miniblog.

Interesting file watcher model: pscid shows errors as you edit, but only one error at a time to help iteration!

I really like the convention of writing Lisp symbols as FOO or Erlang functions as foo/1. The lightweight syntax is great for prose or IMs.

It's really interesting to see how idiomatic Rust code looks next to the venerable macro-heavy C code of Emacs.

Amazing fast JSON parser in Rust that uses SIMD and avoids tokenisation!

Pattern matching is so powerful that Elixir's docs introduce it before conditionals! https://elixir-lang.org/getting-started/pattern-matching.html

Often the best FOSS projects to send patches to are tools that are crucial to the maintainers' workflow. They're highly motivated.

Lessons from the Use of Personal Knowledge Questions at Google https://blog.acolyer.org/2016/03/14/secrets-lies-and-account-recovery-lessons-from-the-use-of-personal-knowledge-questions-at-google/ (ineffective and surprisingly hard to remember)

Exciting to see Docker support multiple architectures! Particularly helpful for the many testing platforms that are Docker based. https://twitter.com/estesp/status/907857746900463616

Before C++, I never thought about the cost of values carrying their type. C++ gives you the choice with optional Run-Time Type Information.

Excellent article on the tradeoffs static typing https://blog.merovius.de/2017/09/12/diminishing-returns-of-static-typing.html (nuances that are sometimes lost in the blogosphere)

A nice example of the remarkable modularity in the npm ecosystem: Yarn just split out its lockfile parser https://github.com/yarnpkg/yarn/pull/4114

This is nifty: yarn will resolve conflicts in lockfiles automatically! https://github.com/yarnpkg/yarn/pull/3544 (novel? I haven't seen other tools do this)

Coverage is a useful tool, but total number of test cases is a better predictor of test effectiveness! https://blog.acolyer.org/2014/10/21/coverage-is-not-strongly-correlated-with-test-suite-effectiveness/

Coming from Twitter, a major difference with the Tooterati¹ is that your server matters. You're more easily discovered by users on the same instance. It's an interesting, different group dynamic. There's more scope for self-organisation and group identities. ¹ This should totally be a word. People use Twitterati with a straight face.

I've seen both #foo and !foo used on Mastodon. How do they differ?