Atomic Spin

Software Science • Jun 18, 2012

Solving Sudoku in C with Recursive Backtracking

Recursive backtracking algorithms are incredibly powerful, solving complex problems with little bookkeeping. Here's an example of one in action.

Personal Optimization • Jun 18, 2012

Creating a Design Portfolio that Gets You Hired

Here are the 5 things that really get my attention — things make me say "Here's somebody I'd love to have as my design intern!"

DevOps & System Admin. • Jun 14, 2012

Creating Encrypted, Offsite Backups with Duplicity

We found a way to create secure, space-efficient remote backups with Duplicity. It supports AWS S3 and other kinds of remote storage with compression and encryption.

Evolving the Industry • Jun 12, 2012

Computer Programming Is Still an Art

Do you write software? Then Don Knuth would consider you an artist. And so would I.

Embedded Systems • Jun 11, 2012

Bringing TDD & Embedded Programming Together with QP

I’ve been struggling with making TDD work in embedded software design. Using QP made me realize that perhaps the problem isn't our tools. It's our policy.

Evolving the Industry • Jun 07, 2012

Why There’s No One Named Ruby Programming in Ruby

AO BitCamp: doing our part to address gender inequity in the STEM fields.

Ruby • Jun 07, 2012

PiecePipe – Pipe dreams in Ruby

PiecePipe lets you break your code into meaningful steps and arrange them in a pipeline to get clearer intent and decoupling from iteration.

Project & Team Management • Jun 05, 2012

Prune Your Backlog

A backlog is often created once and then looked at one iteration at a time. Maintaining it will help you get the best information about your project.

Web Apps • Jun 05, 2012

Safely Parsing Parameters from a Rails Log

A technique to parse the request parameters from a Rails log back into a Ruby hash.

Business Practices • Jun 04, 2012

Characteristics of an Ideal Work Environment

This venn diagram describes the ideal place to create great innovation.

Embedded Systems • Jun 01, 2012

Embedded Projects Need Pull Requests

I was recently inspired by this github blog post and I think pull requests could enable a nearly ideal workflow for embedded projects.

Evolving the Industry • May 31, 2012

Meeting the Growing Demand for Software Professionals

The U.S. isn't producing enough skilled software professionals. We need more educational opportunities and more encouragement from parents and teachers.