20 random bookmarks

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.

2025-06-13

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.

2025-06-12

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

113.

The Ingredients of a Productive Monorepo

blog.swgillespie.me/posts/monorepo-ingredients

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.

110.

honk

humungus.tedunangst.com/r/honk

Take control of your honks and join the federation.
An ActivityPub server with minimal setup and support costs.
Spend more time using the software and less time operating it.

2025-04-24

105.

Instrumenting Axum projects

determinate.systems/posts/instrumenting-axum

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.

2024-10-24

85.

Rust Prism

registerspill.thorstenball.com/p/rust-prism

2024-10-04

80.

Snappy UI Optimization with useDeferredValue

www.joshwcomeau.com/react/use-deferred-value

useDeferredValue is one of the most underrated React hooks. It allows us to dramatically improve the performance of our applications in certain contexts. I recently used it to solve a gnarly performance problem on this blog, and in this tutorial, I'll show you how! ⚡

2024-09-25

78.

in which interactive development saves the day

technomancy.us/189

2024-09-19

77.

Blogging in Djot instead of Markdown

www.jonashietala.se/blog/2024/02/02/blogging_in_djot_instead_of_markdown

2024-09-18

76.

Typescript is surprisingly ok for compilers

matklad.github.io/2023/08/17/typescript-is-surprisingly-ok-for-compilers.html

2024-08-08

63.

More than 200 orphaned Debian packages moved to git, 216 to go

www.hungry.com/~pere/blog/More_than_200_orphaned_Debian_packages_moved_to_git__216_to_go.html

2024-07-05

60.

JavaScript-Free Sidenotes in Hugo

danilafe.com/blog/sidenotes

2024-06-24

52.

Counting Immutable Beans: Reference Counting Optimized for Purely Functional Programming

arxiv.org/abs/1908.05647

Most 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.

2024-06-20

48.

build2 | C/C++ Build Toolchain

build2.org

build2 is an open source (MIT), cross-platform build toolchain that aims to approximate Rust Cargo's convenience for developing and packaging C/C++ projects while providing more depth and flexibility, especially in the build system.

2024-06-19

44.

Aurora - Python Static Site Generator

aurora.jamesg.blog

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

2024-06-14

31.

CAUSAL.AGENCY(7)

causal.agency

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.

2024-06-12

12.

I really like the RP2040

dgroshev.com/blog/rp2040