On the benefits of humanities in software engineering
Read More Boring Poetry
Data Invariants
Asserts But Fancy
Giving Names to Things
Naming things is hard. Naming things that have never been named is harder.
Why do arrays start at 0?
It's not the reason you think. No, it's not that reason either.
I have complicated feelings about TDD
They're not all good and not all bad
Excel is Pretty Dang Cool
It's like discovering a treasure chest under my kitchen sink
Search less, browse more
Why you should browse more documentation instead of just searching for specific answers
Information camouflage
About a thing that makes finding some information really hard
On Metafiles
A metafile is a file that represents multiple possible files. The most common type of metafile in use is the template file: <p>I passed in {number}</p>...
Six Programming Languages I'd Like to See
A few weird ideas for programming languages I came up with that it'd be "really" "cool" if someone made (wink)
Beyond the Four-Document Model
Been a while! Now that learntla is out, I can get back to life. Exercising, eating, sleeping, and most importantly, updating this newsletter. Word of...
The new learntla is now online!
tl;dr: online TLA+ manual/advanced techniques/examples here. TLA+ is a tool for testing abstract software designs. I first stumbled on it in 2016 and found...
Updates on Learntla
Fifteen days left Hi everyone! Been a couple of weeks since the last email. As mentioned, I took June off from weekly newsletter to work on the new version...
Reader Mailbag: June Crunch Edition
Hey everyone! We gotta start with some housekeeping. First, you might have noticed that the newsletter email's changed. Several people informed me that Gmail...
Codebases as communication
Conventionally we communicate programming ideas with talks, papers, and blog posts. But we can also communicate ideas with entire codebases. If someone finds...
How to Memorize a Larger Multiplication Table
This one's going to be a bit off topic. I have a long piece on the history of pattern matching I want to do but this week is really tight work-wise and this...
Technology changes fast
As a teen I regularly read The Daily WTF, a comedy site about bad programming and bad software jobs. Two articles have stuck with me. The first is this...
Update on Learntla and a new writing process
Hey everyone! I realize I should give you all an update on the current learntla progress! So first of all, I've been continuously pushing my work to the...
Software Mise en Place
I am really, really into cooking. In the heady days of 2016 I regularly threw dinner parties for 30+ people. These days I don't hate myself that much, but...
You can automate more than you think
(Sorry this is late! Dealing with COVID.) I have mild ADHD. I can focus on strenuous mental tasks, but I can't handle boring or repetitive work. Even...