Going for a bike ride remains one of my most powerful debugging techniques.

Man, I still really like a lot of the ideas behind @cuelang.org. (But I need to find a good excuse to use it properly to see how it fares in practice.)

oooh, this looks super useful.

Whoah. TIL that yt-dlp (the command line video download tool) includes a crude JS "interpreter" (~1k lines of Python). github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dl...

"Benchmarks are not numerology. Their results are not a divine revelation. Benchmarks are experiments. Their results are meaningless without interpretation and validation." Microbenchmarks are experiments: mrale.ph/blog/2024/11... by @mrale.ph

The shape of things to come.

TIL: FinalizationRegistry → github.com/pdubroy/til/...

Can anyone recommend JS libs that have a good approach to managing Wasm/WebGPU/WebGL resources? We have more options these days (FinalizationRegistry / `using`) but I’m curious how people are making use of those in libraries.

PL folks — For @ohmjs.org, I’m looking at how to support fully incremental pipelines (eg parsing → codegen, all incremental). I know about Salsa (github.com/salsa-rs/salsa); what else should I be looking at?

Finally got around to reading Build Systems à la Carte (dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1...), it's really great (like everyone says). I love papers like this, that take a well-known, messy, unloved area and propose a useful organizing principle for it.

Ha, the @convex.dev landing page shows a live example with a bug and prompts you to fix it. Not sure I've seen something like this before but I like it!

12 exciting live-programming projects will be presented at LIVE this year. It's free, online, and coming up soon! Sat 9/27: Videos premiere Sat 10/4: Q & A and discussion over Zoom Details on projects are up already at liveprog.org; more schedule & links coming soon. Hope to see ya there!

Hey everyone, just FYI: After investigating, we do *not* believe that ohm-js, or any other package under the @ ohmjs namespace, is affected by the Shai-Hulud worm or any of the recent npm supply chain attacks.

TIL: [JS] Faster formatting and linting → github.com/pdubroy/til/blob/m...

❤️ the old Ontario Hydro logo, what a beaut

PL friends — A reader of @wasmgroundup.com asked: "Is there a book that can help with reading the mathematical notation in the web assembly core spec?" The spec itself suggests TAPL, but I'm curious if anyone has any other suggestions.

Thanks to @yoshikiohshima.bsky.social I found the Alan Kay story that this reminded me of. From "The Early History of Smalltalk": worrydream.com/EarlyHistory...

"The second you realize a technology has a hard requirement that individuals independently exercise responsibility or self-control, with no obvious immediate gain for themselves, it is almost certain that said technology is unsalvageable in its current form." news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4521...

But will it work in the EU? 🤔

Just deleted the GMail & GCal apps from my phone, feels good. Moved over to Fastmail a couple weeks ago and don't see any reason to go back.

A few quotes about Steve Jobs from "Valley of Genius" by Adam Fisher.

TIL: Lightweight TypeScript support in Node → github.com/pdubroy/til/...

Seems like an appropriate time to re-share the @aaronboodman.com thread. "Chrome was delivered without any sprints at all" xcancel.com/aboodman/sta...

TIL: [JavaScript] publishConfig in package.json → github.com/pdubroy/til/...

New poster for my home office.

From the author of Pandoc — "I'll go through the six features of Markdown that I think have created the most difficulties" Beyond Markdown: johnmacfarlane.net/beyond-markd...

Saw a guy wearing an Ampleforth jacket and was *this* close to talking to him about stack languages. Turns out it’s a boarding school in England.

It's kinda depressing to realize how many quality-of-life improvements in computing from last 10-15 years only work within the closed ecosystems of the megacorps. Not that I didn't realize it before, it's just easy to take for granted until things no longer "just work".

TIL: Git exclude → github.com/pdubroy/til/...

TIL: uv run → github.com/pdubroy/til/...

There are many gems on @b0rk.jvns.ca's blog but one of my favourites is "Some tactics for writing in public": jvns.ca/blog/2023/08...

Many of our friends in North America are back to school already, but we've still got two more weeks of holidays over here. Which means: it's not too late to snag a copy of the book in our summer sale!

26 years for me. I've embraced it, abandoned it, and re-embraced it multiple times over the years. What's drawn me back most recently is a couple of packages that didn't even exist when I first learned Emacs: magit and org-mode.

This weekend’s fun project? A baby type checker for Python. austinhenley.com/blog/babytyp...

On the subject of spreadsheets: I also discovered qsv (https://github.com/dathere/qsv), and boy, it seems quite powerful.

TIL: Absolute references in spreadsheets → github.com/pdubroy/til/...

We overcomplicate productivity tools. You can get a lot done fast with just a scratch pad and a message thread.

This is a fun paper! It never occurred to me that modern end-user software has many of the same footguns as programming languages.

A recent Chrome update took away my ad blocker, and wow, seeing the web unfiltered again is 😳 But, it was the kick I needed to try a new browser. Installed @vivaldi.com and after tweaking a few settings, it feels pretty comfortable! Let's see if it sticks.

TIL: Blender → github.com/pdubroy/til/...

Moore's Law totally fried people’s brains. It took ~30 years to go from the first PCs to the iPhone. People who lived through that keep expecting new tech (VR, autonomous vehicles, etc.) to follow the same trajectory but it never does.

The summer holidays just started here in southern Germany. So, it's time for a ☀️ SUMMER SALE ☀️ — Use the code SUMMER25 for a 25% discount on the book until Sept 15: wasmgroundup.com

Really enjoyed "Live Programming in Hostile Territory" by @chrisshank.com and @orionreed.com: folkjs.org/live-2025/ They are doing some great stuff with @folkjs.org, y'all should check it out.

“The enjoyment of one's tools is an essential ingredient of successful work.” #DonaldKnuth

Very much enjoyed "Zig's Lovely Syntax" by matklad: matklad.github.io/2025/08/09/... Astute observations about some of Zig's more interesting language choices.

Was reflecting on the @ohmjs.org Wasm project I've been working on for the past 3 months or so… Realized that it's been a *very* long time since I've been able to spend so long on something that's almost entirely data structures and algorithms. It's quite refreshing!

Remember that it's ok to opt out of certain technology if it doesn't work for you, and that doesn't make you a luddite. www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/emai...

What I'm doing now → dubroy.com/now/

Over the weekend I finally finished migrating off Dreamhost (after >20 years) and Cloudflare, so I'm now fully hosted in the EU 🎉 • @bunny.net for web & DNS • CX22 VPS with Hetzner, down the road in Nuremberg • Hetzner Storage Box for backups w/ Borg • Domains w/ Hetzner

TIL: Wasm modules in Node → github.com/pdubroy/til...