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Software

What You Should Know as a Software Developer

• What Every Programmer Should Know about Memory by Ulrich Drepper. Also available as a PDF.
• How Computers Work - Processor and Main Memory by Roger Young.
• Unicode and Character Sets article by Joel Spolsky

Who's Who in Free Software

In this section, there are both links to random free software as well as links to advocacy groups, freelance writers, etc.

• Free Software Foundation - Activist non-profit group, dedicated to promoting usage, creation, modifying, and sharing of truly free software. Maintains the GNU General Public License.
• Electronic Fronteer Foundation - Activist non-profit group, raising awareness of free software and abusive proprietary software as well as advocating for legal changes.
• Open Source Initiative - Non-profit group promoting open-source software and ideals. Maintains the Open Source Definition.
• Software Freedom Conservancy - Non-profit for promoting, improving, developing, and defending Free, Libre, and Open Source Software projects.
• Software in the Public Interest - Non-profit for financially supporting Free ond Open Source Software projects

Free Software

Uncategorized:

• Premake - Create "make" files and Visual Studio project files using Lua.
• Gantt Project - Create Gantt charts and organize projects.

Programming Languages

Python, Lua, Lisp, Rust, Node.js, Go? Here are some you may not know.

• Acorn - An embedded language with emphasis on closures. Part of the Pegasus 3D web browser project architecture.
• AngelScript - C++11 interpreted language. Requires setting up modules. Optimal for programs desiring user-input code to interact with other modules designed in AngelScript.
  • Angel Juice IDE - AngelScript IDE
  • How to make function binding automatic
  • STL-style array that is compatible with AngelScript, complete with code on Github
  • Registering and passing in a class instance of a C++ class (Stack Overflow)
  • Adding AngelScript to a game
• Avail (source code) - General purpose language written in Java and supporting a variety of paradigms.
• Chai Script - Embeddable language for C++11, focusing on ease of integration.
  • Using ChaiScript for game objects.
  • Addition of namespaces:initial issue, pull request (work in progress)
• CoffeeScript - Simple language that converts down to JavaScript.
• Copper - A very easy to read/write, object-oriented, embeddable interpreted language.
  • Documentation
  • Cupric Bridge - GUI hooks for Irrlicht.
  • Curri - Boilerplate code for creating applications with Irrlicht and Copper.
• Falcon - A rich language with support for multiple paradigms (such as "impure functional programming"), closures, list comprehensions, and Unicode, among other things, and has lots of documentation and a number of extensions.

  Note: Linux users may be able to get it via their distro's repo with $ apt-get falconpl

• Grace - A curly-braces-style language designed for teaching newcomers to programming.
• Haxe - A cross platform, GC-managed, statically-typed language targetting native and Android.
• Huo - Functional style language written in C.
• Jx9 - Embeddable language for C++, based on JSON. Supports multi-threading. No "main entry" (like Python).
• Fig - A loose-syntax language designed for new learners of programming.
• Kotlin - Haxe clone-ish.
• Lily (source code) - Type-safe expressive interpreted language.
• Neko - Compiled language designed to be easy to automate output into its source code. Easy hooks into C. Haxe Flixel can output to this, which allows for desktop games.
• Squirrel Lang - Embeddable language. Compiler and explanation of the compiler.
• Vala - GObject-based language used for GNOME. TONS of libraries and hooks, from audio to web, ALSA, Unity, Pango, Webkit, etc. Read the docs. A closely-related language that uses Python-style syntax is Genie, which also lets you use GObject natively.
• Wren - A fast, small, lightweight, concurrent, object-oriented embeddable scripting language written in C with no dependencies.
• Yorick - Interactive scientific computation and visualization language with a syntax vaguely resembling JavaScript. May appeal to programmers who don't like Mathematica syntax.

Works in progress

• XieXie (Guide) - A compiled language with syntax very close to Java and traces of Matlab, etc. Has built-in support for audio playback.

There are many hobby languages on Github, which you can find with queries like "programming language virtual machine" or (better) "interpreted language".

Rust

• Sodium Oxide - Cryptographic library in Rust.
• How to write a Rust syntax extension

Clojure

• Light Table IDE - (Source code) Ideal for Clojure but also designed to work with other languages.
• Java Script vs Clojure - a comparison of the differences.
• Clojure Script - Clojure-to-JavaScript "compiler"
• Brave Clojure - Information about how to program in Clojure.

Node.js

• Node Package Manager - Node JS files. Note: I object to associating Node.js with JavaScript since Node.js has a good size library to go with it, and therefore what works for Node.js doesn't always work for JavaScript.
• NW.js - Formerly "Node-Webkit". Create desktop applications using html, css, and Node.js. In this case, Node.js is activated like Javascript embedded into a page.
  • File dialog box - Creates a file-selector window. Useful for Node-Webkit.
• Electron - Create desktop applications using Node.js. In this case, the program starts with Node.js, which controls everything and decides how the page is created. (More on the differences between Electron on NW.js can be found here.
  • Source code on Github
  • Frameless window - How to make a frameless window in Electron.
• How to Use JSON files in Node.js - My .02: Use JSON.parse(). Don't use "require". You're begging for code-injection since require() correctly parses functions and JSON.parse() should not.
• Working with File-Systems

Haxe

• Haxe main website. - Haxe is a high-level programming language intended to be compiled into other languages so they can work on a native level. It eases the burden of cross-platform and multi-language target coding but at the expense of verbosity. It can be used for desktop applications or web applications, outputting to HTML 5.
• HaxeFlixel - The flash/HTML5/OpenFL game creation library for Haxe. Be aware that distro repositories often contain outdated versions of Haxe, but HaxeFlixel relies upon some of the latest versions.

Visual Programming Languages

Programming with a GUI.

• Pure Data - Audio/Video programming
• Google Blocky - Programming for kids. More info.
• Vizor - Web-technologies-based data-flow programming language. It features live-preview, data flow visualization, network communication, etc.
• Snap! - U. of Berkeley's browser-based programming language for kids.
• Sprog! - Visual programming on top of Perl.
• Glicode - Glico (Japanese treat manufacturer) educational programming language for Android and iOS. You're not allowed to play with your food, but at least now you can program with it. And if you can't read Japanese, there's an English explanation.
• Lava programming environment - for the Lava programming language.
• VRL-Studio - (Source code) (Visual Reflection Library) A rapid-prototyping text+GUI development environment. Requires Netbeans >= 7.01 and Java 1.8. Uses the Groovy interpreted language. Licensed under GPL with some modifications regarding attribution. Please see its license.
• Zaluum (Source code) Visual programming of Java. Eclipse plugin. Integrated GUI editor.

Web

Containers

• Sandstorm - Both apps and data put in containers.
• Docker - Containers.
• Kubernetes - Google's container cluster manager.

Content Management Services

• October CMS - The quasi-CMS development toolkit.
• Apostrophe - The Node.js + MongoDB CMS creation toolkit.

Chat Clients

• Tox Chat - Once famous for being the privacy-advocate replacement to Skype, it's crew is divided. Given it's history, there ar legal issues to resolve, and the departing-but-popular dev team's fork may end up under a new name. uTox is a Tox Client.
• Open Whisper Systems - Super secure chat app for Apple products.

Browsers

• Pegasus 3D Web browser - Still in infancy, it is intended to be a fully 3D immersive web experience.

Misc

• EFF's Surviellance Self-Defense Guide
• Schneier on Security - Bruce Schneier's blog about the wild, wild internet.
• Liferea - Feed aggregator (RSS, Atom, etc.)

Tutorial Link Collections

• How to create a website for business from start to finish
• HTML Tutorials and Training Resources

3D Graphics

Much of this is focused on ray tracing.

Ray Tracing

Ray Tracers

• LuxRender - Powerful realistic raytracer compatible with Blender. 64-bit machines only.
• Yafaray - C++11 raytracing engine. Primarily a plugin for Blender.
• Smallpt Raytracer - Kevin Beason's raytracer in 99 highly compacted lines of C++ (Good luck reading it).
• Picogen - Outdoor-simulation raytracer.

General Info

• Realistic Raytracing - article by Zack Waters introducing the basic principles, including underlying mathematics, sampling techniques, material surfaces, and depth of focus.
• RTfact: Generic concepts for flexible and high performance ray tracing
• Efficiency Issues for Ray Tracing - Brian Smits, University of Utah
• Robust Monte Carlo Methods for Light Transport Simulation - Eric Veach Ph.D dissertation, 1997. Downloadable pdf at the bottom of the page.
• A Practical Model for Subsurface Light Transport - Simulating subsurface light transport in translucent materials to visualize color bleeding and diffusion of light across shadow boundaries. Techniques can be incorporated into coventional raytracers."
• personal site of Inigo Quilez - Contains articles on 3D graphics.

Tutorials and How-To

• Basic Ray-Tracing - Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Science tutorial.
• OpenCL raytracer tutorial

Voxels

• Open-source implementation of "Efficient Sparse Voxel Octrees" - (Google Code Archive) Code of a super fast voxel-scene GPU-based raycaster.
• Binvox - Patrick Min's mesh-to-voxel file converter. Accepts input of VRML, Wavefront .obj, PLY, STL. Outputs .binvox, VTK, MIRA, HIPS, minecraft .schematic, and some others.
• Robust Inside and Outside Solid Voxelization - Nick Darnell's article about occlusion culling voxels that are inside of structures.

Rasterizing

3D Engines

• OGRE - Complex modern game engine using C++11.
• Irrlicht - Very convenient C++ 3D framework, complete with DirectX, OpenGL, and built-in render wrappings, GUI, scene manager, and animators.
• LibCinder - 3D/2D C++ engine targetting audio and video applications for Windows and OSX.
• Panda 3D - Engine by Disney, now maintained by Carengie Mellon. Uses Python for API.
• Open GLFW - An OpenGL library.

Meshes

• Make Human - Produce realistic human meshes via adjusting body parameters.
• Smart Body - Pre-defined realistic human animations for meshes with bone structures.
  • Irrlicht integration discussion

Rasterizing, OpenGL, shaders,...

• Synthclipse - GLSL shader development environment based on Eclipse IDE.
• Array Fire - GPU code library supporting CUDA and most OpenCL devices.

GUI for Engines

• RmlUi - A web-tech-style UI framework for C++. Requires rendering buffer via another engine, so great for games, OGRE, etc. Documentation
• UltimateC++ - A non-traditional, memory-safe GUI engine for C++ applications. Cross platform.
• IrrExtensions - A curated collection of extensions, primarily GUI, for the Irrlicht engine.

Misc

• 3D Programming Weekly - A list of short articles and code for anyone interested in creating a 3D engine. Includes articles on matrix math, reflecting rays, and intersecting boxes with rays/lines.
• Patrick Min's website, with articles concerning 3D-model (mesh) search engines and acoustic modeling for virtual environments.

2D Graphics

Software

• Synfig Studio - Animate shapes, colors, sizes, and images. Allows for tying elements to bones and animating.
  • Synfig tutorials
• Graphviz - For creating graphs and charts using a simple scripting language. Can export to SVG and PostScript.
• Glyphr Studio - Web app for designing fonts.

Video Game Creation and Business

• Lost Garden - A treasure trove of insightful articles and good advice on video game creation, marketing, community building, and other things related to the business.
  • Cozy Games - Why making nice games benefits you and your gaming community.
• Learning Programming and Game Design - A list of links from Villanova Univ for beginners for learning programming and video game creation.

Philosophy

Qualia

• Online papers on consciousness and qualia - compiled by David Chalmers

Digital-related

• You Might Never Upload Your Brain Into A Computer