Posts in 2021

 

Rather than alchemy, methodical troubleshooting

I recently encountered a pesky problem while trying to build a React Native project under Apple’s Xcode. The build would fail with an error reporting: EMFILE: too many open files, watch. Frustratingly, all available advice on the web pointed to different (often inexplicable) directions, none of which worked. After tormenting myself with these, I decided to troubleshoot the problem methodically, which allowed me to pinpoint it and solve it with an uncommon and noteworthy application of the git bisect command. Here’s the story.

Continue reading "Rather than alchemy, methodical troubleshooting"

The Evolution of the Unix System Architecture

Unix has evolved for more than five decades, shaping modern operating systems, key software technologies, and development practices. Studying the evolution of this remarkable system from an architectural perspective can provide insights on how to manage the growth of large, complex, and long-lived software systems. In 2016 my colleague Paris Avgeriou and I embarked on this study aiming to combine his software architecture insights with my software analytics skills. Here is a brief summary of the study, which was published this month in the IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering.

Continue reading "The Evolution of the Unix System Architecture"

Reviving the 1973 Unix text to voice translator

The early Research Edition Unix versions featured a program that would turn a stream of ASCII text into utterances that could be played by a voice synthesizer. The source code of this program was lost for years. Here’s the story of how I brought it back to life.

Continue reading "Reviving the 1973 Unix text to voice translator"

Become a Unix command line wizard
edX MOOC on Unix Tools: Data, Software, and Production Engineering
Debug like a master
Book cover of Effective Debugging
Compute with style
Book cover of The Elements of Computing Style
Syndication
This blog is also available as an RSS feed:

Category Tags
AI (4)
AWS (4)
Android (2)
Apple (11)
C (21)
C++ (17)
Computers (58)
Databases (5)
Debugging (10)
Discussion (6)
Electronics (15)
Environment (1)
FreeBSD (26)
Funny (14)
GSIS (5)
Git (2)
Google (6)
Government (3)
Hacks (26)
Hardware (27)
History (13)
Information systems (1)
Internet (12)
Java (26)
JavaScript (1)
Linux (7)
Management (27)
Microsoft (11)
One Laptop Per Child (3)
Open source (58)
Opinion (30)
Parenting (11)
Perl (13)
Photos (13)
Politics (5)
Programming (110)
Python (3)
R (1)
Raspberry Pi (6)
Risks (7)
Scala (1)
Science (34)
Security (26)
Sights (19)
Smartphones (3)
Software (22)
Software engineering (93)
Standards (7)
System administration (46)
Teaching (9)
Technology (33)
Testing (3)
Tips (43)
Tools of the Trade (52)
Travel (9)
UML (6)
Unix (52)
Web (31)
Windows (17)
Writing (45)
XML (10)
vim (5)
Archive
Complete contents (380)
2024 (1)
2023 (5)
2022 (2)
2021 (3)
2020 (15)
2019 (4)
2018 (5)
2017 (20)
2016 (7)
2015 (6)
2014 (5)
2013 (13)
2012 (17)
2011 (14)
2010 (13)
2009 (40)
2008 (40)
2007 (41)
2006 (48)
2005 (44)
2004 (30)
2003 (7)

Last update: Monday, February 5, 2024 5:49 pm

Creative Commons Licence BY NC

Unless otherwise expressly stated, all original material on this page created by Diomidis Spinellis is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.