I love this kind of explorations. Where does the term boilerplate code come? Let's find out.

Interesting look at the perception of cellphones before they even existed.

Very interesting article. The medieval pig is totally not like we imagined, both on how it looked or how it behaved.

Very interesting post about the history of UML and the MDA approach. Clearly MDA and UML v2 was the beginning of the end for UML. That's too bad, I find UML still useful for sketching and communication between humans.

The death of the floppy disk has been greatly exaggerated it seems. At least for now...

Interesting Java history put in perspective. Indeed it's been stagnant and have been picking up again... reminds me of another famous language.

Let's get the record about medieval time straight, shall we? They weren't as filthy as we like to pretend, far from it.

One of the best developer tools around for analysis and profiling. I'm glad it exists, saved me a few times.

OK, now that's a surprising bit of DNS history.

Good explanation of how repair turned into an art in Japan. It also shows that imperfections can bring values to an object and are part of its history. It makes each object unique.

Definitely contradicts our preconceived ideas regarding labor before the industrial revolution.

A very interesting look at the history of the Agile movement. What it really meant and what it degenerated into.

It's a very nice paper on spreadsheets and how we use them. It got enough history in it to make me tick (goes back all the way to the 1300s!). Also it's well balanced, it's not just about blindly blaming tools but looks at their shortcomings but also how we often use the wrong tool for the task... and then end up managing data and knowledge really badly.

Interesting question, and luckily the top answer is coming from someone who put in the work and memory to do a thorough history recap. Interesting stuff.

Long and very interesting series of posts debunking the myths around Sparta. Where we learn it was a very unequal society... and that on top of being very violent... turns out, once again, all that violence was for nothing. The end of the regime is actually fairly pathetic.

Still somehow they managed to build a myth thanks to a few accomplices. That served them somewhat well but didn't last long. And now that myth is permeating pop culture and inspires toxic masculinity.

Smoke and mirrors.

Now that's a fairly surprising situation. In some way this is logical though and can be seen through recent history. Unsurprisingly, this comes with its own clique effects challenges like discrimination or overprotecting "your group".

EN: Surprising history little article about how even on something as important as declaring a war as over, sometimes simply... we forget.

FR: Article historique inattendu sur ou comment même sur quelque chose d'aussi important que de déclarer une guerre comme finie, parfois simplement... on oublie.

Fascinating piece on how Japan dealt with the arrival of westerners. But also how the westerners did (and still) perceive the relationship with a lot of delusion due to arrogance and racism biases. It is a good example on how the winners tend to attempt to rewrite history.

It also shows how Japan somewhat turned into an inspiration for other Asian countries. I learned a lot.