miniblog.

IPython's %timeit magic is not easily fooled -- it can spot memoisation! I'm impressed.

Which would you rather refactor: a codebase with immutable types but dynamic types, or pervasive mutability with static types, and why?

SHRDLU was this incredible NLP system built in the 60s that hasn't really been surpassed since:

Swift Playgrounds is an incredible live programming experience. It's also one of the few apps exploring a tablet based IDE.

I used to think it odd that JITs rarely beat AOT because a JIT has more info. Turns out JITs can't afford powerful but slow optimisations.

Fascinating post on how diff algorithms actually work: https://blog.jcoglan.com/2017/02/12/the-myers-diff-algorithm-part-1/ (multiple possible implementations!)

"Clang can codegen a switch statement with lots of disjoint cases as a binary search" https://zneak.github.io/fcd/2017/02/19/divisions.html (impressive!)

Worth taking a look: an overview of @webyrd's talk on relational programming at KatsConf:

How copying an int made my code 11 times faster https://medium.com/@robertgrosse/how-copying-an-int-made-my-code-11-times-faster-f76c66312e0f (JITs are criticised as black boxes, but LLVM can be subtle too)

Great to see many new Emacs projects popping up:

The Impact Github is Having on Your Software Career, Right Now… https://medium.com/@sitapati/the-impact-github-is-having-on-your-software-career-right-now-6ce536ec0b50 (advocates for OS contributions inside work hours)

A computer is a device that you can give instructions to in a Turing complete language. On this basis, my phone isn't a computer!

pcase is incredibly powerful. The syntax is a little `(,noisy) but the docs are good and it covers tons of usecases. #emacs

Demangling C++ Symbols in Rust https://fitzgeraldnick.com/2017/02/22/cpp-demangle.html (fun deep dive into how C++ demangling works)

I've noticed that the more experienced a front end developer is, the less HTML they write to achieve their desired result.