Fortran: Arrays Indexed from Anywhere
FORTRAN, ancient giant among scientific languages, has arrays starting at 1 by default—unless explicitly told otherwise. Want to start indexing from -42? Totally allowed. Mixing arrays with arbitrary indexing schemes led to some impressively baffling code, explaining why FORTRAN still frightens new devs.
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/dev/null: The Original Digital Black Hole
UNIX introduced '/dev/null'—the system's ultimate trash can—early in its life (Version 4 UNIX, 1973-ish). Feeding it data instantly discards it. Sysadmins lovingly refer to it as the bit bucket, digital abyss, or management's feedback inbox. Coincidentally, its throughput remains unbeaten.
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Unix Man Pages: Accidental Scripture of Sysadmin Masochism
Unix’s man pages, universally feared yet indispensable, started as an unintended publishing project. Early Bell Labs engineers dreaded documenting their work, often leaving terse placeholders or vague ramblings for commands they figured no sane person would ever run anyway. But somehow, these rough scribbles became canonical scripture. Over the decades,...
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Linux Mascot Born From Torvalds’ Aussie Penguin Assault Trauma
Why a penguin? Torvalds has humorously claimed he chose Linux’s iconic penguin, Tux, because he was once viciously bitten by a ferocious Australian penguin, and thus became fixated on the waddling beasts. Actually, the story is somewhat true—Torvalds had a bizarre run-in with a penguin at a zoo. After recounting...
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Unix Apocalypse Scheduled for 2038: Y2K’s Nastier Sequel Looms
Thought Y2K was anticlimactic? Just wait. Unix systems measure time in seconds from January 1, 1970—the famous "Unix epoch." Unfortunately, storing this timestamp as a signed 32-bit integer means it overflows in 2038. On Tuesday, January 19, 2038 at precisely 03:14:07 UTC, the Unix timestamp flips negative, and if your...
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Linux Kernel Crowned World’s Largest Curated Profanity Collection
Linus Torvalds never minced words, famously spicing up kernel commentary with creative swearing aimed at incompetent vendors and misguided developers. Early kernel sources overflowed with colorful profanity, insults, and sarcastic abuse—forming an unofficial chronicle of Linux’s early development struggles. Researchers later determined that Linux’s source code contained more profanity per...
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