Disco is taking out the bad and keeping only the good.

I had heard of Disco, but it does really seem like it sparks joy. Perhaps I should give it a try.

see: https://github.com/p2r3/bareiron

If you’re building a new CI system/IaC platform/Make replacement: please just let me write code to dynamically create the workflow/infrastructure/build graph.

When “what CAN happen” is as important as “what SHOULD happen”

UNIX is a general-purpose, multi-user, interactive operating system for the Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-11/40 and 11/45 computers. It offers a number of features seldom found even in larger operating systems, including: (1) a hierarchical file system incorporating demountable volumes; (2) compatible file, device, and inter-process I/O; (3) the ability to initiate asynchronous processes; (4) system command language selectable on a per-user basis; and (5) over 100 subsystems including a dozen languages. This paper discusses the nature and implementation of the file system and of the user command interface.

This is such a beautiful piece of computer science exposition. Man, it’s no wonder everyone wanted to copy these two guys.

see: https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~brewer/cs262/unix.pdf see: https://mit.edu/6.1800/www/readings/02-unix.shtml

Note to self: if my language has shell programming, there’s no reason you shouldn’t do it the way Julia does.

via: https://julialang.org/blog/2012/03/shelling-out-sucks/

Bro is starting off the year strong:

God, though, I understand why so many people are chasing that dragon, even though it’s going to ruin their careers, and maybe even their lives. I get why people fall for this, in spite of the externalities that they must know of by now. In spite of the colossal waste, the loss of fresh water resources, the fact that AI datacenters are the fastest growing source of carbon emissions, the people suffering sky-rocketing power bill and rolling outages near these new datacenters, the reams and reams of fascist propaganda these machines are producing to tear our society apart, the corruption, the market manipulation, the plain and simple fact that the ultimate purpose of these tools is to put their users out of a job entirely… well, once you finally get a taste of what it feels like to be great… I suppose all of those problems seem so far away.

The first reason, then, that we care about low-level is that it allows us to make better choices. We can make better software by starting in the right place, with the right frame and the right stack. Low-level programming allows us to build trucks instead of Trucklas.

I love Ben’s work, but he has a bad habit of not giving credit where it’s due, and makes him come off as smug in his writing. Yes, I too care about performance in apps. But this should not be the sole decision-maker when picking the technology stack.

Use a (gitignored) file for interactive scripting. Instead of entering a command directly into the terminal, write it to a file first, and then run the file.

Your language sucks, actually.

A tounge-in-cheek LLVM IR “tutorial.”

via: https://buttondown.com/hillelwayne/archive/refinement-without-specification/

Talk from the Roguelike Celebration 2018

Very nice software architecture talk. Patterns discussed: composition over inheritance, type objects, commands/actions.

Blog posts, talks, and essays that changed how people think about dependency management.

My engine supports detailed changes to world geometry - adding and removing matter both smoothly or with sharp edges. It also supports non-destructive changes like moving a hole around, or creating a tunnel and walking through it - and then seeing it disappear behind you. I’m excited about these non-destructive changes in particular as they enable a lot of interesting gameplay mechanics.

Very impressive!

I went to work to explore this idea of checking if a number is odd or even by only using comparisons to see how well it works in a real world scenario.

Harmonia integrates mathematical reasoning into musical composition by introducing a new kind of system called Scientific Music Notation.

via: https://dmitri.mycpanel.princeton.edu/index.html