miniblog.

REPL driven development in Python, contrasting with TDD and Clojure workflows:

Reflections on the challenges and relevance of Gnu Autotools after the first release in eight years:

I really like interpreters that allow you to inspect values, such as the JS console in a browser or Common Lisp with sly. Otherwise you end up repeatedly pretty printing values. It's unnecessary.

@louis@emacs.ch Low level stuff needs a language without a GC (C/C++/Rust) and Android has been Java based throughout its history. I don't think they have much choice without rebuilding major components.

This article discusses how you often need #'foo rather than foo in Clojure code so you can redefine foo whilst testing your app interactively: https://srasu.srht.site/var-evaluation.html Perhaps function pointers should evaluate to themselves? I wonder if there's a language solution here.

Every programming language attempts to expand until it has an effect system.

As Android moves away from C/C++ to a larger proportion of Java and Rust, its security vulnerabilities are measurably decreasing!

Benchmarking the cost of array bounds checks in Rust code: https://blog.readyset.io/bounds-checks/ The author even patches rustc to make sure *all* bounds checks are gone, in order to compare the performance!

I really like "zero cost abstractions" as a programming language motto. It's really effective for evaluating design decisions. I've heard it for both C++ and Rust. Are there other PL mottos that are equally helpful?

TIOBE considered misleading: https://blog.nindalf.com/posts/stop-citing-tiobe/ It claims that iOS + macOS is less than half the size of Visual Basic!

TIL you can express pretty much all typescript type syntax in JSDoc comments: https://www.typescriptlang.org/docs/handbook/jsdoc-supported-types.html This gives you all the IDE benefits of typescript, but you don't need a compile step to run your code.

Today I learnt that null bytes are valid in UTF-8 and ASCII strings! It was a surprise -- \0 doesn't feel like text -- but it'd be even more awkward when using C-style strings.

RFC 9116 was published this year, which promotes having /.well-known/security.txt as a standard file woth contact information for security issues. It also notes that having this file does not mean you're running a CTF exercise :)

Self hosting is really nifty, but it's an additional cognitive burden. For example, I can run difftastic on its own history. I use plain git-diff just as often. My best improvements have come from using it in other codebases. It lets me think about one thing at a time

OCaml has several unusual design features that I've come to appreciate. (1) Separating integer and float addition is really clear. (2) No subtyping (everything is 'a or concrete) simplifies lots too.