I have been working on a hobby project to reimagine the C core of Emacs in Rust. On this journey, I reached the point where I needed some way to represent the text of a buffer. The simplest approach is to just use a large string or array of lines. However these each suffer from poor performance as either the size or…
From time to time, someone shows that in JavaScript the .length of a string containing an emoji results in a number greater than 1 (typically 2) and then proceeds to the conclusion that haha JavaScript is so broken—and is rewarded with many likes. In this post, I will try to convince you that ridiculing JavaScript for…
Note to readers: this is an April Fools post, intended to satirize bad arguments made against Rust. I have mixed feelings about it now, as I think people who understood the context appreciated the humor, but some people were confused. That’s partly because it’s written in a very persuasive style, and I mixed in some…
Let me tell you a story about how Windows users are deleting files from their installation and as a consequence end up in tears. Background The real and actual curl tool has been shipped as part of Windows 10 and Windows 11 for many years already. It is called curl.exe and is located in the … Continue reading deleting…
SIMT The programming model of a GPU uses what has been coined "single instruction multiple thread." The idea is that the programmer writes t...
React starter kits (Vite, Next, Astro, Remix, React Router) which help React developers to start a React project in 2025 ...
When Java 17 was released in 2021 as a “long term support” version, I wrote an article dissecting its features and came to the conclusion that it had a few nice features, but none that were compelling reasons to upgrade. Except one: tens of thousands of bug fixes.
Xe Iaso's personal website.
Writing code for online games, particularly for mobile or web-based slot games like this one , involves a mix of advanced graphics rendering, real-time networking, security implementations, and intricate game logic. Developers need to balance between performance optimization, cross-platform compatibility, and the…
SQL:2023 has been wrapped. The final text has been submitted by the working group to ISO Central Secretariat, and it’s now up to the ISO gods when it will be published. Based on past experience, it could be between a few weeks and a few months.
When was the first time you had to use LaTeX? If you are like most people, it was probably suddenly forced upon you during your first math or CS class where you had to start writing proofs, with minimal guidance on how to get started. Unfortunately, this meant that while many people have good operational knowledge of…
It's not about technology for its own sake. It's about being able to implement your ideas.
It all started with Instagram Reels showing me too many yummy cooking videos. I wanted to try some recipes out myself. But I didn’t want to have to keep my phone in the kitchen, and I didn’t want to have to keep unlocking it to see the next step. I wanted to print the recipe out, and have it on the counter while I was…
Nix is a tool for configuring software environments according to source files. I’ve been hearing more and more about Nix on Hacker News and Twitter. The idea of it appeals to me, so I’ve been tinkering with it over the past few weeks. My history with infrastructure as code Ten years ago, I discovered Salt, a tool that…
I've spent most of the last decade exploring this area (mainly to design Vale 's memory safety) and I've discovered some surprising things .
An alternate to traditional <code>deleted_at</code> soft deletion that stays out of the way and minimizes bugs.
The Linux Upskill Challenge (https://github.com/livialima/linuxupskillchallenge) as done by Leo Robinovitch
State-based CRDTs grow monotonically, but that doesn't mean they can't be efficient. We'll learn how to compress the pixel editor state by 98%.
The story of the CRUDController
I want to address a controversy that has gripped the Rust community for the past year or so: the choice by the prominent async “runtimes” to default to multi-threaded executors that perform work-stealing to balance work dynamically among their many tasks. Some Rust users are unhappy with this decision, so unhappy that…
Learn how to search, query, and modify JSON data with 25 interactive jq examples and explanations
A recent discovery from old backups revealed something long forgotten: I really developed a version of Elite for…. that’s right… Emacs text editor.
These are some of the error messages produced by Apple's MPW C compiler. These are all real. (If you must know I was bored one afternoon and decompiled the String resources for the compiler.) The compiler is 324k in size so these are just an excerpt I hope. I'm not sure where I stand on the copyright issue. Tony…
Moving on from Python Machine Learning might seem impossible. Let me break down why and how you can do it.
Well, I think most of you reading this blog use git more or less on a daily basis, but have you ever looked into what is in the .git folder that git creates? Let's explore it together and understand what is going on in there.
You should give it a try!
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:
LangChain is complicated, so it must be better. Right?
The first step in building my text editor is to implement the core API. If you’re wondering why I want to do this, the original article is here.
