Welcome to the ninth issue of The Left Fold, a weekly programming news and article digest.

Flickr Doesn't Branch : how they do continuous integration and develop new features without branching. ( reddit )

Pitfalls of Object-Oriented Programming: highlights the memory impact of OO techniques in the context of graphics rendering. Summary starts on page 108.

Making GHC's I/O Manager More Scalable: a quick look into how GHC supports lightweight threads that don't block when performing I/O.

Unladen Swallow project no longer optimistic about removing the GIL: the project aiming to improve CPython's performance has recently updated its plan with a pessimistic outlook on removing the lock that prevents threads from executing simultaneously in the same process.

Python, Surprise Me!: a series of inconsistencies.

Why BASIC is Still Relevant: little explanation of the machinery necessary.