2025-08-29
You no longer need JavaScript
lyra.horse/blog/2025/08/you-dont-need-jsAn overview of what makes modern CSS so awesome.
2025-08-21
A Brief Guide to A Few Algebraic Structures
argumatronic.com/posts/2019-06-21-algebra-cheatsheet.htmlI started writing this post because, for whatever reason, I keep forgetting what the difference is between a ring and a group, which is funny to me because I never forget the difference between a semiring and a semigroup – although other people do, because it’s quite easy to forget! So, I wanted a fast reference to the kinds of algebraic structures that I am most often dealing with in one way or another, usually because I’m writing Haskell (which has some reliance on terminology and structure from abstract algebra and category theory) or I’m trying to read a book about category theory and they keep talking about “groups.” Wikipedia, of course, defines all these structures, and that’s fine, but what I need in those times is more of a refresher than an in-depth explanation.
2025-06-18
You can use `fzf` to review git commits
jvns.ca/til/fzf-preview-git-commitsI just learned that
you can use it to review a git commit like this and I thought that was really
cool.
2025-06-16
CSS Classes considered harmful
www.keithcirkel.co.uk/css-classes-considered-harmfulThe solution to all of these problems
I humbly put forward that modern web development provides us all the utilities to move away from class names and implement something much more robust, with some fairly straightforward changes:
Attributes
Attributes allow us to parameterise a component using a key-value representation, very similar to Map<string, T>. Browsers come with a wealth of selector functions to parse the values of an attribute.
2025-03-18
CASCII - ASCII Diagram Builder
cascii.appA well-equipped ASCII diagram builders freely available on the internet.
It stresses portability, simplicity, and immediateness.
2024-11-22
New stuff in Emacs 30
www.mgmarlow.com/words/2024-07-28-emacs-30-newsReading through the Emacs 30 NEWS file and picking
out the stuff I think is the most interesting.
2024-09-15
Writing an OS in Rust
os.phil-opp.comThis blog series creates a small operating system in the Rust programming language. Each post is a small tutorial and includes all needed code.
2024-08-18
Permacomputing
permacomputing.netPermacomputing is both a concept and a community of practice oriented around issues of resilience and regenerativity in computer and network technology inspired by permaculture.
2024-06-26
A (more) Modern CSS Reset
piccalil.li/blog/a-more-modern-css-resetA reckless introduction to Hindley-Milner type inference
reasonableapproximation.net/2019/05/05/hindley-milner.html2024-06-24
Counting Immutable Beans: Reference Counting Optimized for Purely Functional Programming
arxiv.org/abs/1908.05647Most functional languages rely on some garbage collection for automatic memory management. They usually eschew reference counting in favor of a tracing garbage collector, which has less bookkeeping overhead at runtime. On the other hand, having an exact reference count of each value can enable optimizations, such as destructive updates. We explore these optimization opportunities in the context of an eager, purely functional programming language. We propose a new mechanism for efficiently reclaiming memory used by nonshared values, reducing stress on the global memory allocator. We describe an approach for minimizing the number of reference counts updates using borrowed references and a heuristic for automatically inferring borrow annotations. We implemented all these techniques in a new compiler for an eager and purely functional programming language with support for multi-threading. Our preliminary experimental results demonstrate our approach is competitive and often outperforms state-of-the-art compilers.
2024-06-21
On testing Go code using the standard library | Henrique Vicente
henvic.dev/posts/testing-goMost programming language ecosystems provide assert functions in their testing libraries but not Go's. Go's standard testing package follows a more direct and to-the-point approach.
2024-06-18
Understanding a Python closure oddity
utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/python/UnderstandingClosureOddity2024-06-17
OpenBSD, the computer appliance maker's secret weapon
hiandrewquinn.github.io/til-site/posts/openbsd-the-computer-appliance-maker-s-secret-weaponBetween our ESP32 prokaryotic organisms and our 24/7 Internet-enabled megafauna servers, there exists a vast and loosely-defined ecosystem of things the B2B world likes to call computer appliances. Picture a bespoke Pi 4 packaged up neatly with some Python scripts, a little fancy plastic embossing, and maybe a well-guarded id_ed25519.pub in case you end up in hot water during the (long - very long, stable cash flow for generations long) maintenance contract, and you’re in the ballpark.
2024-06-14
litterbox - IRC logger
git.causal.agency/litterbox/about2024-06-13
The magic of dependency resolution
ochagavia.nl/blog/the-magic-of-dependency-resolutionCategory Theory in Context
math.jhu.edu/~eriehl/context.pdfAPI Tokens: A Tedious Survey
fly.io/blog/api-tokens-a-tedious-surveyComparison between types of API tokens.
2024-06-11
Exploring Gleam, a type-safe language on the BEAM!
christopher.engineering/en/blog/gleam-overviewFrom Erlang, to Elixir and now, GLEAM!?
2024-06-10
Modern IRC Client Protocol
modern.ircdocs.horseLiving specification of the IRC protocol. Does not include brand new behavior, just existing behavior present in IRC software and/or networks (new extensions are IRCv3's area).