Merchants on the Ivory Road
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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?
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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)
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?
Is it 1 dollar/mb? 10 dollars/mb? 100? 100,000?
Language Warts and Vim Trix
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...