Quality in the Age of Slop
Lessons for a changed profession from a classic novel.
Sinclair Target
Latest posts
Even More Tagged Union Subsets with Comptime
Type narrowing with switch statements in Zig.
Markdown Features I Didn't Know About
Explaining some less commonly used Markdown syntax.
Negative Externalities of Gen-AI within Software Teams
How coding agents can hurt collaboration.
The Trellis: A Gardening Metaphor for Software Engineering
In any substantial software project, there are usually two categories of code. There's code that actually implements the program—whether it is an application, a library, a game, or whatever—and code that exists to support the other code. This second category of code includes automated tests but also benchmarks, deploy scripts, Makefiles, and CI jobs. The second category of code exists because we…
Snapshots or Patches? Does It Matter?
Although overwhelmingly people use Git, other version control systems exist. Some are even new and shiny and experimenting with features that Git doesn't have. I recently worked my way through this excellent tutorial for Jujutsu . It excited me, because it made me realize that the design space for version control systems is much larger and more unexplored than I had imagined. But I don't want to…
Thoughts on Go vs. Rust vs. Zig
What do each of these languages value most?
Error Handling with Iterators in Go
How to handle errors from iterators idiomatically.
Is There a Secret to Explaining Complicated Board Games?
An exercise in writing succinct explanations of complicated systems.
Who Will Maintain Vim? A Demo of Git Who
An exploration of Vim's commit history using a new tool called Git Who.
Why Use the Terminal?
The terminal is a dinosaur. Why do we keep using it?
Making Sense of the Linux Filesystem Hierarchy
An explanation of what all those directories are for in Linux.
Why I Love the Journals in Myst So Much
The Myst games all feature journals of some kind. What makes those journals so important?
Configuring Bash to Make Your Command History Useful
A guide to overcoming some of Bash's nonsensical defaults.
How to Make Your Logs Less Noisy in Python
Controlling log output in Python requires an understanding of the Logging module.
A House I Like in Cambridgeport
An Appreciation of A Field Guide to American Houses.