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.

This web app displays notes and slides in separate windows,
keeping both synchronised.
It accepts simple, double-width, or double-height PDF presentations:

I just learned that
you can use it to review a git commit like this and I thought that was really
cool.

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.

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.

Every so often I come across a paper, blog post, or (occasionally) video that completely changes how I think about a topic in programming languages and compilers. For some of these posts, I can’t even remember how I thought about the idea before reading it—it was that impactful.

When people say Rust is a “safe language”, they often mean memory safety.
And while memory safety is a great start, it’s far from all it takes to build robust applications.
Memory safety is important but not sufficient for overall r…

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

Most 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.

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.

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.

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.