miniblog

Wilfred Hughes

Here's a neat GitHub feature that I haven't noticed before: if you hover over Contributors, it shows you profile pictures of major contributors! This picture is from https://github.com/github/semantic. Reminds me of JS projects that generate READMEs with this visualisation.

Jun 15, 2019

Wilfred Hughes

A lightweight anonymous function syntax seems to reduce the need for metaprogramming. I've written custom loop constructs with lisp macros, but Smalltalk seems to do just fine with blocks and method calls.

Jun 14, 2019

Wilfred Hughes

Cryptocurrencies are one of the few places where white papers are celebrated. Sometimes it's just a tickbox exercise, but it does encourage thorough, up-front discussions of design.

Jun 14, 2019

Wilfred Hughes

A wonderful property of link aggregators is that they don't limit themselves to current affairs. For example, HN regularly links to content that wasn't published this year (with a label to show the content is older). It's too easy to largely consume content that's very new.

Jun 14, 2019

Wilfred Hughes

I'm excited to see Mastodon offering a single column layout! https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2019/06/mastodon-2.9/ The multiple column layout didn't work as well on my small laptop screen.

Jun 14, 2019

Wilfred Hughes

The Nim programming language is preparing for a 1.0 release with a stability guarantee! https://nim-lang.org/blog/2019/06/06/version-0200-released.html

Jun 14, 2019

Wilfred Hughes

Julia syntax is lovely: I really like how you can add a . to make it distribute over an array. Looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softmax_function, compare the raw formula with the Julia syntax.

Jun 14, 2019

Wilfred Hughes

Typescript has an interesting approach to type checking: it will emit JS even if the code isn't well-typed! https://basarat.gitbooks.io/typescript/docs/why-typescript.html (This is a nice property of gradual typing: you can run unit tests on refactored code even when some code still uses the old API.)

Jun 13, 2019

Wilfred Hughes

TIL eager macro expansion can mean very different things. Rust macros must expand to valid code, so eager macro expansion allows illegal intermediate states: https://docs.rs/eager/0.1.0/eager/macro.eager.html#macro-expansions Elisp macros are expanded at runtime unless expansion is eager: https://dgutov.github.io/blog/2013/04/07/emacs-24-dot-3-s-killer-feature-eager-macro-expansion/

Jun 12, 2019

Wilfred Hughes

Replacing npm (the tool and the organisation) with a federated alternative by npm inc's former CTO! https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/06/04/npm_cj_silverio_javascript/ (I had no idea that so many registries were sprouting!)

Jun 12, 2019

Wilfred Hughes

straight.el https://github.com/raxod502/straight.el looks like a great alternative package manager for Emacs. It checks out git repositories of dependencies, so it's always easy to contribute changes upstream! This has been a definite point of friction in my Emacs workflow.

Jun 11, 2019

Wilfred Hughes

I fear I no longer have much appreciation for what the typical level of computer literacy is. I work on tools used by other developers, so a ton of my day-to-day life is not at all representative of the population at large.

Jun 11, 2019

Wilfred Hughes

Shower thought: often the value of tests is enabling you to make changes (they're less helpful if you never make code changes). When deciding where to focus tests, we should probably focus on the parts with the most churn rather than the least coverage.

Jun 11, 2019

Wilfred Hughes

Prediction markets are a fascinating potential application for cryptocurrencies. The details of who and how a claim is verified are challenging though. https://info.binance.com/en/research/marketresearch/augur-design-flaws.html (But it looks like the several political outcomes are already available on UK betting exchanges.)

Jun 11, 2019

Wilfred Hughes

Google has an internal prediction market that beats forecasts by experts! https://academic.oup.com/restud/article-abstract/82/4/1309/2607345

Jun 10, 2019

Wilfred Hughes

AWS is only 32% of global cloud computing spend: https://www.canalys.com/newsroom/cloud-market-share-q4-2018-and-full-year-2018 That's less than I expected! It's the biggest provider but there are a lot of popular options it seems.

Jun 10, 2019

Wilfred Hughes

Defining a subset of #[no_std] Rust, formally verifying it, and releasing it as 'Sealed Rust' for use in safety critical systems like automotive and avionics: https://ferrous-systems.com/blog/sealed-rust-the-pitch/

Jun 9, 2019

Wilfred Hughes

On the social function of multiplayer video games over telephone calls: https://kotaku.com/for-men-who-hate-talking-on-the-phone-games-keep-frien-1835277944

Jun 9, 2019

Wilfred Hughes

I suspect there's an analogy of blub programming languages for IDEs. Once you've seen more powerful solutions you miss them in less capable tools. If you haven't learnt them, you're indifferent. This is probably why 'table stakes for a modern IDE' viewpoints vary so much.

Jun 7, 2019

Wilfred Hughes

In 2005 I was thinking about a career in tech. There was a best selling book called The World Is Flat that argued that you'd be competing with the entire world, including places with much lower living costs. I make a living writing code in London. What happened?

Jun 7, 2019