20 random bookmarks

2025-08-21

129.

A Brief Guide to A Few Algebraic Structures

argumatronic.com/posts/2019-06-21-algebra-cheatsheet.html

I 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.

2025-06-26

124.

The plan-execute pattern

mmapped.blog/posts/29-plan-execute.html

I feel uneasy about design patterns.
On the one hand, my university class on design patterns revived my interest in programming.
On the other hand, I find most patterns in the Gang of Four book to be irrelevant to my daily work;
they solve problems that a choice of programming language or paradigm creates.

My litmus test of a good design pattern is its cross-disciplinary applicability.
I’m more likely to accept an idea that pops up in fields beyond software engineering.
And the most convincing patterns are the ones that help me in everyday life.

This article describes a universal pattern that billions of people rely on daily, but software engineers rarely discuss—the plan-execute pattern.

2025-06-18

120.

zb beta released

www.zombiezen.com/blog/2025/06/zb-beta-release

zb is a tool for reproducibly building software, similar to Bazel.
(See the comparison page if you’re curious to know the differences.)
When a software build process is reproducible,
it will produce the exact same output
when given the same inputs.
Reproducibility is a desirable property for a software build process to have:
it simplifies debugging,
it enables build speed-ups,
and it is essential for digital supply chain security.
However, reproducibility is a difficult goal to achieve.

2025-06-17

119.

Debugging tricks for IntelliJ

andreabergia.com/blog/2025/06/debugging-tricks-for-intellij

I have been using IntelliJ Idea at work for a decade or so by now, and it’s been a reliable companion. JetBrains IDEs have a bit of a reputation for being slow, but their feature set is incredible: powerful refactoring tools, a great VCS UI (though I like magit even more!), a huge number of supported frameworks, integration with just about any testing library for any language, code coverage tools, powerful debuggers, etc.

2025-06-12

116.

Always do Extra

www.bennorthrop.com/Essays/2021/always-do-extra.php

Extra is different than More. Extra is finishing those two screens, but then researching a new library for form validation that might reduce the boilerplate code. Or it's learning ways to protect against common security vulnerabilities from data entry. These little off-ramps from the main highway of Normal Work could be dead-ends and not have any practical value to the project. But they might also be important contributions. And that's the thing with Extra. While the tangible value to the project is uncertain (it could be nothing this time or it could be something), the value to you is real.

2025-05-28

114.

SAT Live!

localhost:4000
113.

The Ingredients of a Productive Monorepo

blog.swgillespie.me/posts/monorepo-ingredients

2025-03-21

103.

Life Altering Postgresql Patterns

mccue.dev/pages/3-11-25-life-altering-postgresql-patterns

2025-03-18

102.

CASCII - ASCII Diagram Builder

cascii.app

A well-equipped ASCII diagram builders freely available on the internet.
It stresses portability, simplicity, and immediateness.

2025-01-17

98.

Earthstar

earthstar-project.org

Storage for private, distributed, offline-first applications. Earthstar is a specification and JavaScript library for building connected applications owned and run by their users.

2024-08-15

67.

Writing a C Compiler

nostarch.com/writing-c-compiler

A fun, hands-on guide to writing your own compiler for a real-world programming language.

2024-07-03

59.

Announcing wcurl: a curl wrapper to download files

samueloph.dev/blog/announcing-wcurl-a-curl-wrapper-to-download-files

2024-06-27

56.

plainweb

www.plainweb.dev

plainweb is a framework using HTMX, SQLite and TypeScript for less complexity and more joy.

2024-06-24

51.

Deriving Dependently-Typed OOP from First Principles -- Extended Version with Additional Appendices

arxiv.org/abs/2403.06707

The expression problem describes how most types can easily be extended with new ways to produce the type or new ways to consume the type, but not both. When abstract syntax trees are defined as an algebraic data type, for example, they can easily be extended with new consumers, such as print or eval, but adding a new constructor requires the modification of all existing pattern matches. The expression problem is one way to elucidate the difference between functional or data-oriented programs (easily extendable by new consumers) and object-oriented programs (easily extendable by new producers). This difference between programs which are extensible by new producers or new consumers also exists for dependently typed programming, but with one core difference: Dependently-typed programming almost exclusively follows the functional programming model and not the object-oriented model, which leaves an interesting space in the programming language landscape unexplored. In this paper, we explore the field of dependently-typed object-oriented programming by deriving it from first principles using the principle of duality. That is, we do not extend an existing object-oriented formalism with dependent types in an ad-hoc fashion, but instead start from a familiar data-oriented language and derive its dual fragment by the systematic use of defunctionalization and refunctionalization. Our central contribution is a dependently typed calculus which contains two dual language fragments. We provide type- and semantics-preserving transformations between these two language fragments: defunctionalization and refunctionalization. We have implemented this language and these transformations and use this implementation to explain the various ways in which constructions in dependently typed programming can be explained as special instances of the phenomenon of duality.

2024-06-20

46.

Why does SQLite (in production) have such a bad rep?

avi.im/blag/2024/sqlite-bad-rep

2024-06-14

33.

A useful shell prompt

blog.meain.io/2022/my-shell-prompt

Featureful zsh prompt.

2024-06-13

24.

Category Theory in Context

math.jhu.edu/~eriehl/context.pdf

2024-06-11

10.

Self-serve dashboards

briefer.cloud/blog/posts/self-serve-bi-myth

Sales pitches are the only place where “self-serve dashboards" work. In the real world, it's a different story.

Why "business" people don't use metabase/power-bi.

9.

Exploring Gleam, a type-safe language on the BEAM!

christopher.engineering/en/blog/gleam-overview

From Erlang, to Elixir and now, GLEAM!?

2024-06-10

4.

soju IRC bouncer

soju.im

soju is a user-friendly IRC bouncer. soju connects to upstream IRC servers on behalf of the user to provide extra functionality. soju supports many features such as multiple users, numerous IRCv3 extensions, chat history playback and detached channels. It is well-suited for both small and large deployments.