Posts

• Venture into Erlang

  Published Jun 28, 2024

  Recently I've been exploring Erlang and the OTP. As I've been trying things out, some aspects of the design Erlang and the OTP have finally started to click. I'm writing this blog post about my experiences with Erlang and the OTP so far. …

• A return to Clojure

  Published Jun 15, 2024

  Recently I started using Clojure again. It's been a while since I've used it. I'm recording my thoughts and impressions as I get back to using it. The experience doesn't feel like it changed much over the past few years, which is both good and bad. This is more of a post of my thoughts rather than having a clear direction. …

• A journey across editors

  Published Feb 17, 2024

  Often I hear developer journeys through the programming languages they used or the companies they worked for. Sometimes it's told through frameworks learned or projects released or mistakes made. I'll probably tell my story a few times using some of those common methods. But today I thought I'd do something different. Instead of telling it in languages learned or frameworks worked with, I'm going to tell it in editors I used. …

• A site for my experiments

  Published Feb 1, 2024

  I recently created a website which holds a lot of my experiments. Some of these experiments either make it into my blog or they form the basis of some of my blog posts. Many of them don't make it into my blog posts. Instead of just letting them sit in the dark, I decided to put some of them on an experiments site. …

• C++ to JavaScript with Cheerp

  Published Jan 7, 2024

  Lately I've been exploring different ways to make C and C++ code run in the web browser. I compiled one of my C/C++ libraries to WASM with Emscripten and Embind (details in Chapter ). I also made a maze program in C and SDL2 and got that working via Emscripten. Emscripten is great, but it only compiles to WASM. …

• Creating a WASM Library with Embind

  Published Dec 13, 2023

  I've been working on my Test Jam project for a while. I had previously tried to do a WASM wrapper around my C/C++ build, but I ran into a memory leak which existed outside the C/C++ code. Instead of reading the manual, I rewrote the code in TypeScript. After the rewrite, I read the manual and learned what was the source of the leak. I then rebuilt my WASM wrapper and ended up with a TypeScript and WASM implementation. I then decided to start comparing the two implementations to see what the benefits and drawbacks are. I also wanted to test some well touted claims about WASM (e.g. performance, code reuse) in the context of a library. So I started poking and prodding, and then I created this post. …

• Overview of globally unique identifiers

  Published Dec 2, 2023

  Recently I saw that CUID, a way to generate unique IDs, had been deprecated due to security concerns. That got me really curious. I haven't ever thought of IDs as being "secure." Instead, I've always treated them as untrusted, public-knowledge values. I've always built access controls around my IDs, even when they were randomly generated GUIDs. So I started looking at a lot of ID generators to see if this concept of "secure ids" really did exist, what meant, and what other properties IDs had. …

• Unsigned Integers in JavaScript

  Published Nov 30, 2023

  Lately I've been experimenting with creating random data generators in TypeScript. I wanted to avoid using the global random number generator Math.random since I wanted my generators to be fully determinitic (i.e. if you give them the same input, they will always return the same output). I also wanted a seed to be passed in every time, which meant that I'd be creating a new generator every time. …

• Writing a Property test library

  Published Nov 28, 2023

  In a previous post I talked about property testing (see ). In that post, I discussed the difference between property tests and more traditional example-based testing, how to write property tests, and the shortcomings of property tests. If you'd like to learn more about property testing, then go give that article a read. …

• What is property testing?

  Published Oct 23, 2023

  Property testing is a developmental approach to writing tests (both unit tests and integration tests) which helps developers find the limitations of their software. It isn't an all-encompassing set of principles or practices which impacts the whole development lifecycle, unlike Test Driven Development. Instead, it's isolated to the testing process, and it focuses on procedurally generating test inputs and then checking the properties of the output, rather than relying on a predefined list of "Input X gives Output Y." …

• Error Handling Across Programming Languages

  Published Sep 10, 2023

  One of the most frustrating yet fascinating facets of using a programming language is how it handles errors. Many of these error handling patterns include the traditional try/catch, error flags, unions, multiple return values, error paths, etc. These patterns are fascinating to investigate and see the various methodologies and practices languages and libraries have used to implement them. This is by no means an exhaustive list or investigation. Rather, it's a review of what I've personally experienced with error handling. …

• Stateless Logic

  Published Sep 9, 2023

  State is some form of "global" or "shared" memory. It allows code to "remember" or "know" something without having to be retold that fact every time. For instance, let's consider a simple count method which tracks how many times the method was called. Below is an example using state: …

• Separating SQL from code with files: Initial Thoughts

  Published Nov 28, 2022

  Recently I've been working on a side project (that may or may not get published publicly, I haven't decided yet). For this project, I decided I'd try a lot of new things, not all of which worked out as well as I thought (which may be why it stays private). I've tried a new Java/Kotlin framework, briefly tried a new JVM build system (and then went back to Maven), tried new control flow mechanisms, new error handling techniques, etc. It's been more of a playground for new ideas than a true product. …

• Predictions in Tech: Looking Forward from 2022

  Published Nov 11, 2022

  A lot has happened in the world this year. Most of the world has started to move past COVID-19, especially in the U.S., regardless of whether it's really gone. Russia has started a "special operations" (aka. military invasion) inside Ukraine, has had the war go fairly poorly for it, and is now trying to salvage what it can while hurting NATO and Ukraine as much as it can - especially when it comes to energy prices (aka. gas and oil). Elon Musk just bought Twitter, and it currently looks like the bird is on a hard crash course with the ground. Meta has revealed it's spent multiple billions of dollars in the metaverse. Mass layoffs in tech are starting to happen, and there's talk of a coming recession (or maybe a depression). That's also not mentioning the craziness in politics right now. …

• Why Care About Web Accessibility

  Published Oct 20, 2022

  For most people, websites are visual experiences. We see images, we read text, we move the mouse,scroll with our fingers, tap or click on buttons, etc. The only way most people change howthey interact with sites is by switching to another device, such as from a computer to aphone. …