157 / Against Names

Hey, just coming back from vacation, so naturally this issue is packed.

Quote of the Week

“Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.” —Cyril Connolly

Software

• Basic MetaProgramming in Zig (openmymind.net)

  Karl Seguin writes an introduction to using comptime in Zig.

• Against Names (steveklabnik.com)

  Steve makes a convincing case against one of the hardest things in computer science: naming things.

• Reckoning: Part 3 — Caprock (infrequently.org)

  Alex Russell about inaccessible government websites and why most sites shouldn’t be a single-page-app.

• Practices of Reliable Software Design (two-wrongs.com)

  kqr shares eight practices they accumulated with experience, in the context of building an in-memory cache.

• A Flexible Minimalist Neovim for 2024 (wickstrom.tech)

  Oskar Wickström shares their minimalist Neovim config.

• How I program in 2024 (akkartik.name)

  Kartik Agaram rewrote some of their software and shares findings on how their way of programming evolved over the years.

Cutting Room Floor

• Process Zero: The Anti-Intelligent Camera (lux.camera)

  Ben Sandofsky about the new process in the Halide iOS app, which skips AI and computational photography, and why they did it.

• Things I’m Working On (anhvn.com)

  anh shares five incomplete projects they’re (more or less) working on.

• Cleaning up the aging brain: Scientists restore brain's trash disposal system (sciencedaily.com)

  Douglas Kelley et al. found a way to restore the brain’s storage disposal in elder mice, a potential treatment for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

• I Put a Toaster in the Dishwasher (jdstillwater.blogspot.com)

  JD Stillwater put a toaster in the dishwasher and shares a lesson on conventional wisdom vs conventional ignorance.

• How to avoid losing items? Holding pens. (blog.alexwendland.com)

  Alex Wendland shares a solution to prevent loosing items at home.