20 random bookmarks

2025-10-24

137.

How to Run 1:1s as an Engineering Manager

justoffbyone.com

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.

2025-06-13

117.

What I talk about when I talk about IRs

bernsteinbear.com/blog/irs

I have a lot of thoughts about the design of compiler intermediate representations (IRs). In this post I’m going to try and communicate some of those ideas and why I think they are important.

2025-05-23

111.

share_target - Web application manifest

developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Progressive_web_apps/Manifest/Reference/share_target

The share_target manifest member allows installed Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) to be registered as a share target in the system's share dialog.

2025-01-21

99.

Algebraic Effects for the Rest of Us

overreacted.io/algebraic-effects-for-the-rest-of-us

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.

2024-11-20

88.

On "Safe" C++

izzys.casa/2024/11/on-safe-cxx

2024-09-02

70.

Parsing awk is tricky

www.raygard.net/awkdoc/pages/awk_parsing_is_tricky.html

A somewhat compact implementation of the awk programming language

2024-07-15

62.

"GitHub" Is Starting to Feel Like Legacy Software

mistys-internet.website/blog/blog/2024/07/12/github-is-starting-to-feel-like-legacy-software

I’ve used a lot of tools over the years, which means I’ve seen a lot of tools hit a plateau. That’s not always a problem; sometimes …

2024-07-02

58.

A write-ahead log is not a universal part of durability

notes.eatonphil.com/2024-07-01-a-write-ahead-log-is-not-a-universal-part-of-durability.html

A write-ahead log is not a universal part of durability

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.

2024-06-19

44.

Aurora - Python Static Site Generator

aurora.jamesg.blog

Aurora: An extensible, Python-based static site generator.

2024-06-17

36.

How I learned Haskell in just 15 years - duckrabbit solutions

duckrabbit.tech/articles/learning-haskell.html
35.

OpenBSD, the computer appliance maker's secret weapon

hiandrewquinn.github.io/til-site/posts/openbsd-the-computer-appliance-maker-s-secret-weapon

Between 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

32.

Putting Go's Context package into context

blog.meain.io/2024/golang-context

2024-06-13

19.

A simple, arena-backed, generic dynamic array for C

nullprogram.com/blog/2023/10/05

2024-06-12

13.

My experience crafting an interpreter with Rust

ceronman.com/2021/07/22/my-experience-crafting-an-interpreter-with-rust

Last year I finally decided to learn some Rust. The official book by Steve Klabnik and Carol Nichols is excellent, but even after reading it and working on some small code exercises, I felt that I …

2024-06-11

6.

Go evolves in the wrong direction

valyala.medium.com/go-evolves-in-the-wrong-direction-7dfda8a1a620

Go programming language is known to be easy to use. Thanks to its well-thought syntax, features and tooling, Go allows writing easy-to-read…

Hard disagree on this one, but still interesting.