Computer programming by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
Programming is hard. To Ciro Santilli, it's almost masochistic.
What makes Ciro especially mad when programming is not the hard things.
It is the things that should be easy, but aren't, and which take up a lot of your programming time.
Especially when you are already a few levels of "simple problems" down from your original goal, and another one of them shows up.
This is basically the cause of Hofstadter's law.
But of course, it is because it is hard that it feels amazing when you achieve your goal.
Putting a complex and useful program together is like composing a symphony, or reaching the summit of a hard rock climbing proble.
Programming can be an art form. There can be great beauty in code and what it does. It is a shame that this is hard to see from within the walls of most companies, where you are stuck doing a small specific task as fast as possible.
Glitch by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
A glitch is more precisely a software bug that is hard to reproduce. But it has also been used to mean a software bug that is not very serious.
Standard cell library by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
Basically what register transfer level compiles to in order to achieve a real chip implementation.
After this is done, the final step is place and route.
The standard cell library is typically composed of a bunch of versions of somewhat simple gates, e.g.:
  • AND with 2 inputs
  • AND with 3 inputs
  • AND with 4 inputs
  • OR with 2 inputs
  • OR with 3 inputs
and so on.
Each of those gates has to be designed by hand as a 3D structure that can be produced in a given fab.
Simulations are then carried out, and the electric properties of those structures are characterized in a standard way as a bunch of tables of numbers that specify things like:
  • how long it takes for electrons to pass through
  • how much heat it produces
Those are then used in power, performance and area estimates.
Dirac equation by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
Adds special relativity to the Schrödinger equation, and the following conclusions come basically as a direct consequence of this!
Experiments not explained: those that quantum electrodynamics explains like:
See also: Dirac equation vs quantum electrodynamics.
The Dirac equation is a set of 4 partial differential equations on 4 complex valued wave functions. The full explicit form in Planck units is shown e.g. in Video 1. "Quantum Mechanics 12a - Dirac Equation I by ViaScience (2015)" at youtu.be/OCuaBmAzqek?t=1010:
Equation 1.
Expanded Dirac equation in Planck units
.
Then as done at physics.stackexchange.com/questions/32422/qm-without-complex-numbers/557600#557600 from why are complex numbers used in the Schrodinger equation?, we could further split those equations up into a system of 8 equations on 8 real-valued functions.
Video 1.
Quantum Mechanics 12a - Dirac Equation I by ViaScience (2015)
Source.
Video 2.
PHYS 485 Lecture 14: The Dirac Equation by Roger Moore (2016)
Source.
Verilog by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
Examples under verilog, more details at Verilator.

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