miniblog.

I love that modern package managers (npm, cargo etc) make it easy to see what libraries need updating. It's a shame that changelogs aren't a first class concept though. The tooling can't tell me what's changed, I have to find the relevant docs.

Kindness, expectations, and communication in OSS projects: https://snarky.ca/setting-expectations-for-open-source-participation/

Looking at assembly output from rustc to see zero cost abstractions in action:

Bringing a 'command palette' (M-x in Emacs, Cmd-P in Atom) to all Gtk applications in Gnome! https://github.com/p-e-w/plotinus I'd love too see this UI paradigm be pervasive. The ribbon in office is helpfully contextually, but text lists with filtering scale superbly.

I definitely feel more productive with a larger monitor compared with just a laptop, and I know there have been studies on this. I wonder if it's primarily the window switching overhead? E.g. would a tiling WM with lots of virtual desktops perform better?

It can be really hard to find good free resources: for-pay providers are much more motivated to promote themselves. I found it really hard to find quality stock images, and eventually found unsplash. This week I found pixabay too. I'm sure this also happens in other domains.

One thing I've really come to appreciate from working on type checkers: There's a crucial difference between the type system and checks you can do on type-inferred code. E.g. using a bottom type is totally well-typed, but users expect warnings: x = exit(0);

Digital Ocean still growing at 20% YoY and targeting profitability in 2 years: https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/20/digitalocean-raises-100m-in-debt-as-it-scales-towards-revenue-of-300m-profitability/ I'm a happy DO user but I like to know about the profitability of the services I use.

Wonderful, empathetic discussion of open source dynamics, emotional associations and mindset: https://blog.burntsushi.net/foss/

The dhall survey has a ton of interesting feedback from users about why they use the language, what they use it for, and areas that need work. https://www.haskellforall.com/2020/02/dhall-survey-results-2019-2020.html It's a really great way of learning what needs polish on the official website too!

Nifty, you can run Coq in a web browser with a notebook-style interface!

Here's an IDE feature I think should exist: A *random* file finder! Rather than doing a range of static analyses (typical lint issue count, typical number of functions per file), just randomly sample! It's less overwhelming and prevents recent feature bias to code cleanliness.

Open source can be used by companies to commoditise complementary products. It makes sense for them. There's nothing stopping others doing the same though! You run the risk of others trying to commoditise your value add. I wonder if this has happened?

Slow progress towards self-driving cars, despite early optimism: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/2/14/21063487/self-driving-cars-autonomous-vehicles-waymo-cruise-uber (Human fatalities are 1 per 100,000,000 miles driven, and no manufacturer has driven that much yet!)

Using status for group chats *with audio* to create a sense of presence: