Unit testing is hip these days and every programming language has its own JUnit clone that mimics the original more or less closely. For C++, there's the excellent CppUnit package that I've been using extensively lately. Unfortunately, C++ is less dynamic than languages like Java, so you can't simply tell …

On GNOME desktops, the D-Bus IPC standard has superseded the CORBA-based approach. Using D-Bus, the operating system can notify the desktop about hardware changes and applications can communicate with each other in a standardized, simple manner. Using signals it is also possible to get a notification in case there are …

The interactive python interpreter is a highly useful tool. When writing python code, I always run it in a terminal to test things and to access the documentation. Unfortunately, the built-in line editing capabilities are limited: There's no history, tab-completion, or other advanced editing features that shells like bash provide …