Cool Stuff
Some things I would recommend:
-
The OCaml programming language is a
dialect of ML. It has first-class functions and closures, as found in
Lisp, but it does type-checking at compile time. You get 95% of the
power of Lisp with faster debugging, fewer run-time errors, and
cleaner code. Things you will miss from Lisp include easy macros and
automatically-defined I/O functions. Personally, I find that the warm
fuzzy feeling I get from static type-checking more than makes up for
these. The free compiler can generate small, fast, native code
executables for lots of platforms, including Linux, Windows, and Mac
OS X. Compiled programs can be distributed without encumbrance - this
makes it easy to give fast executable binaries to other people. OCaml
is my current language of choice.
- The VNC remote viewing
software lets one use a Unix X-windows session or a Windows computer
remotely. (It is
like GNU
screen, but for graphical sessions.) This is handy if you want to
access your office machine from home or while traveling, or if you are
stuck with the wrong operating system on your desktop machine. It's
better than a remote X session because you can switch displays in the
middle of a session and the viewing software is free and available for
many platforms. There is even a viewer written in Java so you can
connect to your X session from any web browser! The `remote desktop'
feature in GNOME is a VNC server, although a pretty slow one.
- I like the Google Chrome
browser even more then Firefox. It's fast and works on
Windows, Mac OS, and Linux.
- The Linux operating system is very
robust and portable. If you like to program, you'll like Unix.
- The GNU Emacs
editor is great.
- If you like books, you should know about
the AddAll used book finder.
- Hipmunk has a nice UI for
finding airfares.
Configuration
In case it helps you, some configuration files I use:
I would welcome any bugfixes, tips, or suggestions for improvement!
Wheeler Ruml