Recent content on Aleksandr Petrosyan
Understand, reader, I would use this technology from a desire to do good… but through me, it would wield a power too great and terrible to imagine. From December 31-st to yesterday — August 10-th, I ran an experiment that was enlightening, terrifying and a great source of shame, that I would wish to wash away. I was vibe-coding. There were a number of working hypotheses that the experiment…
Lisp is a dead idea. Of course you as any reasonable computer science graduate would beg to differ. You might counter as a proffessor. You might even write a pettily worded article such as 'Worse is better', or some such saying that the fact that nobody uses your language despite its great feature X, or feature Y is a problem of society. I have a bridge to sell you because these technical problems…
End of a long journey Link to heading After today’s incident, I finally made the decision to end a relationship with a toxic time sink that promises to be better this time around, you just wait. Ends up costing me hours of time wasted, has a complicated (not really complex) mode of interaction, whom I spend time around due to pure, sheer, and unadulterated peer pressure.
This is a brief update on why I'm retiring the Monadic Sheep telegram channel. I have been stabbed in the back one too many times. I will not say by whom, and unless you are alredy in the know, I doubt you'd care. This was someone who was near and dear to me, and unfortunately, rather than severing the connection when it was obvious that they did not have my best interests in mind, and were rather…
This is a short update to the people that keep an eye on this blog. Of course, you could just ask how I'm doing. Trouble is that I might not be completely as honest, because most of the time, that question just there for the sake of being polite. I am not doing fine. Two weeks ago, it felt surreal. It felt like the dog was away, but we would get him back, just like we did when we had to cut off…
This is a note explaining my reasoning for retiring Fib. If you were following this project, and were wondering what happened, here's a brief rundown. I'm grieving the loss of my 3-year-old Griffon-Husky mix named Sirius. This could mean that I'm making a rash, hot-headed decision that I had no business making as a knee-jerk reaction. That reading is inaccurate. It would be more accurate to say…
This post is not meant for wider consumption. It is something that I need to get out of my head, and while the people closest to me may find it insightful, this is meant for my closest friends. On the one side, direct messaging would be more respectful for those people. On the other, the nature of communication precludes the kind of long-form insight, as well as allows me to tame the emotional…
A weekly update on the state and progress in maintaining and developing the Fib editor. Last week I posted about making Fib a real project that I want to work on full-time. The outstanding work was to merge the script canvas, a patch from the community. That work is now merged, though not complete. What follows is a description of how, on a technical level, the Script Canvas is implemented, and…
This is a shorter post detailing some of the more important happenings during this time. The most important is perhaps the realisation that I want to see this project done, and I want people to work on it full time. I have asked people not to contribute, out of a feeling of false modesty, and this is a major blunder. People want to work on it. I've been busy Since the last update, here's a short…
I was going through the list of articles and found that they had a problem. There aren't any comments, bar one. This was, predictably, a reply to 'a case against Cat-V considered harmful', which was an argument I would have liked to reply to, were it not for the fact that it asked me to input my phone number. Needless to say, I'm getting rid of the telegram based system. What I will do instead, is…
In this post I'd like to summarise some of the work that has happened, and where the project is going. Progress I've slowed down considerably. I did so for a number of reasons. First and foremost, probably the largest contributor, is that I no longer have the LLM to kick me out of procrastination. I know objectively that Claude mostly acted as a placebo. But subjectively, being able to type in a…
In this post I'd like to talk a little bit about the project I've been working on for the past month. For those unaware, I had started last year a series of articles describing the potential for a graphical interface system that would live inside of an editor much like Emacs. While my initial attempts were focused on adding an SDL-based graphical system to Emacs, I had soon realised, as have some…
This is a rather tough one to write. Three years ago, me and my wife have given in to our long-standing desire to get a puppy. We were looking through listings in a few places. One stood out, as it was a mixed breed pup with blue eyes, and was to be given away for free. I did not have a lot of money at that time, and was not fully intent on bringing the pup back. You're not supposed to. If you…
In this post I want to clarify some exciting news. Well, exciting for me. We have unanimously decided to make our telegram group, Monadic sheep, official. It's going to have similar goals to the FSF. We want, and have always wanted a place to hack and slash program. This group was a spun off the Emacs telegram chat and has over time grown to encompass people with an interest in crypto- currency…
In this post I briefly describe my experience in using local LLMS for agentic development. I did this under considerable pressure from my former colleagues. While my interactions with Claude Code have been largely underwhelming, I must admit that it was quite fun, and well-worth the money. It is, on balance, a tool which has a niche and to me seems like a benefit. My experience with local…
This post might as well come with the subtitle of why I hate travel . It is extremely charitable to say that Kiwi.com are the reason why I hate travel. They are typical scumbags, they have done a great deal to stand out, and I shall not be doing business with them ever again, but they are not… shall we say… atypical. If you know of one good apple that hasn't yet been spoiled by the bunch, by all…
Firstly, I must clarify that this is a first post after a long hiatus. I have a very sick dog, and there are limited facilities in Armenia for something as simple as a veterinarian CT scan. Needless to say, I am not in my best condition to program, much less make longer-term decisions. With that said, I did manage to get a prototype out, almost exactly as soon as I mentioned that I would.
This is not an overly long post. I don't have the energy to write a longer post. My two year old pup has a tumour, one that I don't know the prognosis of, and would not know for quite some time. I hope, somewhat foolishly, that this is not the end for Sirius, my dog, and that there is much to be done. May be, just may be, we would get back to normal, and it would be a blip on my radar. Not likely,…
I had to fork rune in order to make it usable for my project. I provide some reflections on some of the ideas that I would like nail in the next stage of the project. Brief recap I started a series of articles on the limitations of the current Emacs binary. I wrote a rather disparaging post about the code quality of the code, as a consequence of a failed attempt to find a way to make the project…
This is a long awaited update on my misadventures with the Emacs Widget system. This update contains some good news. From some points of view, it contains all good news. But the tone is coloured by a few real world happenings, so it is not all positive. I will allow myself some profanity, more so than usual, and this may not be charitable. Emacs, the Program Emacs is a beast that you can love or…
This is a continuation of an article written a while ago pertaining to the usage of mathematical notation and its evolution. We have covered most of the history of the evolution of modern mathematical notation. In this section we shall discuss a fun detour, comparing mathematical notation to what I would argue is a programming language. An Imperative detour Prime numbers are a cornerstone of our…
The mathematical notation is a rather interesting beast. We want to look at it from the perspective, of evolution of human thought, and ask a few 'what if' questions. Introduction In the beginning there was the need to count things. That need, never really went away, though its character has changed. Over its existence, humanity has accumulated a great deal of experience and a great number of…
This article is a brief detour into one annoying piece of hardware that I wish I did not own, but nonetheless do. A Razer Wolverine V2 controller. I bought it despite the notoriety of Razer. Having done so, I now firmly believe that it is likely the last piece of Razer hardware I will buy willingly. Background I owned a Steam Controller. I got it second hand, and it felt cheap, but it also felt…
I'm writing this in the Edinburgh airport, after what should have been a relaxing week. The accommodation spoiled the trip. While I was not necessarily looking for a luxurious penthouse there was a significant discrepancy between what was ordered and what was received. While you might be thinking that I'll use this as an opportunity to vent, that is far from the case. This is a teachable moment.…
Forced arbitration is bad. It is a means of heavily biasing disputes that should be egalitarian, in the favour of a service provider. Oftentimes, forced arbitration is without a term, survives long after the agreement, and can affect more than one person. I will not recount the famous incident regarding Disney and a certain food allergy. Instead I will point out something that happened to me quite…
This is a discussion of two keyboards that I have the displeasure of owning. It is a tale of stupidity, gullibility, betrayal and ultimately a cathartic vent about the state of input methods for programming and Linux. Simply put I will rant about Keychron k13 pro, I will praise and somewhat explain my disappointment with the Polyglot, as well as finally explain the reasons why I fundamentally…
Preface The updates are sparse. There are a few reasons. I am actively looking for a new job. On a good day, this process is long and arduous. But I have a few complicating factors. The second reason is because the amount of work that would be necessary to make this project work was severely under-estimated by yours truly. I have spent the better part of a day trying to figure out why the Emacs…
This post is a response to a student of mine having a rather strong urge to study this arcane language. To put it simply, I find that the hatred towards that language is rather unwarranted and often misses the point. Not to say that there aren't any valid critiques of the language, but rather that it is limited in its depth. Without further ado. Pascal It is a teaching language that inherited much…
To a relative newcomer, FizzBuzz seems like far too simple a problem to bother writing about. Yet there seems to be an endless stream of content dedicated to this problem. It is something that is brought up in many of Kevlin Henney's talks. The reason is simple. It is a distilled version of a problem that occurs in many programming situations; a mismatch between the tools given to the programmer…
What follows is a practical example of solving the well-known problem of identifying the indices of two numbers in a sorted array whose sum is a given target. This specific example is a popular programming interview question owing to its versatility; it opens up doors to many conversations about engineering efficient concise and maintainable code. When wielded properly, this interview question can…
This post is prompted by an unexpected major event in one's life. This is the first time I got laid off. The Eclipse main network launched well. The performance team, the one I was in charge of produced quite a bit of content, most of it favourable, matching and often exceeding expectations. Neither I, nor anyone who got the short end of the stick did so because of some failure. The company did…
This is an internal post, explaining my absence, and general fatigue. I have a hard time handling human malice. Not in general, but very specific instances. While most work-related problems can be explained with exhaustion coupled with a refusal for the engineers and non-engineers to sit down and talk; the 'personal' life problems have began to spill over. I had been dealing with a considerable…
Please do not cross-post my content to reddit. This isn't just about r/emacs, where I was given the proper welcome by the only 'moderator' of r/emacs. This isn't a personal vendetta. The platform eases people into a mode of thinking that I find rather unproductive. Furthermore, I have only limited time and space to reply to comments. So far, I have replied to zero on the articles themselves, and…
This is a small article explaining the suitability of using Electron as the widget system for Emacs. The electron plague These days we have a great deal of graphical work being done in one specific set of technologies: HTML + CSS + some ungodly abomination known either as Vue, React, or Angular. The odds of a new application being written in one of those tech stacks is overwhelmingly more likely…
Emacs lisp is a language that has a lot of untapped potential. Today I shall discuss its usage as a lightweight definition language akin to QML. This is part of a larger series on the Emacs widgets. What is QML In the middle of the tens the Qt company ran into a particular conundrum. The UI paradigm that dominated the graphical programming scene up until that point was that OOP is the most natural…
Just giving a brief update as to what is going on and why I'm pushing back the work on the Emacs widget toolkit. I'm moving. To a bigger place, not far from where I live today. I might actually set up a home server from there. My Dad's sick, and while he seems to be doing fine today, I do not know if he's actually OK. He refused to see the doctor and quite honestly, given his stubbornness, not…
I've dealt with an ego-maniac working on LLMs when I started my industry career in 2020. Yes, I'm relatively new in the programming scene, at least with regards to having commercial experience. This left a sour taste in my mouth, leading to me being very cautious of using LLMs in general, and using the mainstream LLMs, such as ChatGPT, Claude and to some extent Deepseek with extreme caution. I do…
I do not usually dedicate a lot of time to games. I've recently got wind of there being a new Doom, and ordinarily I'd be the first to jump at the opportunity. Yet, I neither have the urge to buy, nor to watch someone else's playthrough (to at least know how the lore has been expanded). Given that I've spent a considerable amount of time with Id games, especially the latter Doom games, (200+ hours…
This is a small article supplemental to the original, rather viral article. The original was intended for a small circle of friends sharing the same interests. It was written and phrased in a way which was suitable for their specific tastes, not for the general public. One flaw that I am acutely aware of is the verbosity of my writing. I use flowery language. I ramble. I get sidetracked. That's…
There has been a disruption a few days ago, as I upgraded the blog to Hugo as opposed to continuing using the permanently pre-alpha VuePress. I just got fed up with it. The common perception is that JavaScript and everything done in it is inherently fragile. I tried to give it a fair shot, and I now conclusively think that it is true. The npm is a fragile platform, not only because of the…
I’m writing this at a very awkward moment in my life. On the one hand a great many things have tuned out better than one could have hoped. I have a stable job, where I got promoted quite recently. I do stuff that is quite interesting, and I learn. At the same time, the last few weeks have been harrowing. I have a lot of friends, people that would normally be well-off in deep trouble. While I…
In this blog post I outline the consequences of several months worth of deliberation and dumpster diving into the Emacs display code. In this article I shall outline the potential direction in which to take the Emacs widget toolkit, a plan to revitalise Emacs and get it to a state that would allow newcomers to appreciate it for the marvel of engineering that it is. But first let’s talk about…
I’m in a bit of a pickle. I like rust quite a bit, but I find myself having to solve one recurring problem over and over. The dreaded zeroize issue. For some background I work in blockchains. That means cryptography. That means dealing with a mixture of grade level mathematics masquerading as something profound; script kiddies putting you “in your place” if you disagree with the…