Posts by Matthew Prast

Right after college I spent two years at Microsoft, working on an internal pipeline that handled real-time telemetry data for Hotmail, OneDrive (SkyDrive back then), and some other major services. All told it was a great job; I got to hang out in Seattle and learn from some very smart...

By Matthew Prast

CORRECTION: In this article I make that case that Mario's name is just Mario, not Super Mario. Hacker News user bitwize pointed out that in certain games Mario's bigger form (the form he turns into after picking up a Super Mushroom) is indeed referred to as...

By Matthew Prast

It's a pedagogical pet peeve of mine when technical concepts are simply listed in their fully developed state, with little in the way of motivation, derivation, or historical context. This, I think, is like publishing a cookbook filled with beautiful pictures of cakes, but no recipes. My aim...

By Matthew Prast

I've been writing some guides at my startup, Nerve, for newer engineers. My aim is to cover things you don't necessarily have to know to do your job, but which will probably come in handy at some point in your career. This is a guide to...

By Matthew Prast

The other day I came across some people on The Internet talking about a certain scene from Labyrinth, which is a movie from the 80s (if you haven't seen it you should - lavish musical numbers, very unsettling Jim Henson puppetry, David Bowie doing contact juggling in spandex,...

By Matthew Prast