For the longest time I shied away from low level programming. I always found it intimidating. It turns out it isn’t any harder than other programming. It’s just that everything written about it assumes too much. So here’s my attempt at an intro to machine code jimmyhmiller.com/machine-code...

Can software express critical reflections on its own nature in the same way post-modern architecture does? I don't have the answers, but I wrote a long text with some early thoughts: tomasp.net/architecture/

New blog post: Five coding hats → dubroy.com/blog/five-c... Yeah it's kinda goofy, but maybe also useful?

In writing, there is a distinction between those who love to outline and those who discover their story through writing. We seem lack that distinction in the programming world. So I wanted to introduce it. jimmyhmiller.github.io/discovery-co...

FUTURE OF CODING INTERVIEW featuring @unkai.bsky.social patreon.com/posts/118714678

Final Advent of Papers post: Against a Universal Definition of ‘type’. This paper is fantastic. Both haters and fans of types should read it. If every paper in computer science were as good as this one, this series would have been way easier. jimmyhmiller.github.io/advent-of-pa...

Advent of Papers day 23: Do Artifacts Have Politics? I said no classics, but I made an exception for this one. It is undoubtably a classic, though one I don't think makes HN lists of papers, nor many CS curricula Your code does in fact have politics. jimmyhmiller.github.io/advent-of-pa...

Advent of Papers day 22: jimmyhmiller.github.io/advent-of-pa...

What is Conceptual Engineering and What Should It Be? For day 21 of advent of papers we are covering a topic completely ignored by software engineering, but crucial to it, Conceptual Engineering. How do we fix our broken concepts? How do we make new ones? jimmyhmiller.github.io/advent-of-pa...

Advent of Papers day 20 Amnon H Eden argues that computer science is really three different paradigms. Rationalistic, Technocratic, and Scientific. This paper argues that we should abandon the first two and "be scientific". Are they right? jimmyhmiller.github.io/advent-of-pa...

What are you favorite, most interested, weirdest papers? Looking for papers I’m unfamiliar with as I’m finishing up my adventure of papers. jimmyhmiller.github.io/advent-of-pa...

Advent of papers day 19 Now it's time to get funky To the right now To the left Take it back now y'all Twelve hops this time Slide to the left Slide to the left Slide to the left Slide to the left Slide to the left Slide to the left Slide to the left jimmyhmiller.github.io/advent-of-pa...

How can we understand the meaning of a program? James Grimmelmann gives us three ways. This is a fantastic paper, that I wish I had more time to summarize. Worth the read. Day 18 of advent of papers. jimmyhmiller.github.io/advent-of-pa...

Advent of papers day 17: Are the things we learn from culture like programs? Are this programs at all like computer programs? Does this paper have substance? Am I just missing something? From the massive number of citations the paper has, I'm guessing so. jimmyhmiller.github.io/advent-of-pa...

Day 16 of advent of papers: Will Computers Ever Become Easy to Use? by Jef Raskin. Raskin believes that apps stand in the way of computers being easy. But in the nearly 20 years since, alternatives haven't really been explored. Will they ever be? jimmyhmiller.github.io/advent-of-pa...

On day 2 of advent of papers, we asked about the ontology of software. On day 15 we ask about the ontology of programming languages. Aren't these the same? According to our paper, no. jimmyhmiller.github.io/advent-of-pa...

Advent of Papers 15: This tutorial on bidirectional type checking really makes the whole seem way less magical. I was amazed at how easy writing a basic type checker with this setup was. jimmyhmiller.github.io/advent-of-pa...

Advent of Papers day 13. What is knowledge? In this 3 page paper, Edmund Gettier over-turned a tradition reaching back to Plato which told us that it was "Justified True Belief". Turns out, that was wrong. jimmyhmiller.github.io/advent-of-pa...

What if your database didn't actually have to do all that work to write transactions, but could just promise you it would do it later? It turns out lazy evaluation in databases is just as interesting as it is in languages! Advent of papers day 12: jimmyhmiller.github.io/advent-of-pa...

Can OO and FP be reconciled? Probably not. But day 11 of advent of papers provides a super interesting take on a version of OO that is completely compatible with immutability and purity. On Understanding Data Abstraction, Revisited by William Cook. jimmyhmiller.github.io/advent-of-pa...

Large Models of What? Do LLMs actually model language? Not if we properly consider language in its full human context. In day 10 of advent of papers, we look at ways in which LLMs fall short. jimmyhmiller.github.io/advent-of-pa...

What is a game? Wittgenstein famously asserted there was no way to define "games". Bernard Suits took that personally. Day 9 of advent of papers, I may have cheated because this isn't a computing paper. But it has completely changed the way I write my code. jimmyhmiller.github.io/advent-of-pa...

This has been a wonderful series to read!

Why do all tools for remote work suck? Because they all keep trying to replicate the feeling of "being there". For advent of papers day 8 we look at a 1992 paper that gives us a better alternative. jimmyhmiller.github.io/advent-of-pa...

Advent of papers day 7. What is implementation? Well according to Rapaport the answer is "Semantic interpretation". But what does that mean? Well, it kind of sounds like the stuff haskellers say when they tell you about monads. jimmyhmiller.github.io/advent-of-pa...

Will there ever be a good software development method? Why is the answer so definitively no? In day 6 of #AdventOfPapers we look at Peter Naur's "Intuition in Software Development" where he tells us exactly that. jimmyhmiller.github.io/advent-of-pa...

Today's advent of papers explores a fascinating programming construct from Alex Warth and Alan Kay called Worlds. Worlds let you control mutation by branching your program state. Later if you decide you want those changes, you can commit them back. jimmyhmiller.github.io/advent-of-pa...

Day four of #AdventOfPapers. Is the Brain a Digital Computer? No. There is a tension between the idea that the brain is a computer and the fact that we can implement a computation with any physical media. It turns out, nothing is intrinsically a computer. jimmyhmiller.github.io/advent-of-pa...

This is something I like to think about.

Squeaking in right before the self-imposed deadline, I bring to you advent of papers day 3. Sadly it's an awful paper. Writing about good papers takes time. So instead today I ranted about Google's paper on Tech Debt. jimmyhmiller.github.io/advent-of-pa...

Today's advent paper is a work in ontology. What exactly is the ontological status of software? Where do programs exist? Nurbay Irmak tells us that software is an abstract artifact. Much like music is more than its score, software is more than its text. jimmyhmiller.github.io/advent-of-pa...

Rather than trying to do advent of code, I'm doing advent of papers! jimmyhmiller.github.io/advent-of-pa... Hopefully I can read and share some of weirder computer related papers. First paper is Elephant 2000 by John McCarthy. Did you know he didn't just make lisp? Wonderful paper, worth a read.

Every month, we do a Future of Coding bonus episode. They're mint. $5. Helps us do the show. You know the deal. This time, @jimmyhmiller.bsky.social and moi share a *lot lot* of thoughts about Visual Programming, circling @mwh.nz's Reclaiming The Unexplored. www.patreon.com/posts/reclai...

One clever technique I learned from the gdb JIT interface is how to communicate between a program and a debugger. You just need an empty function! The debugger simply puts a breakpoint on this empty fn and reads some data from a predefined location (args or a global). Super simple, very effective.

When building a compiler, one of the things I always desperately want is a debugger that lets me compare across runs. It should by default save as much information (ast, ir, codegen, functions hit, arguments, etc) as it can and let me see the diff in all these areas.

I’m making a functional language. I want a syntactic construct like clojures loop. (I have auto tail calls, want something nicer). But I never really liked loop + recur as the names for this construct. Loop is nice. But recur feels off. Anyone have suggestions? Happy for general thoughts as well.

I’ve never been a note taker or highlighter when reading. But now that I’m having a conversation with @spiralganglion.com on the podcast I’ve found it to be wonderful But it isn’t working for readings outside the podcast. For note takers, do you have a frame of mind? An audience? Any advice?

I’ve been streaming some work on an arm assembler in service of grander goals for prog langs I resisted this sort of wheel reinvention for so long Why? Because resisting NIH has been indoctrinated in my from my day jobs. Why have I let company logic dictate my personal life? When did I get boring?