A JSON Feed Apology and Explanation—JOURNAL

All my best efforts and this is still where we end up!

This Week I Learned #1 —JOURNAL

The Infra Engineer’s Blind Spot—JOURNAL

Why I ended up down a rabbit hole instead of shipping.

find, grep, xargs, and newlines and null—JOURNAL

Turns out tr is your friend for this kind of thing.

Follow-Up on Command-Line Finding and Filtering—JOURNAL

A simpler solution that doesn’t require tr… if you have GNU utils or other alternatives.

This Week I Learned #3—JOURNAL

Less reading this week… because more composing.

mut (and set) and autotracking in Ember Octane —JOURNAL

Understanding a surprising behavior—and fixing a refactoring hazard.

Designing an Atomic CSS System—JOURNAL

Making my CSS scalable from the outset.

This Week I Learned #5—JOURNAL

Making Illegal States Unrepresentable—In TypeScript—JOURNAL

Showing how Scott Wlaschin’s approach in F^♯ translates to a language with a very different type system.

Building the Slow Way—JOURNAL

Or, part of why rewrite is taking a while: I’m in this for the long haul.

A Git Workflow for Managing Long-Running Upgrades—JOURNAL

Using some lessons learned in the trenches of large upgrades.

Migrating Off of PromiseProxyMixin in Ember Octane —JOURNAL

An important refactor for getting rid of mixins and proxies.

Async Data and Autotracking in Ember Octane—JOURNAL

Digging into the load helper and AsyncData type I introduced in an earlier post.

Tracking in the Glimmer VM↩︎—❈—ELSEWHERE

Chris Garrett (@pzuraq) explains to me how autotracking and the Glimmer (Ember) template layer connect!

Data Constructors, Part 1: Understanding by Implementing —JOURNAL

Understanding an idea from Standard ML-like languages by implementing it in (boring) TypeScript.

Autotracking: Elegant DX Via Cutting-Edge CS —JOURNAL

A modern JavaScript reactivity system powered by Lamport clocks and incremental computation and depth-first searches: oh my!

Things I Was Wrong About: Types —JOURNAL

Because it would do us all good to be a little more honest about where we’ve changed our minds or simply been mistaken.

Initializing Class Fields in Ember Octane —JOURNAL

One of the many small-but-lovely benefits of getting to use native classes in Ember Octane.

Writing Robust TypeScript Libraries—JOURNAL

A subtler art than it might at first appear, if you intend to support JS or even loose mode TS.

Notes on Thoughtbot’s “Stop Using 'any'”—JOURNAL

A couple tweaks and improvements to a good post!

Understanding args in Glimmer Components—JOURNAL

Clearing up a common confusion with a worked example.

Announcement: Speaking at EmberConf 2021 —ELSEWHERE

In which I’ll be speaking for 30 minutes at a JS conference… and will spend only about 5 of those minutes on JS.

A Useful Approach to Problem-Solving—JOURNAL

(It’s useful to me, at least.)

A Gap in (My Knowledge of) the Developer Productivity Literature —JOURNAL

Where is the equivalent of Accelerate for anything outside of DevOps?

Naming and Framing—JOURNAL

Or, why did Accelerate matter for DevOps?

Introducing “Heuristics for Good Software Design”—JOURNAL

A series of posts in which I explain how I think about effective software design.

Progressive Disclosure of Complexity and Typed FP Languages—JOURNAL

Or, one part of why to some extent Elm, and to a significant degree PureScript Halogen, can be quite difficult for users to get their heads around at first.

RFC: Semantic Versioning for TypeScript Types ↩︎—❈—ELSEWHERE

In which years of thinking and months of design come to fruition.

Impromptu EmberConf 2021 AMA↩︎—❈—ELSEWHERE

In which my friend David Baker put me on the spot… and it was great!

Keep It Local—ELSEWHERE

Or: (part of) what “reasoning about your code” really means; being my EmberConf 2021 talk.

Chatting About Web Dev ↩︎—❈—ELSEWHERE

Ember CLI history, ember-auto-import, web bundling, and more

MusicXML and Percussion Notation—JOURNAL

Digging into How Dorico and StaffPad represent percussion differently.

Small, Non-Trivial Projects for Learning—JOURNAL

For learning effectively, nothing is better than a real project which gives you a place to experiment and play.

Program modifications at low cost?—LIBRARY

Announcement: Speaking at TypeVille 2022 —ELSEWHERE

On the subject of “Types as Tools for Thought”

Semantic Versioning for TypeScript Types 1.0.0-beta.1↩︎—❈—ELSEWHERE

After years of work, I’ve published the first beta of the spec for semantic versioning for TypeScript types!

SemVer for TS in Practice—JOURNAL

Showing how the recommendations from www.semver-ts.org can actually work in the real world.

Misusing TypeScript Assertion Functions for Fun and Profit—JOURNAL

A horrible (but very useful) hack I came up with yesterday for adding types to some old code.

A Pleasing Symmetry in Rust—JOURNAL

Appreciating how Rust enum variants are mirrors of its kinds of structs.

On the Ember Blog: Plain Functions as Helpers ↩︎—❈—ELSEWHERE

Making sure people understand a new feature we shipped which is a big deal.

Flow State—JOURNAL

Maybe it’s less important than we like to think?

Marco’s Rule of Software Stacks (Expanded)—JOURNAL

On being the biggest user of a given technology.

Trade-offs—JOURNAL

They are real; but too often offered as an excuse to avoid thinking rather than a reason to think harder.

necessarily simple abstractions—LIBRARY

Organizing Many Software Projects—JOURNAL

How I lay out my file system and how I tweak Git for working on literally dozens of different repositories.

Reasoning About Reference Cycles—JOURNAL

Rust’s lifetime types are challenging, but they bring a capability I miss all the time in other languages.

A UML Comeback?—JOURNAL

Because the tools are positioned for sketching, now?

Product Idea: Meal Tracking for Athletes —JOURNAL

All of the existing tools need broader design vocabularies.

Special Null Syntax vs. Types and Functions—JOURNAL

Why does Maybe.map feel better than ?? and friends to me? A sketch.

Build Yourself Small Tools—JOURNAL

Feature Idea: Week-Level Smart Training Plans —JOURNAL

Training (at my level, anyway) is less about individual day-to-day work and more about what I do each week. The tools should support that!

Competencies—JOURNAL

An observation on the dynamics of (sufficiently) large organizations.

dimension change/code review—JOURNAL

Is GitHub Copilot Any Good?—JOURNAL

Betteridge’s Law applies, but the details of why I think so might still interest you.

Be a quality detector.—LIBRARY

Writing Tools—JOURNAL

Obsidian, Bear, high-quality native apps vs. cross-platform Electron apps…

On Ember’s New Major Version Cadence—JOURNAL

Not just how this one specific process for one JavaScript framework is changing, but why—and why I hope it will be useful to other projects as well!

Trying BBEdit and Nova—JOURNAL

I am taking some time off, and this seems like a great time to mess with alternatives for my software stack.

Je ne sais quoi—JOURNAL

Programming languages, cameras, computers, and other technologies—and feel.

Is TypeScript Good?—A Reply to Rach Smith—JOURNAL

Taking a thoughtful post as an excuse to discuss software system dynamics through the lens of TypeScript.

My Current Mac Stack—JOURNAL

The software I use every day, with commentary.

Extended Time Off Report—JOURNAL

What I got up to over the past month! Because I relax by learning and doing.

Reflections on a Month with BBEdit and Nova—JOURNAL

What works, what doesn’t, and where did this experiment lead me in the end?

Unsafe—JOURNAL

On a common meme: “Rust would not help because we would have to use a lot of unsafe”.

Stay Curious About Your Tools—JOURNAL

I have lately enjoyed digging further into Unix and macOS fundamentals—and it has reminded me to stay curious about my tools!

Just Keep Climbing—JOURNAL

Or: how to make progress.

Hierarchical systems—LIBRARY

Unmeasurable Costs and Benefits—JOURNAL

One major reason standard advice about “demonstrating value (or impact)” does not work well for foundational software, including (but not only) open-source library code.

Brain Rewiring in Progress—JOURNAL

Learning Racket is making my head hurt in the best way.

Do It the Dumb Way Sometimes—JOURNAL

Simple tools for small, well-scoped problems, please!

Versioning and Big Binary Blob Art Files—JOURNAL

Sharing my ad hoc version management for writing musical scores. (It works for Photoshop just as well!)

Where DRY Applies—JOURNAL

The rule is taught early and often, but it ought to come with a clarification.

How to Do a TypeScript Conversion —JOURNAL

Addressing a very common question: do-it-as-you-go or follow the dependency graph?

Seven Languages in Seven Weeks—LIBRARY

A now-classic read for software developers. How did it age?

Next—JOURNAL

Leaving LinkedIn, taking a 3-month sabbatical, and thinking about what comes next.

Next: Role?—JOURNAL

Ratchets over levers.

Now: Sabbatical—JOURNAL

Resting well and (by?) working hard.

The Wizardry Frontier—JOURNAL

Against the idea that accessibility and reliability (or other such dichotomies) must remain at odds in programming languages.

Why Not OpenDoc-Alikes?—JOURNAL

Maybe apps, for all their limitations, actually have some things going for them.

2023 in Review: Sabbatical Report—JOURNAL

LambdaConf 2024—Two Talks!—ELSEWHERE

One technical deep dive on versioning, one philosophical exploration of our limits as software engineers.

jj init—ESSAYS

What if we actually could replace Git? Jujutsu might give us a real shot.

Garmin Training Status – A Complaint—JOURNAL

The feature ends up being useless to me because it does not model my real-world training very well.

You Have to Type It Out—JOURNAL

A note on how learning works (in my experience, anyway).

Upcoming: Substrate Engineering (StaffPlus New York 2024)—ELSEWHERE

Coming in September: a talk on “Engineering Foundations in a World of LLMs”.

The Cutting Edge of Versioning (LambdaConf 2024)—ELSEWHERE

Semantic Versioning, library & framework evolution, programming language design, type systems, and you.

Seeing Like a Programmer (LambdaConf 2024)—ELSEWHERE

Resiliency, Limits, and Moral Hazards in Software Engineering

Using cargo tree to Explain Dependencies—JOURNAL

Or, the equivalent of npm why, yarn why, pnpm why, etc. that you might be looking for.

Weeknote: June 17–21, 2024—JOURNAL

Pest.rs’ Syntax Tree is Very Low-Level—JOURNAL

Which is fine, mostly, but it means you have to do two passes to get a typed AST!

Changelog Interviews #597: Major.Semver.Patch ↩︎—❈—ELSEWHERE

Teaming up with Predrag Gruevski to talk SemVer with Adam and Jerod.

Weeknote: June 22–29, 2024—JOURNAL

An Observation on Constructor Syntax—JOURNAL

From debating whether to implement them in my little programming language.

Weeknote: June 30–July 5, 2024—JOURNAL

Fast Tools are Wonderful—JOURNAL

A real-world example: Markdown-, HTML-, Unicode-aware word counting.

Weeknote: July 6–13, 2024—JOURNAL

count-md: a New Rust Tool and Library ↩︎—❈—ELSEWHERE

Counting words in a Markdown files in a way that actually makes sense.

StaffPlus NY 2024: Substrate Engineering —ELSEWHERE

Engineering Foundations in a World of LLMs

Read the Manual: open —JOURNAL

open files and directories on macOS!

Read the Manual: less —JOURNAL

Sorry, “opposite of more” doesn’t tell me much.

Read the Manual: last —JOURNAL

A tiny tool I used for the first time in late September, 2024.

Read the Manual: cd—JOURNAL

One of the few Unix tools that actually follows the Unix philosophy! Mostly, anyway.

Read the Manual: du—JOURNAL

Disk utility. Not that Mac app you might be thinking of, the older one.

Read the Manual: rm—JOURNAL

Another old Unix standby… without too many extra flags.

Read the Manual: uptime—JOURNAL

It tells you how long your computer has been running. Handy, occasionally!

Read the Manual: pbcopy and pbpaste—JOURNAL

Two of my favorite command line tools: copy and paste to the macOS clipboard. (Actually to one of… several clipboards?)

Read the Manual: lsof—JOURNAL

Like ls, but it’s about open files instead of files in a directory. Neat!

Read the Manual: id—JOURNAL

When you need to know a bit more about how the system identifies a given user.

brew services uses launchctl or systemctl—NOTES

The DefinitelyTyped dprint Setup—NOTES

Much, much simpler than I expected!

dprint—NOTES

A very fast auto-formatter!

True Myth 8.1.0—ELSEWHERE

Adding some test helpers!

PSA: Default to cargo install --locked —NOTES

There are reasons this is not the default, but you can make it your default.

On cargo install Not Defaulting to --locked—NOTES

A few details, as I best I know them, because a friend asked after reading my last post!

jj v0.24—NOTES

My daily-driver version control tool keeps getting better.

dprint for Nova—ELSEWHERE

I like nice, fast tools, so dprint and Nova make a great pair.

2024 State of Rust Survey↩︎—❈—NOTES

An opportunity to provide real and actionable information to the Rust project leadership. Take it!

jj Tip: Rebase All Branches Matching a Revset—NOTES

Read the Code: Using Drop Safely in Rust—JOURNAL

A deep dive into Rust’s vec::Drain and its Drop implementation as an example of how ownership prevents subtle bugs—memory and otherwise!

Runtime or Types?—NOTES

A false dichotomy! They always go together.

Buttondown’s Alternatives Page—NOTES

Would that all software companies acted this way.

jj tip: ignore gh-pages by default—NOTES

I want my log to show me only useful information. Revsets let me do that!

To Throw or Not to Throw in TypeScript?—NOTES

Taking a bit of inspiration from Rust and ending up with much more reliable TypeScript.

Configure Zed to Use the Project’s rust-analyzer—NOTES

Because it is not nice for your editor tooling to stop working!

Publishing to GitHub Pages via GitHub Actions—NOTES

Including two tips for bits that were very much not obvious about the project settings!

fish shell v4 beta 1—NOTES

A bunch of small nice improvements… and a rewrite in Rust!

rust-analyzer version via rust-toolchain.toml—NOTES

If you use an older toolchain, this will make for a better developer (and contributor!) experience.

Announcement: LambdaConf 2025 Keynote—ELSEWHERE

Infrastructure, Common Goods, and the Future of Open Source Software

A Year of Shipping—NOTES

…details to be determined as I go.

True Myth v8.2.0—Now With a Task Type!—ELSEWHERE

Literally seven years in the making. But it happened!

True Myth v8.3.0—ELSEWHERE

Lots of async combinators, a new Result helper… and some deprecations.

True Myth v8.4.0—ELSEWHERE

Probably the last 8.x release: Task is feature complete!

JavaScript’s Promise.race and Promise.all Are Not “Fair”—NOTES

Just like life! And just like life, you just have to deal with it.

The Essence of Successful Abstractions—JOURNAL

Complexity has to live somewhere; but it does not have to live everywhere.

jj tip: describe multiple revisions at once—NOTES

Revsets and filesets remain mind-blowing.

A Reasonable Error Printing Utility in TypeScript—NOTES

Something I want all the time in JS/TS now that I am used to it in Rust—thanks to anyhow!

Tasks You Can Retry: True Myth v8.5.0 —ELSEWHERE

I know, I said we were done, but then someone had a good suggestion!

The Curse of Knowledge and True Myth’s Documentation—NOTES

Writing good introductory documentation and teaching materials is hard.

TypeScript 5.8 Checks Runtime Code for Conditional Types!—NOTES

One of those “if you know, you know” releases.

minijinja tip: What That Custom Function’s Type Error Means —NOTES

If the error message involves Function, the problem is really ViaDeserialize.

minijinja tip: Template Values Must Round Trip—NOTES

A general lesson about de/serialization applied in this specific context.

Big Packages or Many Dependencies—NOTES

Pick which you prefer, but you cannot be mad about both!

Prototyping/Sketching in Code—NOTES

How Progress Feels—JOURNAL

In everything, by way of analogy with running.

Axum Handler Errors Need to Implement IntoResponse—NOTES

This has some interesting implications for Result.

fish tip: Launching $EDITOR to Edit the Current Terminal Command —NOTES

Something I end up doing surprisingnly often!

The Rust Programming Language, 2024 Edition—ELSEWHERE

That’s my name in the authors list! Whoa!

Separation of Concerns—NOTES

…for web domain management.

Why Hover for Domain Registration?—NOTES

Because unlike most other registrars, they genuinely don’t suck.

Cloudflare Worker Responses Require Manual Caching—NOTES

This was not intuitive or obvious, but at least it isn’t hard, either.

Yes, Hallucinations are the “Least Dangerous”—Exactly—NOTES

A rejoinder to Simon Willison’s rant last week.

TypeScript Native Port: Some Questions—NOTES

Faster is good! The rest of this announcement is… strange.

True Myth Releases: 8.6, 9.0, and a New Docs Site!—ELSEWHERE

Continuing the year of shipping with more True Myth goodies.

Next: Vanta—JOURNAL

The next order of magnitude I haven’t seen before.

Using mise-en-place for dotfiles—NOTES

Lots of ways to do this; this is mine for now.

The Git “Invalid username or password” error—NOTES

Spoilers: If you’re me, it’s probably your personal access token.

Infrastructure, Common Goods, and the Future of Open Source Software—ELSEWHERE

My LambdaConf 2025 Opening Keynote

History and Disposition—NOTES

I have spent my career on large, legacy systems, and that informs an awful lot about me—including my views on LLMs.

BBEdit Syntax for Jujutsu Commit Messages↩︎—❈—ELSEWHERE

Because I want JJ: lines to be treated like comments, dagnabbit!

true-myth-zod—ELSEWHERE

The Year of Shipping continues!

Some Products Just Aren’t Big Companies—JOURNAL

A reflection on Mozilla shutting down Pocket.

Subscriptions That Respect Users—NOTES

A decade on, no one has done better than JetBrains on this.

jj tip: cool revsets and per-repo aliases—NOTES

CleanShotX: Another Example of a Good ‘Subscription’ Model—NOTES

I will celebrate every piece of software I use that gets this right.

true-myth-zod v0.1.2—ELSEWHERE

AKA the first version that actually works.

isolatedDeclarations and Zod —NOTES

One strategy for using TypeScript’s isolatedDeclarations flag with inference-driven libraries like Zod.

True Myth 9.1.0: Standard Schema and More!—ELSEWHERE

Doing my best to keep making True Myth more useful in more places.

Software, change, stability, imperfect markets…—NOTES

Some reflections on 1Password.