J as a Desktop Calculator
Talk Tuesday I'm speaking at Berlin Function Programming Group! Noon CST tomorrow, register here. It's my standard TLA+ talk, so there won't be any major...
"Naming Things" is a Poor Name for Naming Things
It's been a while! Let's just say the past couple of weeks have not been kind to me and leave it at that. So, newsletter. I got 40% through writing about...
No, "reasoning about code" is not a scam
Late Newsletter next week Alloy workshop. Still one slot left if people are interested! No, "reasoning about code" is not a scam Last week I read “Reasoning...
Adversarial Nondeterminism
Damn, has it been two weeks since the last "real" newsletter? I feel like my brain is out shape. Anyway, I thought of a fun metaphor to explain model...
New Essay: Are We Really Engineers?
Are We Really Engineers? It's finally ready! Part one of the Crossover Project covers what inspired me to do this all, what makes engineering "engineering",...
How I got into formal methods
Alloy Workshop There's a couple slots left for the February Alloy Workshop. Feb 8th, 10 AM - 6 PM CST. Learn how to find bugs in your designs without having...
Write Code That Delivers Value to Clients
Does a person help my team deliver software to stakeholders? If they stomp their feet and demand that we spend a week reducing the program’s memory footprint...
100th Issue End-of-Year Bonanza
It's the 100th Computer Things Newsletter! I'm celebrating with a book announcement and director's commentary on all of my 2020 essays. But first, a couple...
Cross-Branch Testing
This was inspired by a few conversations I had last week. There's a certain class of problems that are hard to test: The output isn't obviously inferrable...
The Most Important Video Game Ever Made
So first question: important how? If we're just talking "impact to the game industry" it'd probably be something like Super Mario Bros or Tetris or something...
Oracle Testing
This is another experiment in producing intermediate workhorse essays, combined with a bunch of theorycrafting. Most unit tests are "example test", showing...
Safety and Liveness Properties
Hi nerds, I'm back! I didn't think about tech at all last week so don't have a whole lot on my mind this week, but let's see what I can dredge up. Workshop,...
Computer Things: Vacation Phone-In Edition
Hi all! I'm taking my first "real" vacation since I went independent two years ago. Ostensibly the plan is to spend it all juggling, cooking, and not...
Knights, Puzzles, and Hypermodels
I, being a huge nerd, am a fan of logic puzzles. One of the most famous ones is "Knights and Knaves": you have a bunch of statements from people, where...
Why I Still Use Vim
The Stack Overflow blog recently published Modern IDEs are magic. Why are so many coders still using Vim and Emacs? Posts about Vim vs Emacs vs IDEs are...
No, your clean code won't save the planet
Need to channel my election anxiety into something productive, so here you go. One baffling trend I'm seeing recently is people trying to moralize virtuous...
Programs Writing Programs
New Essay Two workers are quadratically better than one. I shared a first draft of this a couple weeks back; this time it didn't change a whole lot aside...
TLA+ Helped Me Count to Six
The TLA+ Workshop is done! I'm taking November off from workshops do complete three writing goals: Feedback from the first draft of the Crossover Project is...
The Pendulum Swings Eternal
I shouldn't have had a newsletter this week because of the TLA+ workshop, but I forgot to say "no newsletter this week" last week so guess what, extra...
Edge Case Poisoning
TLA+ Workshop Last Call The TLA+ workshop is next week! Oct 20-22, register here, use the code COMPUTRONSTUFF for $500 off. Learn how a few hours of...