on modern hardware.

Matt Godbolt's CppCon 2017 talk shows what modern compilers do with your C++ code, using Compiler Explorer to inspect generated assembly. It covers surprising optimizations and how the tool works.

Ed March rides a Honda C90 through Iran on his journey from Malaysia to the UK, showing the country and its people. He argues Iran is far more welcoming than the press suggests.

Chandler Carruth's CppCon 2016 talk tries to defuse the heated debate over undefined behavior in C and C++. He explains from the compiler writer's perspective why UB exists and how it enables optimization.

A short Wendover Productions explainer on ETOPS, the rules that let twin-engine jets fly long routes over oceans. It covers the economics that favored twinjets like the 787 over four-engine aircraft like the A380 and 747.

Stephan T. Lavavej's CppCon 2019 talk on implementing floating-point to_chars and from_chars in Microsoft's C++ STL. It covers the history of float-string conversion and the algorithms that make it much faster.

Maciej Ceglowski's talk at Web Directions argues that small teams and lone programmers can build sustainable businesses without chasing Silicon Valley's grow-or-die model. He offers alternative, more achievable definitions of success.

The first part of Google's Python Class, taught by Nick Parlante, introducing the language and its strings. It is aimed at people with some programming familiarity and comes with exercises.

Scott Wlaschin's NDC Oslo talk on four 1970s languages, SQL, Prolog, ML and Smalltalk. It explains their philosophies and what practical principles they still offer modern developers.

A 1995 Sun Microsystems film about the Self programming language, a prototype-based Smalltalk relative, showing its live, graphical programming environment.

Kirsten Dirksen visits architect Gary Chang's 32 square meter Hong Kong apartment, which he has redesigned over decades. Sliding walls and transformable furniture turn it into 24 different room configurations.

Tom Scott explains phatic expressions such as hello, thank you and how are you, which carry social meaning rather than information, and why replies like no problem can seem rude to some people.

A 12-minute demo of the Alternate Reality Kit, built by Randall Smith at Xerox PARC in 1986. It is a simulated physical world in which users manipulate objects and program by direct interaction.

A recording of Richard Feynman's talk on the possibilities of manipulating matter at very small scales, widely seen as an early vision of nanotechnology. This is a later version of his 1959 "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom" lecture.

Christian Schafmeister presents CANDO at the 2016 European Lisp Symposium. It is a compiled Lisp-based language for designing macromolecules and nanoscale materials, built on the Clasp implementation of Common Lisp.

Tudor Girba's Curry On! 2019 talk on moldable development, the idea that developers should build custom tools and views for each software system they work on. It draws on the Pharo and Glamorous Toolkit environments.

A tour of Christian Schallert's 24 square meter apartment in Barcelona, designed so that it looks like an empty cube until he builds the furniture he needs. Kirsten Dirksen shows how the space is transformed for cooking, sleeping and dressing.

IBM's record-setting stop-motion film made by moving individual carbon monoxide molecules with a scanning tunneling microscope, illustrating atomic-scale memory research.

A one-minute clip of slime mold placed on a map with food at the cities around Tokyo, growing a network that approximates the Tokyo-area railway system.