Ciro Santilli is a big believer that there is value in tutorials written by beginners, because beginners are more likely to explain things in a way that other beginners can understand.
Even though they make more mistakes, this more approachable point of view can be very valuable.
And mistakes/omissions can be corrected on comments by people with more knowledge, so that the writer also ends up learning something new.
By other people:
- jakobschwichtenberg.com/about/ from Jakob Schwichtenberg mentions quotes C. S. Lewis book "Reflections on the Psalms"[ref]:
It often happens that two schoolboys can solve difficulties in their work for one another better than the master can. [...] The fellow-pupil can help more than the master because he knows less. The difficulty we want him to explain is one he has recently met. The expert met it so long ago he has forgotten. He sees the whole subject, by now, in a different light that he cannot conceive what is really troubling the pupil; he sees a dozen other difficulties which ought to be troubling him but aren't.
However it won't remain like that for long, because it will be migrated to OurBigBook.com, and therefore become a brain dump of society itself.
Unmigrated sections of the old version of Ciro Santilli's website by 
Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16It is interesting to see how your own ideas shift with time, and Ciro Santilli doesn't think the following are very important anymore, so he was lazy to migrate them.
| Grade | Name | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 4 | C / C++ | Cheatsheets: C, C++, POSIX C API |
| 3 | x86 assembly, ELF | Cheatsheet, x86 Paging Tutorial, Bare Metal |
| 4 | Python | Cheatsheet |
| 4 | Bash | Cheatsheets: language, POSIX / GNU utils |
| 4 | HTML, CSS, JavaScript | web technology, Node.js, CoffeScript |
| 4 | Java | Cheatsheet, school projects |
| 3 | Ruby, Rails | GitLab contributions, cheatsheets: Ruby, rails-cheat |
| 3 | GDB | Cheatsheet |
| 2 | MySQL | Tutorial |
| 3 | LaTeX, Markdown | LaTeX cheatsheet, Markdown style guide, Markdown Testsuite contributions, Jekyll cheatsheet |
That which does not exist, cannot be broken.
And of course:
People love green on black mostly.
How to develop Ciro Santilli's website before the OurBigBook migration by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16The website moved from AsciiDoctor to OurBigBook Markup in 2020, making this section mostly useless. But hey, history!
The source code is located at: github.com/cirosantilli/cirosantilli.github.io
Build locally, watch for changes and rebuild automatically, and start a local server with:
git clone --recursive https://github.com/cirosantilli/cirosantilli.github.io
cd cirosantilli.github.io
bundle install
npm install
./runSource:
./run.The website will be visible at: localhost:4000.
Tested on the latest Ubuntu.
Publish changes to GitHub Pages:
git add -u
git commit -m 'make yourself look sillier'
./publishSource:
./publish.GitHub forces us to use the master branch for the build output... so the actual source is in the branch
dev.Update the gems with:
bundle update
git add Gemfile.lock
git commit -m 'update gems'His website was originally written in markdown, however those were deprecated in favour of AsciiDoctor when Ciro saw the light, rationale shown at: markdown-style-guideuse-asciidoc
GitHub pages is chosen instead of a single page GitHub README.adoc for the following reasons:
- Ciro will want some unsupported extensions, notably mathematics, likely with KaTeX server side:
- github.com/asciidoctor/asciidoctor/pull/3338
- stackoverflow.com/questions/11256433/how-to-show-math-equations-in-general-githubs-markdownnot-githubs-blog
- g14n.info/2014/09/math-on-github-pages/
- stackoverflow.com/questions/11256433/how-to-show-math-equations-in-general-githubs-markdownnot-githubs-blog
- www.quora.com/How-can-I-combine-latex-and-markdown-in-GitHub
- when GitHub dies, Ciro's website URL still lives and retains the PageRank!
Insanely active poster on Stack Overflow 4chan post (2023-07-03) by Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16
Ciro Santilli 40 Updated 2025-07-16archive.ph/Dd3aC web.archive.org/web/20230709141533/https://desuarchive.org/g/thread/94445084/#94448535 desuarchive.org/g/thread/94445084/#94448535
Most of the thread went into pro/anti gay trashtalk due to Ciro using Gay Putin at the time on his Stack Overflow profile as a useless way to protest the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Some comments:
How does this guy manage to be so active on Stack Overflow? I feel like this disgusting avatar is on at least a quarter of all the active posts.
The answers are always pretty good though.
Obviously severe autism. Also racism homophobia Looks like everything is ok if it's Russia/Chinese...
The only new information:
Reminds me of Xah Lee.
Ciro Santilli's energy throughout the day varies as follows:
- morning: highest
- 11AM: peak exercise performance
- after lunch: brain death. Possibly due to Ciro's partial Spanish descent?
- late afternoon and evening: can do some stuff
Ciro has low tolerance to sleep deprivation which makes him very irritable, and low ability to sleep if there is any light. It must have to do with those damned ganglion cell photoreceptors. On the other hand, Ciro Santilli's wife can sleep without any problems with some morning light! It is definitely genetic. Ciro conjectures that people from very Northern parts of the world must have a gene that allows them to sleep even if there is some light, while more equatorial people don't. Maybe: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33049062/
Ciro has mild olfactory synesthesia for star anise (八角, bajiao), which is widely used in Chinese cuisine and makes Ciro think uncontrollably of the color blue. Ciro does not have any other known synesthesias. He is also prone to nerd sniping form time to time.
Ciro is a reptilian-like being with cold hands and feet and low blood pressure. For this reason he believes that he will die of cancer or some respiratory problem. If the Chinese government doesn't get him first that is. This also partly explains why Ciro is not a big fan of swimming.
Besides Chinese food, Ciro really likes eating fruits and roasted nuts, maybe partly because he was born in Brazil, and partly because of monkey nature, see his Chinese name. At home he is known as "水果大王" (the big king of the fruits). Ciro is also a sucker for yoghurt (natural without added sugars and full fat, fat-tree yoghurt is terrible, often eaten with fruits). Ciro's "favorite drink" could be tonic water with freshly squeezed lemon. Tied with fresh fruit juices. Chocolate-wise, although not a huge fanatic, a Lindt dark chocolate with whole hazelnut pieces bar will do the job.
Ciro does not like receiving or giving gifts on expected social situations like birthdays or Christmas. Ciro believes that every day is equally precious, and can be a day to give, be it through awesome open source software contributions, or if you find something that your friend will like
Ciro has some respiratory allergies. When he was around 5, he had relatively serious asthma crisis which scared his parents to death. Throughout his life, he appears to be allergic at an intermediate level to: mold or dust mites (or whatever it is that old books/pillows have), cats (itching on touch), hay fever (in May in the UK, likely grass pollen). But even outside of hayfever season, Ciro's nose is constantly either running in the cold, or often partially blocked while sleeping throughout the year. Ciro believes however that this also gives him higher resistance to viral infections, since it has been many many years since he had a cold/flu, and when everyone in the office is going down with it, he's just fine. Ciro wonders if his active immune system will actually kill off cancers early, which he ranks as his most likely causes of death, along with respiratory and gastro-intestinal problems. Ciro has low blood pressure and cannot get fat, so cardio vascular problems seem much less likely.
Ciro is generally democrat due to his high compassion level. He believes that politics is highly genetically determined, and that just like you enter a room full of people and immediately like some and dislike others, the same goes for politics. People just vote for whoever they want to see more of because their way of speaking makes them feel good. There is not rationality involved in it at all.
Ciro self diagnoses a slight graphomania in the early 2020's. This is largely what led him to create OurBigBook.com, and contribute to Stack Overflow. Literature Nobel Prize laureate Naguib Mahfouz also suffers from the condition however, so maybe good can also come out of it:
When Ciro was quite young, maybe around 7-10, when he got very angry or sad for some stupid reason (bullying perhaps? Ciro forgot), he would have a psychosomatic manifestation: his spine would become visibly curved sideways (scoliosis). While writing this paragraph, Ciro Googled it, and found e.g. medium.com/@michaelrosen_94192/the-root-cause-of-scoliosis-5c461002b634 that describes:so it is a somewhat well known thing! Incredible. Can you imagine the level of the passions that lead to such physical deformations? But of course, it was all for nothing.
The Root Cause of Idiopathic Scoliosis
Ciro Santilli feels that Ciro Santilli Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is much more random/hard to determine than the Big Five personality traits
This is how Ciro Santilli evaluates himself on the Big Five personality traits:
- Openness to experience; very high, see: Ciro Santilli's self perceived creative personality
- Conscientiousness: low, Ciro is driven very strongly by internal passion rather than external expectations
- Extraversion: high online, e.g. Ciro Santilli's campaign for freedom of speech in China, but much lower in the real world, no patience for something he's not Googled for in the last 5 seconds
- Agreeableness: high, see e.g. Ciro Santilli's self perceived compassionate personality. But Ciro has built some tolerance disagreement online for it online during Ciro Santilli's campaign for freedom of speech in China, you've got to fight for what is right.
- Neuroticism: medium high, Ciro does have some anxiety. It does help get things done sometimes, but it also sometimes gets in the way.
Ciro once told a friend that his ideal life would be to "just chill out and eat his bread in peace" (while also learning and teaching the sciences). Quote "Omar Khayyam's chill out quote" comes to mind. See also: Ciro Santilli's cheapness.
David Hall is a chemist known for his contributions to the field of organic chemistry, particularly in areas related to synthesis and reaction mechanisms. His work often involves the development of new synthetic methodologies and understanding chemical reactivity.
Ciro Santilli has an undiagnozed condition where his upper legs and lower torso often start to itch when he runs, to the point of being extremely annoying and removing all pleasure form the activity.
If some doctor knows why this could be, please tell him!!!
The problem is a bit hard to reproduce however, and Ciro hasn't been able to determine which exact condition triggers it: temperature, nutrition, something else?
Ciro believes that this is not chiefly due to transpiration, but rather to the impact motion that running does on the muscles, as he has felt something similar on his arms some times while cycling in very rough terrain, which made his arms shake in a similar fashion. or for example if he has a water bottle on a tightly tied backpack that rubs his back, then the back itches at that point.
Also, running on a threadmill is not a problem at all. Ciro believes that this is because the threadmill is better amortized, and therefore does not cause the same mechanical stress required to create the itching as running on pavement.
Interestingly, Ciro didn't feel that at all when he played soccer enthusiastically as a child, and he was one of the fastest runners of the group for sure at that time. So he's not sure if it started when he got older, or if it is just because the difference in workloads between soccer and running.
youtu.be/PNgYW5N95z8?t=945 "My back itches" after riding on a bumpy makeshift motorcycle.
For more china-related stuff see: cirosantilli.com/china-dictatorship/wife
Excerpt of For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway (1940), slightly adapted for brevity:Related: www.reddit.com/r/OldSchoolCool/comments/hj7bfq/comment/fwkik5v/
"Yes," the girl said. "Truly.""For you, Inglés?" Pilar looked at Robert Jordan. "Don't lie.""Yes," he said. "Truly."
Teresinha performed by Maria Bethânia
. Source. Composed and previously performed by Chico Buarque in 1987: Video "Teresinha by Chico Buarque".
This video has English subtitles, click CC to enable them. This is one of the the best popular Brazilian music (MPB) of all time. A transcribed English translation adapted slightly by Ciro Santilli to be a bit less literal:
The first one came to me as if coming from the flower shop
Brought a stuffed toy, brought an amethyst pin
He told me about his journey and the perks he had
He showed me his watch and called me 'queen'
He found me so undefended that he touched my heart
But he denied me nothing, so, frightened, I said 'no'The second came to me as if coming back from the bar
Brought a bottle of brandy too bitter to swallow
He asked me about my past and sniffed my food
He searched through my drawer and called me 'the lost one'
He found me so undefended that he scratched my heart
But he gave me nothing, so, frightened, I said 'no'
Song of pig by Xiangxiang (2005)
Source. Chinese: 猪之歌 by 香香. Baidu Baike page: baike.baidu.com/item/猪之歌/16181836. A dude wrote the lyrics though: 毛慧 (Mao Hui), but wouldn't have been a hit if he had performed it given the insane gender imbalance in China. Chinese lyrics on mojim: mojim.com/cny104491x1x1.htm. A quick translation:Pig, you have two holes in your nose, and they have snot when you catch a cold
Pig, you have dark eyes, you can't see the edge
Pig, your ears are so big, you can't hear me calling you stupid
Pig, your tail is curled and curled. It turns out that you can't live without it when you run and jump.Pig head, pig brain, pig body, pig tail, a wise toy who is never picky about food
Every day sleep until after three in the afternoon, you never brush your teeth, and you never fightPig, your belly is so bulging, you can tell at a glance that you can't stand the hardships of life
Pig, your skin is so white, you must have been from a rich family in your past life, oh
Legend has it that your ancestor had eight rakes, and it hit a peach blossom criminal.
When you see a beautiful girl, you chuckle, won't blush, and isn't afraid
Ciro Santilli with his soon-to-be Ciro Santilli's mother-in-law during his wedding in 2017
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Pinned article: Introduction to the OurBigBook Project
Welcome to the OurBigBook Project! Our goal is to create the perfect publishing platform for STEM subjects, and get university-level students to write the best free STEM tutorials ever.
Everyone is welcome to create an account and play with the site: ourbigbook.com/go/register. We belive that students themselves can write amazing tutorials, but teachers are welcome too. You can write about anything you want, it doesn't have to be STEM or even educational. Silly test content is very welcome and you won't be penalized in any way. Just keep it legal!
Intro to OurBigBook
. Source. We have two killer features:
- topics: topics group articles by different users with the same title, e.g. here is the topic for the "Fundamental Theorem of Calculus" ourbigbook.com/go/topic/fundamental-theorem-of-calculusArticles of different users are sorted by upvote within each article page. This feature is a bit like:
- a Wikipedia where each user can have their own version of each article
- a Q&A website like Stack Overflow, where multiple people can give their views on a given topic, and the best ones are sorted by upvote. Except you don't need to wait for someone to ask first, and any topic goes, no matter how narrow or broad
This feature makes it possible for readers to find better explanations of any topic created by other writers. And it allows writers to create an explanation in a place that readers might actually find it.
Figure 1. Screenshot of the "Derivative" topic page. View it live at: ourbigbook.com/go/topic/derivativeVideo 2. OurBigBook Web topics demo. Source. - local editing: you can store all your personal knowledge base content locally in a plaintext markup format that can be edited locally and published either:This way you can be sure that even if OurBigBook.com were to go down one day (which we have no plans to do as it is quite cheap to host!), your content will still be perfectly readable as a static site.
- to OurBigBook.com to get awesome multi-user features like topics and likes
- as HTML files to a static website, which you can host yourself for free on many external providers like GitHub Pages, and remain in full control
Figure 3. Visual Studio Code extension installation.
Figure 4. Visual Studio Code extension tree navigation.
Figure 5. Web editor. You can also edit articles on the Web editor without installing anything locally.Video 3. Edit locally and publish demo. Source. This shows editing OurBigBook Markup and publishing it using the Visual Studio Code extension.Video 4. OurBigBook Visual Studio Code extension editing and navigation demo. Source. 
- Infinitely deep tables of contents:
All our software is open source and hosted at: github.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook
Further documentation can be found at: docs.ourbigbook.com
Feel free to reach our to us for any help or suggestions: docs.ourbigbook.com/#contact