Jacks Repository

The other day I attempted to browse a J script described in an old blog post only to find that my employer’s network monkeys had blocked the file sharing service. I’ve railed about IT control freaks in the past. They will not rest until it’s impossible to do useful work. I fumed and grumbled until I perceived a bigger problem. I have so many references to program code in this blog that it’s getting tedious tracking them down. Wouldn’t it be nice if my hacks were neatly organized in one coherent repository?

Let me introduce jacks. jacks, or “J-hacks”, organizes the J related code referenced in this blog into a single GitHub repository. Most of the scripts in jacks are one-offs but some have proven so useful that it makes sense to store them in a repository and track changes. From now on jacks will be the first place to look for code from this blog. You pull the contents of jacks into a new Git repository with the commands:

git init
git remote add jacks https://github.com/bakerjd99/jacks.git
git pull jacks master

It took me a few moments to settle on the name “jacks.” I considered “jokes” because programmers often take their code too seriously and “jocks” because J programmers are wild out of control convention eschewing code jocks but jacks won out when I remembered the refrain “jack be nimble, jack be quick, jack jump over” whatever coding problem is pissing you off.