Grind Smarter, not Harder
New Essay: Why Specifications Don't Compose Read it here! Didn't sneak peek it to the newsletter because I used a lot of Hugo preprocessing, so this is the...
Reject Simplicity, Embrace Complexity
"Keep it simple!" "Just write simple code!" "Great devs come up with simple solutions!" I get it. Simple code is better than complex code. It's an important...
Function Sets and Specification
May TLA+ Workshop Still three slots left! May 24-26. Learn how to find bugs that would slip right past types, test, and code review. No Newsletter Next Week...
Why Property Testing Finds Bugs Unit Testing Does Not
I intended this newsletter to be my thoughts without editing, and I have a new thought, so here goes. I want to respond to this discussion: But Kids These...
Some Rambling About Structured Text
TLA+ Workshop You know the drill. TLA+ Workshop, three days, May 24-26. Only four slots, so sign up before they're gone! New Essay Why do Interviewers Ask...
The Antipattern Scripting Language
This is a little out of the normal for this newsletter but I had an idea that I just needed to get off my brain. This is going to be a little more free-...
A Binder Full of Questions
1. A joke I once read: A certain well-known pure mathematician had a wife who, while intelligent, was not into mathematics. However, by continued practice,...
No Seriously, Hate Your Tools
TLA+ Workshop Only one slot left! 3 days, April 12-14. Register here! Why Don't Specs Compose? My friend Lars Hupel and I did a small Twitter experiment: a...
Vim is Turing-Complete
No, not VIMSCRIPT. Vim KEYSTROKES are Turing-complete.
Code is Data is YAML
This is a weirder theorycrafting post and I don't know how much I actually believe in it, but it seems like something you all'd enjoy reading. A couple weeks...
New Post, Blub Studies, and Theorycrafting
Hello everyone! First of all, new post: TLA+ Action Properties. It's about specification properties on changes to the state, not just properties on the...
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...