Programming

For the past few months I’ve retreated from working on a software product to, well, for a month after October 7th I didn’t seem to get much work done, then I was working on software systems for clients. Now dipping my toe back into RSSDeck, the biggest edifice I’ve ever created, I’m inspired by this short piece by Jason Fried, “To Make”:

I’ve consulted. I’ve done client work. I’ve advised. I’ve served on boards. I’ve invested. I’ve written books. I’ve spoken on the circuit. I’ve blogged for years. I have to say, I’ve found no greater professional joy than working with a tight group of people to ship and support our own products.

At Why Svelte?, the homepage states “CSS is component-scoped by default” ⁠— the “by default” being the compliment vice pays to virtue. Because at the Github discussion on this issue (Ability to disable css scope across entire application #4764), Svelte Core Member/Maintainer @Conduitry, 2nd in commits only to founder Rich Harris, writes:

In general, using global CSS everywhere is something we want to steer people away from, and doesn’t feel like something we want to natively make easy or tacitly endorse.

The “C” in “CSS” stands for “cascading” yet the purpose of scoping CSS in components is to neuter that cascade. For the poster of this issue, Svelte’s stance was a dealbreaker, as it would be for me too. Scoped CSS components are the wussy option, which is fine and in many cases perhaps more viable, but the wussy option they should remain.

In this tutorial by Martin Fowler for coding with ChatGPT, he interviews Xu Hao, who first tells the AI what tech stack he’s using, what the project is intended to be, and to generate not code but a list of tasks required to build it. He then tweaks this task list. And only then, working from the task list, do they begin generating code.

My take away from this discussion was that using chain of thought and generated knowledge prompting approaches can be a significantly useful tool for programming. In particular it shows that to use LLMs well, we need to learn how to construct prompts to get the best results. This experience suggests that it’s useful to interact with the LLM like a junior partner, starting them with architectural guidelines, asking them to show their reasoning, and tweaking their outputs as we go.

“The AI does not love you, nor does it hate you, and you are made of atoms it can use for something else.” ⁠— Eliezer Yudkowsky in Time

What a mindblowing, humbling project: infinitemac.org ⁠— every Mac system since January 24th, 1984, in the browser!

It’s over too quickly, these two great alliterative-entitled Americans in conversation, Alan Alda and Kevin Kelly on AA’s Clear+Vivid podcast. Alda has such a gracious voice, and Kelly’s meets it. Kelly introduces some novel standpoints, earning his “world’s most interesting man” Tim Ferris monicker. The impetus and much of the conversation revolves around AI chatbots.

What a fabulous ⁠— and fabulously-presented ⁠— list of free Mac utilities recommended by Snazzy Labs.

A good ol’ rant by everyone against Microsoft in this Hacker News thread, this time about Teams. When o when will this monstrosity of a corporation die already. “Developer-friendly”; may the GitHub guys get what they deserve for selling out to the Borg.

Great interview at Berkeley with alum and local Oakland boy Craig Federighi [Dec 2019].

Testing entire BPMN process paths ⁠— a Camunda blog article. I guess I’m being hopelessly naive but it seems to me BPMN could be used to test software logic; software doesn’t just power processes, software itself is comprised of processes, ie, the transformations that happen to variables.

Computer, enhance! Jeff Dean, Senior Fellow and SVP, presents Google Research’s R&D accomplishments of the year ⁠— this company, wow.

Generative models for images … have made significant strides over the last few years. For example, recent models have demonstrated the ability to … “fill in” a low-resolution image to create a natural-looking high-resolution counterpart (“computer, enhance!”)…

In Firefox, when CSS’s scroll-snap is turned on, scrolling is broken. Yet the only mention of the problem that I can find is this open bug report at Bugzilla, “Trackpad scrolling gets stuck on containers with ‘scroll-snap-type: x mandatory’” featuring an unambiguous video of the problem. Given that both the Web and laptops are rather popular these days, I’d have thought this problem would have garnered much more attention. For me it has been a showstopper, finally causing me to make Chrome my default browser.

A nice and curt summary of the emotions a programmer has.

A great topic, covered well: in Wired, Clive Thompson surveys the problem with productivity software:

To-do lists are, in the American imagination, a curiously moral type of software. Nobody opens Google Docs or PowerPoint thinking “This will make me a better person.” But with to-do apps, that ambition is front and center.

Bryan Braun recreated classic Mac screensavers in CSS only! It’s cool that Warp only uses 9 different stars to create that star field. [via Hacker News]

Andy Bell outlines new CSS functionality in Smashing Magazine.

3D model of Fallingwater by sighty for sale, including a portion of Bear Run, which interestingly gets cuts off even before the bridge that obviously crosses it, making this a model not of the house but of a model of it.

Boy, there are other models too. Here’s an interactive Fallingwater by archimore. It has the interior, even the raised rocks around the fireplace! (Though missing the grand swinging water heater.) The non-Wright dining-table chairs that Mrs Kaufman brought. The portrait of Edgar on the wall! Yet no walkway up to the Guesthouse, and no Guesthouse.

And another Fallingwater by Myles Zhang which does have the Gueshouse and ramp, even the steps into the swimming pool. And a very long stretch of Bear Run. It does have the round red water holer, but no furniture.

Would be good to merge these magnificent efforts to make a more detailed, canonical model.

“Indie developers need protection from monopolistic and anti-competitive practices from larger players in the market through strong government regulation, not a discount on their first $1m in sales.” “Apple’s 15% Deflection Tactic” by John Luxford.

On NPM becoming part of Microsoft, by Bryant Jimin Son. I feel stalked in my work life by Microsoft, which I strive to avoid ever since their horrible behavior re IE6. First Skype, then Atom, now NPM. Fortunately, there are alternatives.

Hacking Apple by Sam Curry. Fascinating and amazing.

In wake of Phil Schiller’s ascent, Cult of Mac lists all the Apple Fellows.

Poolside.FM, the lovely Mac throwback to 1997.

Doug Tarr weighs in on learning to code. I didn’t know my old roommate could write so well. Doug, write more.

Great thread: What do software engineers who work at a large scale understand that other developers don’t? at /r/programming.

Matt Layman’s handy Failed SaaS Postmortem ⁠— too much tech tinkering; I need to take heed. Plus it’s great he’s getting right back in the saddle.

A deep dive into the newness of the iPhone 11 camera at the Halide blog.

Gadget: 1. Survey [PDF] is a cool history of software milestones “from Smalltalk to Minecraft” Chaim Gingold (2017). When you see these things collected you realize how much progress they collectively represent. I wonder what we’d have been doing otherwise…

To loop through an object in JavaScript, convert it to an array, Zell Liew explains.

For anyone (like me) working on doing the same, see Wenbin Fang’s article “The boring technology behind a one-person Internet company”. Of course the technologies used will differ, but the frankness here is refreshing, the contour of what’s required enlightening.

“Please just leave me alone when I cross streets.” Richard Stallman’s terms of service for speaking engagements come to light [via The Register] surrounding his forced terminations. A couple of observations: for 66 his skin looks amazingly moist and smooth, like a healthy 25-year-old’s, which perhaps says something about his lifestyle and choices. And his exactingness regarding these terms is both ridiculous and admirable; few things are more important than knowing who we are and what we want and expressing these clearly.

Philosophy of Computer Science, an ongoing text by William J. Rapaport for an eponymous course at SUNY, Buffalo.

Eric Elliott the JavaScript guru lays out his vision of the technical roles of a software company.

Naval’s How to Get Rich: Every Episode. His bifurcation between wealth and status is particularly bracing.

Interesting /r/webdev thread: Does real web dev exist? Like the stuff they write all those articles about? The consensus seems to be that the further along the spectrum from web site to web app, the more testing and whatnot becomes worthwhile.

Nice frank piece by Monica Lent, a software engineer in Berlin, about mistakenly believing one is a senior developer.

First episode of Views on Vue that I’ve found worthwhile, on things people don’t like about Vue, including a discussion on language and translation.

Note to self: Eric Elliott’s article entitled 12 Books Every JavaScript Developer Should Read.

Programming Sucks is some cynical cuteness on coding by Peter Welch.

Doing this all day leaves you in a state of mild aphasia as you look at people’s faces while they’re speaking and you don’t know they’ve finished because there’s no semicolon.