I have recently worked on making a web application out of my latest Rubik’s cube optimal solver . This involved building a rather complex C code base (with multithreading, SIMD, callback functions and whatnot) to WebAssembly via Emscripten , and writing a minimal amount of JavaScript and HTML for the frontend.
Picking the technology stack for a project is an important and consequential decision. In the enterprise space in particular, it often involves a multi-year commitment with long-lasting implication...
Recently a local news station in Maine reported a story of some middle schoolers calling their friends with landline telephones. Their parents thought they w...
HN should be treated as an external comment section for the internet to the extent that it can’t substitute for the internet, much less for your own thinking. At its best, HN is a map to new questions and a window onto new angles. The landscape itself remains elsewhere.
Conversational interfaces are a bit of a meme. Every couple of years a shiny new AI development emerges and people in tech go "This is it! The next computing paradigm is here! We'll only use natural language going forward!". But then nothing actually changes and we continue using computers the way w
Ever wondered why you need the underscore in target="_blank" to open a link in a new tab?
A discussion on why forcing dark mode on users can lead to poor user experience, the impact of high contrast ratios on readability, and the need for better guidelines in dark mode design.
Supercharging Slack’s Reaction Icons
The “linear()” timing function is a game-changer; it allows us to model physics-based motion right in vanilla CSS! That said, there are some limitations and quirks to be aware of. I’ve been experimenting with this API for a while now, and in this post, I’ll share all of the tips and tricks I’ve learned for using it…
Why I chose Phoenix LiveView over Rails, Laravel, and Next.js
Unicode is good. If you’re designing a data structure or protocol that has text fields, they should contain Unicode characters encoded in UTF-8. There’s another question, though: “ Which Unicode characters?” The answer is “Not all of them, please exclude some.”
Turning your API inside-out.
Never write your own date parsing library. Never. No exceptions. Never have I ever… So… I’ve written my own date parsing library. Why? Our story begins seven…
This last decade has seen an inundation of new JavaScript runtimes (and engines in equal measure), enabling us to run JavaScript in all manner of contexts...
GraphQL solves a real problem, but in many enterprise setups that problem is already handled by BFFs. After years using Apollo in production, I think the tradeoffs often outweigh the win.
# TLDR Datastar is a new hypermedia framework that makes building real-time web applications simpler and more efficient. It prioritizes server-side logic, uses “signals” for automatic UI updates, and leverages Server-Sent Events for lightning-fast performance. If you’re looking for a streamlined alternative to…
So there are only 2 web browser engines, and it seems likely there will soon only be 1, and making a whole new web browser from the ground up is effectively impossible because the browsers vendors have weaponized web standards complexity against any newcomers. Maybe eventually someone will succeed and there will be 2…
When people turn data into HTML tables using JavaScript, they either use the DOM methods (createElement() and the likes), but most of the time just append a huge string and use innerHTML, which always is a security concern. However, did you know that HTML tables also have an old, forgotten API ? Using this one, you…
A couple of days ago, the small server hosting this website was temporarily knocked out by scraping …
Alex Moon is an Australian-British software engineer and artist based in the North East of England.
A blog about making culture. Since 1999.
In which I push browser engines to their finite limits using infinite values.
Or Why I Think Lean Software Development is Wrong
I should have titled this post “I hate S3”. 📢 What is the status quo? FTP is dead (yay), SFTP is too dependent on SSH and unix authentication. AWS made S3 pervasive and now every webapp that needs to store files assumes you’ll be able to connect it S3. This …
Markov chain babblers, bogus php files, and more!
Why Icons Alone Aren't Enough.
Phishing PassKeys credentials using browser intents
Ten years ago this week, in May 2015, the JSON Web Token (JWT) became RFC 7519 . This was the culmination of a 4.5 year journey to create a simple JSON-based security token format and underlying JSON-based cryptographic standards. The full set of RFCs published together was:
If you take just one thing away from this article, I want it to be this: please build your own website.
