Mostly announcements and plans but also some fun floating point trivia
This is a really busy week for me, so light newsletter this time. Let's start with obligatory stuff and then get into fun newsletter stuff. Announcements So...
Problems harder than NP-Complete
People always talk about "P vs NP" like P problems are easy and NP problems are hard. This is a useful day-to-day model but also an oversimplification....
The seven specification ur-languages
A brief overview of the formal specification landscape
When to prefer inheritance to composition
Hint: it involves the typechecker
Some of my workshop teaching tricks
And some thoughts on the role in software in solving problems
GPT4 should be part of your toolkit
On March 24 I wrote GPT is revolutionary. On March 27 I got access to GPT4.1 Now that I've used it for a month, I'm firmly in the "this is the greatest thing...
In Defense of No-code('s potential)
Don't think about businesses, think about *people*
What TLA+ Can't Check
Hi everyone, I wrote a new blog post, Breaking the Limits of TLA+ Model Checking. It's the first (non-learntla) TLA+-related content I've put out in what,...
I really like powershell
When I went on Windows full time in 2019 I decided to avoid WSL as much as I could, which meant learning the Windows-native ways of doing things, which meant...
The Capability-Tractability Tradeoff
The more you can say, the less you can say about what you can say.
Repurposing Hotel Keycards
April Cools!
Everything's an API
Hi Everybody, April Cools is this weekend! A bunch of people who normally write tech stuff will be writing about a bunch of other topics. If you've got a...
GPT is revolutionary
Even a stochastic parrot can sing.
Ergonomic APIs, channel invariants, and data views
Musings on a tempting antipattern
Making Memes
Fnord.
What can you code up in an hour?
Fast programming is a powerful skill.
Formalizing Stability and Resilience Properties
Via TLA+
Predicate Logic for Programmers: Status Report
A 2000-word piece on why I haven't yet finished a different piece
Hype Cycles Aren't "Gaslighting" You
I promised an update on the logic book today but I haven't done a spite write in a while and oh boy a new one is just raring to go. Update is queued up to be...
Teaching Implication Better
Hello everyone! It's finally March, or at least close enough to March for my purposes. First thing, we're a month off from April Cools! April cools is a...