Reviews by Team: Hackers

XKCD is comprised of mostly nerdy sciencey things that are even over my head, and I sit around writing software all day. The comic has become somewhat of an internet phenomenon and is cited quite frequently.

cjdns is a very simple, yet powerful routing layer. It is meant to replace the internet at the protocol level. All traffic is encrypted between each peer and everyone has a static ipv6 ip address. Nodes manually peer with each other via config file. The routing uses kademlia so if peers are geographically close to each other, then network routing is much faster than the current internet topography.

Spacemacs is a distribution of Emacs that completely overhauls the editor. Originally the default mode was based on vim key bindings, but the app lets you choose between emacs or vim default mode on install now-a-days [I still use vim key bindings]. It introduces the concept of a “leader” key which is supposed to reduce repetition induced strain since it only requires one hand. For example to launch Magit (emacs git client) you type <space> <g> <s> in sequence rather than some weird key combination consisting of control and alt keys. The characters after the space key are grouped by mnemonic [g is for git, s is for status]. I have found myself to be about 100 times more productive in spacemacs than any other editor. The learning curve is pretty shallow as well. I would definitely recommend any programmer give it a try.