2025-09-04
Beacon API
developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Beacon_APIThe Beacon API is used to send an asynchronous and non-blocking request to a web server. The request does not expect a response. Unlike requests made using XMLHttpRequest or the Fetch API, the browser guarantees to initiate beacon requests before the page is unloaded and to run them to completion.
2025-06-26
The plan-execute pattern
mmapped.blog/posts/29-plan-execute.htmlI 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
zb beta released
www.zombiezen.com/blog/2025/06/zb-beta-releasezb 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.
2025-05-30
The PGP Problem
www.latacora.com/blog/2019/07/16/the-pgp-problemWhy do people keep telling me to use PGP? The answer is that they shouldn’t be telling you that, because PGP is bad and needs to go away.
2025-02-04
Running a Debian Sid on Ubuntu
blogops.mixinet.net/posts/incus2024-11-04
Writing secure Go code
jarosz.dev/article/writing-secure-go-codeSecurity testing starts with understanding vulnerabilities. The CVE website lists known software flaws. The OWASP Top Ten highlights common weaknesses. With this knowledge, we can improve our Go development. This article shows how to put in place robust practices. They are to: fuzz inputs, verify dependencies, and use static analysis tools (SAST).
2024-10-04
Snappy UI Optimization with useDeferredValue
www.joshwcomeau.com/react/use-deferred-valueuseDeferredValue 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! ⚡
2024-08-15
Planning Weekly Workouts in 100 lines of Haskell
alt-romes.github.io/posts/2024-08-14-planning-a-workout-week-with-100-lines-of-haskell.htmlA lightning post on logic programming in Haskell to construct a workout weekly schedule given the set of exercises, days and constraints.
2024-07-09
Using use in Gleam
erikarow.land/notes/using-use-gleam2024-06-26
A reckless introduction to Hindley-Milner type inference
reasonableapproximation.net/2019/05/05/hindley-milner.html2024-06-24
Counting Immutable Beans: Reference Counting Optimized for Purely Functional Programming
arxiv.org/abs/1908.05647Most 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
build2 | C/C++ Build Toolchain
build2.orgbuild2 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.
2024-06-14
Nix as a WebAssembly build tool
determinate.systems/posts/nix-wasm2024-06-13
Category Theory in Context
math.jhu.edu/~eriehl/context.pdfBuilding Go programs with Nix Flakes
xeiaso.net//blog/nix-flakes-go-programsArena allocator tips and tricks
nullprogram.com/blog/2023/09/27Avoid Linux locking up in low memory situations using earlyoom
dataswamp.org/~solene/2022-09-28-earlyoom.htmlThis article presents the program earlyoom to prevent a Linux system to lock up in low memory situations.
2024-06-11
Self-serve dashboards
briefer.cloud/blog/posts/self-serve-bi-mythSales 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.
2024-06-10
soju IRC bouncer
soju.imsoju 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.
2024-06-09
Piku
piku.github.io/index.htmlpiku, inspired by dokku, allows you do git push deployments to your own servers, no matter how small they are.