Computer Things

Edge Case Poisoning

October 12, 2020

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...

We have met the Excelnemy and he is us

October 6, 2020

Workshop The TLA+ workshop is in just two weeks! Oct 20-22, register here, use the code COMPUTRONSTUFF for $500 off. Still three slots left for the workshop!...

Mystery Knowledge

September 28, 2020

Mystery Knowledge In the misty past of 2019, when I was still giving conference talks, I always meditated for 5-10 minutes before starting. Arrive early, set...

Software Engineers Don't Have Disciplines

September 22, 2020

I know I said no newsletter this week, between the Alloy workshop and my panicked rush to finish The Crossover Project, but I found this old abandoned essay...

Updates on the Crossover Project

September 14, 2020

No Newsletter Next Week I'll be teaching the Alloy workshop. Speaking of workshops… TLA+ Workshop TLA+ Workshop for October 20-22, 10 AM - 6 PM CST. 24 hours...

Write Notes for Your Code

September 10, 2020

New Essay Decision Table Patterns: How to write better decision tables and fix common issues. If you've wanted to try formal methods but weren't sure where...

That Time I Almost Joined a Software Cult

September 8, 2020

Alloy Workshop There's just one slot left for the Alloy Workshop! Use the code YARLSNARTH for $1200 off. Are We Engineers Toxx clause is still in effect: if...

Formal Specification Languages

August 28, 2020

Alloy Workshop Slots for the September 21st Alloy workshop are still available! Learn how to model domains in a way that finds the bugs for you, rather than...

Please read the paper before you comment

August 24, 2020

Each day on twitter there is one main character. The goal is to never be it— maple cocaine (@maplecocaine) January 3, 2019 Yesterday the main character of...

What's the Deal with Message Passing, Anyway

August 21, 2020

I'm back from the moving! Things are still a bit chaotic here but hopefully normal newsletter/essays/office hours should resume next week. Alloy Workshop...

New Essay and a Very Peculiar Optimization

August 14, 2020

New Essay J Notation as a Tool of Thought. Many of you already read it as a newsletter piece, but this new version is considerably expanded and has a lot of...

New Workshop, Test Inference

August 11, 2020

Delayed newsletter next week I'm moving Monday, so newsletter should go out Tuesday. This is entirely unrelated to why the newsletter was delayed this week,...

How knowing math helps you write better software

August 3, 2020

Projects Update TLA+ workshop last week went really well! I'm super happy with the current state of the workshop and while I'll still be making a bunch of...

Syntax highlighting is a waste of an information channel

July 20, 2020

No newsletter next week Running the TLA+ workshop. No way I'm gonna have any brainpower after that. Syntax highlighting is a waste of an information channel...

Merchants on the Ivory Road

July 13, 2020

Before we get into the main bit I have a few announcements to cover: Announcements New essay I wrote a new essay! The Frink is Good, the Unit is Evil. Learn...

I have become ideas guy

July 6, 2020

Workshop There's still one slot available for the TLA+ workshop! July 27-29, remote, going to be super intense. Sign up here. Random Thoughts I wanted to...

Situated Software

July 3, 2020

New essay In what might be the shortest turnaround ever, I just uploaded weak and strong fairness. It's gone through some revisions since the draft I shared...

Why You Should Always Blindly Chase Industry Trends

June 29, 2020

Look I know you're here for the train wreck but there's logistical stuff we have to cover first. "Are we really engineers" video now available Here. tl;dr I...

New TLA+ Workshop, New PBT Essay

June 20, 2020

Thanks to everyone who came out for the "Are We Really Engineers" talk yesterday! I suspect they'll be putting the recording up here at some point, but if...

Monads and Transducers are Literally 100% The Same Thing

June 15, 2020

No Newsletter Next Week I promised one last week but the Alloy workshop took way too much out of me. Since I'm doing another workshop next week, I'm just...

Some Ranting About Examples

June 2, 2020

Delayed newsletter next week I'm doing the Alloy workshop on Monday and will have zero energy after that, so the newsletter will be out by Tuesday at the...

Defects are not the fault of programmers

May 27, 2020

Sorry this one is late! I've been having a rough time lately, which I think is pretty normal right now for everyone. But I'm doing a bit better now and hope...

Workshop Innovations and New Website Essay

May 18, 2020

Office hours What I'm thinking of doing is office hours every two weeks, alternating between an evening slot and a morning slot. So this week let's do office...

If Inheritance is so bad, why does everyone use it?

May 15, 2020

This essay says that inheritance is harmful and if possible you should "ban inheritance completely". You see these arguments a lot, as well as things like...

New Essay: In Praise of AutoHotKey

May 12, 2020

No office hours this week Still thinking through how to best do office hours. I think based on attendance it'd probably be more comfortable to do something...

Rage Against the God Machine

May 8, 2020

Content warning: mental illness, depression, abuse, PTSD, stuff like that. If you're sensitive to these topics you may want to skip this one. On Wednesday I...

How I Write Talks

May 4, 2020

New Workshop Given the interest in the previous Alloy workshop, I've opened up a second day on June 22nd. Same discount applies, [redacted] for 500 off. It's...

New Essay, Office Hours, and a short essay

April 27, 2020

Workshop Sold Out The Alloy workshop is now sold out. Dang, that was fast. If you're still interested in this, please add yourself to the waitlist. If enough...

This Newsletter is Too Popular

April 21, 2020

New Talk My Deconstruct talk, "What we can Learn from Software History", is now out! It covers why studying history so important and what it looks like to...

Making Illegal States Unrepresentable

April 17, 2020

I have opinions on this Okay so the saying is "make illegal states unrepresentable". The meaning is that we should structure programs in a way it such that a...

Announcing Alloydocs, updates on major projects

April 13, 2020

Alloydocs It's finally ready! Almost 13,000 words of Alloy reference, techniques, and pitfalls. There's still a lot of work to do when people inevitably...

A Very Brief Intro to Formal Methods (aka my job)

April 6, 2020

Office Hours Worked pretty well last time, so let's do it again! This Friday, 11 AM CST, Zoom Room [redacted], password is [redacted]. Not sure if this is...

What's the Most Expensive Software Per Byte?

April 2, 2020

Is it 1 dollar/mb? 10 dollars/mb? 100? 100,000?

Language Warts and Vim Trix

March 30, 2020

New(ish post) Last week I published a new post called 10 Most(ly dead) Influential Programming Languages and forgot to share it here. In that time we've...

Please don't write your documentation in Markdown

March 23, 2020

Please don't write your documentation in Markdown. Please. I'm begging you. Markdown is tolerable for short documentation, like a readme.md. Past that, it's...

Special Purpose Languages

March 18, 2020

Greetings from the end of the world! Sorry things are late, I had writers ablockalypse. Remote workshops All the conferences I was supposed to go to are now...

On Customization

March 11, 2020

A couple letters back I talked about how mental models don't scale. If you heavily customize the environment to your needs, it'll be hard for other people to...

Online Workshops, Project Updates, New Post

March 9, 2020

Back from vacation! Turns out I'm bad at vacationing. Anyway, quick update on projects: Crossover Project: I recently gave a 10 minute lightning talk draft...

The Opposite of Documentation is Superstition

March 5, 2020

Yes I know I'm technically on vacation but if I go too long without writing I die from a witch's curse and I don't want to work on longform projects For...

On Scaling Mental Models

February 24, 2020

No Newsletter Next Week I'll be on vacation in the Caribbean, sipping drinks and juggling for Hermit crabs. The Actual Thing I'm a vim user. I've used Vim...

Donald Knuth Was Framed

February 22, 2020

YOW! Talk My YOW! talk, "Designing Distributed Systems with TLA+", is now available! You can watch it here. Donald Knuth Was Framed The other day I was...

Happy Precedence Day!

February 17, 2020

Happy precedence day! (For my non-American followers, it's a pun on a national holiday we got today) New Consulting Offering I'm now available to do paid...

New Essay: Feature Interaction Bugs

February 5, 2020

Read it here! This has gone through some fits and starts, so it's finally good to get it out. I sketched out the first draft in 2018. 2018! ps y'all are gr8

Project updates, request for help, braindump

February 3, 2020

Update on Major Projects I've finally, finally started drafting out the crossover project. And only two months late! Right now the outline is almost a...

On Emulation

January 28, 2020

Last week I said that I had some thoughts on "emulation" but hadn't yet hammered them out. So today I'm gonna hammer them out. I might eventually polish this...

New Essay: The Business Case For Formal Methods

January 22, 2020

New essay at the site! The Business Case for Formal Methods is a primer on the financial benefits of using FM, plus case studies and a demo. It's a...

A Totally Polished and not-at-all half-baked Take on Static vs Dynamic Typing

January 20, 2020

I'm back from Madfest! Since this is a newsletter computer things and not a newsletter about juggling things, I won't say anything about it. Except I got to...

Three Ways Juggling is Like Programming

January 17, 2020

I'm going to my first ever juggling convention this weekend! If any of you are in Madison, hit me up. Not sure if I'll be able to get away from Madfest, but...

New Essay, Intentional Errors, and a TLA+ CLI

January 13, 2020

New Essay I haven't posted any essays on formal methods in a while, so let's start of the new year right: Hypermodeling Hyperproperties When we design...

Bill Kentstravaganza

January 10, 2020

Bill Kent is one of the unsung greats of software engineering. I get why Data and Reality is obscure: the 2nd edition is out of circulation and the 3rd...