1621
Git-sim: Visually simulate Git operations in your own repos
git-sim: Visually simulate Git operations in your own repos with a single terminal command
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The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 1,733 posts.
1622
Thoughts on the Python packaging ecosystem
My response to the discussion topic posed in Python Packaging Strategy Discussion Part 1 had become quite long, so I decided to move it to write a blog post instead. This post then started absorbing various draft posts I’ve had on this topic since this blog was started, morphing to include my broader thoughts on where…
1623
An unexpected benefit of unit tests
While I won’t go so far as to diagnose myself with ADD without consulting a doctor, those who know me know I can be distracted quite easily. So recently, I decided to do something a little different with a personal project I started a few weeks ago (link to come). I wrote unit tests. That may seem rather uninspired…
1624
An instruction oddity in the ppc64 (PowerPC 64-bit) architecture
You're probably reading this page because you've attempted to access some part of my blog (Wandering Thoughts) or CSpace , the wiki thing it's part of. Unfortunately you're using a browser version that my anti-crawler precautions consider suspicious, most often because it's too old (most often this applies to versions…
1625
From Zero to main(): Bare metal C (2019)
A community and blog for embedded software makers
1626
GitHub Sunsetting Subversion Support
On January 8, 2024, GitHub will remove support for Subversion.
1627
Rust in 2023: Growing Up
When I started working on Rust in 2011, my daughter was about three months old. She’s now in sixth grade, and she’s started growing rapidly. Sometimes we wake up to find that her clothes don’t quite fit anymore: the sleeves might be a little too short, or the legs come up to her ankles. Rust is experiencing something…
1628
Replacing Pandas with Polars
I remember those days, oh so long ago, it seems like another lifetime. I haven’t used Pandas in many a year, decades, or whatever. We’ve all been there, done that. Pandas I mean. I would dare say it’s a rite of passage for most data folk. For those using Python, it’s probably one of the […]
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1630
Choosing a Postgres primary key
Turns out the question of which identifier to use as a Primary Key is complicated -- we're going to dive into some of the complexity and inherent trade-offs, and figure things out
1631
Wolf Incident Postmortem
Incident #210 Status Complete, one action item outstanding. Summary Sentinel consumed by wolf after repeated false alarms. Impact Loss of sentinel. No flock impact. Root causes Sentinel generated noisy alerts due to premature deployment, incomplete training, and overly monotonous task. Oncalls failed to respond to…
1632
Lisa Source Code Release
CHM publicly releases the source code to Apple's Lisa computer, including its system and applications software.
1633
Pandoc 3.0
A universal document converter
1634
Formalising a new proof that the square root of two is irrational
Recently, somebody shared on Twitter a new proof of the irrationality of √2. Its claimed advantage is that “it requires no knowledge of mathematics above the definition of what it means for a number to be irrational, and can be written almost in one line.” These claims are dubious: the usual proof, which I’ve…
1635
Short, friendly base32 slugs from timestamps
~4 lines of Go to produce succinct, stable, URL-friendly slugs from timestamps.
1636
Bun v0.5
Support for npm workspaces, DNS lookups, database drivers, and lots of improvements to bun install.
1637
Rust concepts I wish I learned earlier
This past month, I have been enthralled by the Rust programming language given its unique edge for writing memory-safe, modern programs. Over the years, several languages have emerged as the most preferred by engineers to write resilient, backend software. The tides have shifted from Java/C++ into Go and Rust, which…
1638
Hello, PNG
PNG is my favourite file format of all time. Version 1.0 of the specification was released in 1996 (before I was born!) and the format remains widely used to this day. I think the main reasons it stuck around for so long are:
1639
No Start Menu for You
I tend to launch most programs on my Windows 10 laptop by typing the <Win> key, then a few letters of the program name, and then hitting enter. On my powerful laptop (SSD and 32 GB of RAM) th…
1640
1641
Git security vulnerabilities announced
Git users are encouraged to upgrade to the latest version, especially if they use `git archive`, work in untrusted repositories, or use Git GUI on Windows.
1642
New make --shuffle mode
I implemented new --shuffle option for GNU make to simulate non-deterministic build order in parallel makefiles.
1643
Ruby 3.2’s YJIT is Production-Ready
YJIT, a just-in-time (JIT) implementation on top of CRuby built at Shopify, is now production-ready and delivering major improvements to performance and speed. Maxime shares the updates that have been made in this newest version of YJIT, and future plans for further optimization.
1644
PHP in 2023
A blog about modern PHP, the web, and programming in general. Follow my newsletter and YouTube channel as well.
1645
Why we need to know LR and recursive descent parsing techniques
A couple of people have asked me for my thoughts on part of an article from Tiark Rompf called (roughly) “ Just Write the Parser ” which advocates the use of recursive descent parsing over more “formal” approaches to parsing, at least in the context of teaching compilers. I’m fairly sure I read this article a couple…
1646
How Memory safety approaches speed up and slow down development velocity
Every March, developers worldwide each try to make a roguelike game in less than 168 hours as part of the 7DRL Challenge . Roguelike games are hard , involving procedural level generation, pathfinding, line-of-sight algorithms, and more dijkstra maps than you can imagine.
1647
Major standard library changes in Go 1.20
The second part of a three part look at new features in Go 1.20.
1648
We invested 10% to pay back tech debt
Why and how we continuously invested the team bandwidth to pay back tech debt and what were the results?
1649
Making Lenses Practical in Java
How (and why!) to convince the machines to write lenses for you
1650
Rust vs. C++ Formatting
In Rust, if I want to print some 32-bit unsigned value in hex, with the leading 0x, padded out with zeros, I would write that as: