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Computer Things: 2019-2020

Hillel Wayne

A compilation of all Computer Things newsletter essays in 2019 and 2020, including essays that were for subscribers only.

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About

About

About the Book

A compilation of all Computer Things newsletter essays in 2019 and 2020, including essays that were for subscribers only. Some of the public essays include:

  • The most expensive software per byte
  • How everybody misunderstood the "Literate Programming vs Unix Philosophy" 'debate'
  • How knowing math helps you write better software
  • Why blaming defects on "programmers" and not the broader system is a waste of time.

Some of the private essays include:

  • Why Vim is a bad representation of what a "modal editor" is
  • The difference between "code" clever and "insightful" clever
  • Fringetech
  • Multiple first drafts of essays that eventually went on my official website.

Some administrative material was pruned, otherwise all essays are left as-is. Thank you for reading!

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Computers and Programming

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Author

About the Author

Hillel Wayne

I have a blog at hillelwayne.com and a newsletter at https://buttondown.email/hillelwayne/

Contents

Table of Contents

Introduction

The kind of thing this is gonna be

On Hating Your Tools

New Post: Formally Modeling Database Migrations

On Documentation

Data and Reality, 2nd Edition

Software isn’t designed for power users

Automation vs Augmentation

New Post! Plus Upkeep

  1. New Post: How Fast Do I Talk?
  2. The Crossover Project
  3. Link: A Cool Game

We Are Not Special

Canonical Examples

  1. Newsletter Links

Back on Windows

What is a “beautiful” proof?

A few smaller updates

  1. Ethnography of antipatterns
  2. Crossover project update

New Essay! (Also Workshop Field Notes)

Workshop Improvements

Increment Magazine

Science Turf War

Computer Things: YOW Roundup Edition

  1. YOW

Why Python is my Favorite Language

Why Python Is My Favorite Language

  1. Solving this

On Marketing Formal Methods

  1. Marketing Formal Methods

Back up your arguments plz

Bill Kentstravaganza

New Essay, Intentional Errors, and a TLA+ CLI

  1. New Essay
  2. Intentional Errors
  3. TLA+ CLI

Three Ways Juggling is Like Programming

A Totally Polished and not-at-all half-baked Take on Static vs Dynamic Typing

New Essay: The Business Case For Formal Methods

On Emulation

Project updates, request for help, braindump

  1. Random Thoughts

New Essay: Feature Interaction Bugs

10 Most(ly dead) important programming languages (first draft)

  1. tlacli now a python package
  2. First draft

Happy Precedence Day!

  1. Formal Methods Tweetstorm
  2. Precedence is weird

Donald Knuth Was Framed

  1. YOW! Talk
  2. Donald Knuth Was Framed

On Scaling Mental Models

  1. No Newsletter Next Week
  2. The Actual Thing

The Opposite of Documentation is Superstition

Online Workshops, Project Updates, New Post

  1. Leo Trip Report

On Customization

Special Purpose Languages

  1. Github acquires NPM
  2. Special Purpose Languages

Please don’t write your documentation in Markdown

  1. What to use instead

Language Warts and Vim Trix

  1. New(ish post)
  2. Language Warts

What’s the Most Expensive Software Per Byte?

  1. Expensive
  2. Small
  3. Small and Expensive
  4. Very Small and Very Expensive
  5. Small and Hideously Expensive
  6. Conclusion
  7. Update 2020-04-03

A Very Brief Intro to Formal Methods (aka my job)

  1. Formal Methods

Announcing Alloydocs, updates on major projects

  1. Alloydocs
  2. What’s Next

Making Illegal States Unrepresentable

Workshop Announcement, Vim is a bad modal editor

  1. Vim is a bad modal editor
  2. Better modal editors

New Essay, Office Hours, and a short essay

  1. New Essay
  2. Terse Programming Languages

Sneak Peek: Constructive vs Predicative Data

  1. Techniques for constructive solutions
  2. Thoughts

How I Write Talks

Rage Against the God Machine

New Essay: In Praise of AutoHotKey

  1. New Essay: In Praise of AutoHotKey
  2. Nothing else for now

If Inheritance is so bad, why does everyone use it?

  1. Some thoughts on first-generation solutions

Workshop Innovations and New Website Essay

  1. New essay: constructive versus predicative data
  2. Workshop innovations

Defects are not the fault of programmers

Some Ranting About Examples

Monads and Transducers are Literally 100% The Same Thing

New TLA+ Workshop, New PBT Essay

Understanding Fairness

  1. Stuttering
  2. Strong fairness
  3. Thoughts

Why You Should Always Blindly Chase Industry Trends

  1. “Are we really engineers” video now available

Why You Should Always Blindly Chase Industry Trends

  1. Disclaimers
  2. Technical Benefits
  3. Career Benefits
  4. Personal Benefits
  5. Conclusion

Situated Software

  1. New essay
  2. Situated software

I have become ideas guy

  1. Random Thoughts

Merchants on the Ivory Road

  1. Merchants on the Ivory Road

J sieves as a tool of thought

  1. J sieves as a tool of thought
  2. Sieves

Syntax highlighting is a waste of an information channel

New essay and some thoughts on humility

  1. New essay
  2. On Humility

Software correctness is a lot like flossing

How knowing math helps you write better software

  1. Bonus: De Morgan’s Paradoxes

Test Inference

  1. Miscellaneous thoughts

New Essay and a Very Peculiar Optimization

  1. New Essay
  2. Storing Sorts
  3. Discussion

What’s the Deal with Message Passing, Anyway

  1. Tweetstorms

Please read the paper before you comment

Formal Specification Languages

  1. Conclusion
  2. Tweetstorms

Treasure Hunting in the Noosphere

  1. Office Hours
  2. Fringetech
  3. Tweetstorms

Finding Go Concurrency Bugs with TLA+

  1. Discussion

That Time I Almost Joined a Software Cult

Write Notes for Your Code

  1. New Essay
  2. Write Notes For Your Code

Updates on the Crossover Project

Software Engineers Don’t Have Disciplines

  1. What is a discipline?

New essay, new “book” thingy

  1. New Essay
  2. New “Book”: Graveyard

Mystery Knowledge

We’re Bad at SAT Solvers

  1. We’re bad at SAT Solvers

We have met the Excelnemy and he is us

  1. Whoops on SAT

Edge Case Poisoning

  1. Addressing edge case poisoning

The Pendulum Swings Eternal

  1. Alloy Stream
  2. The Pendulum Swings Eternal

Sneak Peek: Two Workers are Quadratically Better than One

Two Workers are Quadratically Better than one

  1. Planning Ahead
  2. Specifying Throughput
  3. Specifying Latency
  4. Two Workers
  5. Generalizing the Model
  6. Conclusion

TLA+ Helped Me Count to Six

New Essay, Universal Examples, Old Essay

  1. Universal examples

Programs Writing Programs

  1. New Essay

Programs Writing Programs

  1. Other uses
  2. Misc

No, your clean code won’t save the planet

  1. Why do people do this?

Why I Still Use Vim

Weird Examples and Weird Tools

  1. Weird Examples
  2. Weird Tools
  3. Twitter

Knights, Puzzles, and Hypermodels

  1. Knights, Puzzles, and Hypermodels

There’s always more history

Computer Things: Vacation Phone-In Edition

Safety and Liveness Properties

  1. Limitations of LTL
  2. Exotic Properties

Oracle Testing

New Essay, New Workshop, Thoughts on Cleverness

  1. On Cleverness

The Most Important Video Game Ever Made

  1. The Most Important Video Game Ever Made

Cross-Branch Testing

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