Cap'n Web is a new open source, JavaScript-native RPC protocol for use in browsers and web servers. It provides the expressive power of Cap'n Proto, but with no schemas and no boilerplate.

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.

In functional programming,
combinator libraries refer to a design style that emphasizes bottom-up program construction.
Such libraries define a few core data types
and provide constructors—functions that create initial objects—and combinators—functions that build larger objects from smaller pieces.

Combinators enable the programmer to use intuitive visual and spatial reasoning
that’s vastly more powerful than linear language processing.
As a result, solving problems with combinators feels like playing with lego pieces.

Things we wish we didn't know

This post is all about speculative compilation, or just speculation for short, in the context of the JavaScriptCore virtual machine.

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

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

Featureful zsh prompt.

I make mostly IRC software in C. I like OpenBSD but also the GPL. I just want to read books and try to learn to be kinder. When I can I'd like to talk to strangers and experience more magic.

A single-user “wiki” engine powering the ThoughtStorms wiki.

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 …

I've been running NetBSD on a RockPro64 since NetBSD 10-BETA, and I'm still happy with it now with NetBSD 10-RELEASE. I'm always looking for hardware to hack NetBSD though, and I recently watched a FOSDEM 2024 video: NetBSD 10: Thirty years, still going strong!. The Pinebook Pro laptop was mentioned at one point, which has the same RockChip SoC as the RockPro64. That reminded me I'd been wanting to give this inexpensive ARM 64 laptop a try.

Rust and Node aren't bad for encouraging dependency use -- your favorite language's tools just suck.