miniblog.

Computer Science is increasing in popularity in universities: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/24/technology/computer-science-courses-college.html At least in the UK, popularity plummeted for years after the dot com bubble. I wonder if we're at all time highs or not.

The downsides of writing a large project in Typescript: https://medium.com/javascript-scene/the-typescript-tax-132ff4cb175b I don't share all the author's views, but makes interesting comments on what percentage bugs get caught by the typechecker, and type declaration verbosity/placement challenges.

Rust has a very reassuring compile process. After I've made the compiler completely happy, I have an unusually high level of confidence in my code. (It might not be doing the right thing, but it's robust and pleasant to refactor!)

@rocx @cstanhope A great example where the full page is being used to show more content! Examples from other languages: PHP: http://php.net/manual/en/function.count.php Clojure (unofficial): https://clojuredocs.org/clojure.core/count C++ (admittedly this has two functions):

Cute project of stock illustrated people, particularly useful for websites: https://www.humaaans.com/

Useful metrics, vanity metrics, and organisation alignment:

Fortnite as a communal hangout area, a 'third place': https://char.gd/blog/2018/fortnite-is-the-new-hangout-spot https://medium.com/s/greatescape/fortnite-is-so-much-more-than-a-game-3ca829f389f4 It's also really impressive to build a successful app across PC, consoles and Android, with everyone playing together!

Intentional variable shadowing, sorting floats, and other reflections on writing Rust: https://rcoh.me/posts/thoughts-on-rust-a-few-thousand-lines-in/

Fabulous introduction to the Emacs C interface:

I'm coming round to the view that optimum documentation is one web page per function. This gives you space for prose, examples, related functions, version history and even user comments! It's not the norm though, and requires substantial content writing.

I've noticed that data small enough to fit in your clipboard rarely gets saved to an individual file. You get collections of data, but it would be odd to save a single URL to a file. The clipboard less persistent, but it's incredibly convenient.

Rust's dbg! macro (new in 1.32) is delightful. You write dbg!(my_var) and you get a print statement that writes: [src/my_file.rs:123] my_var = "value of my_var" It's a huge ergonomic help when debugging!

Find yourself regularly reviewing pull requests just to comment "please update the changelog"? Automate it! https://danger.systems/js/ Unlike a CI tool, this is automating PR commenting.

Food for thought: suppose better libraries/tools over the next 5 years doubled software productivity. A six month project today would take three months in 2024. Would we even notice? How often do we compare like-for-like projects for improvements in development speed?

TIL there are AI competitions for rock-paper-scissors! https://www.rpscontest.com/