Links

🕑 Nov 8, 2025

How to write blog posts that developers read

https://refactoringenglish.com/chapters/write-blog-posts-developers-read/

🕑 Nov 6, 2025

Unexpected benefits of building your own tools

https://tiniuc.com/make-more-tools/

🕑 Nov 5, 2025

Every piece of software is a state machine. Any mutable variable adds a staggering number of states to that machine.

https://old.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1ojmwd9/john_carmack_on_updating_variables/nm518eo/

🕑 Nov 4, 2025

"A Plea for Lean Software" by Prof. Niklaus Wirth (1995)

https://liam-on-linux.dreamwidth.org/88032.html

🕑 Nov 3, 2025

Card Driven Development (CDD)

https://jimmyhmiller.com/card-driven-development

🕑 Nov 3, 2025

At the end you use git bisect
(this is especially useful in messy codebases with no test coverage)

https://kevin3010.github.io/git/2025/11/02/At-the-end-you-use-git-bisect.html

🕑 Nov 2, 2025

URLs are state containers

https://alfy.blog/2025/10/31/your-url-is-your-state.html

🕑 Nov 2, 2025

(Quite) A few words about async

https://yoric.github.io/post/quite-a-few-words-about-async/

🕑 Nov 1, 2025

Taking learning seriously

https://dubroy.com/blog/taking-learning-seriously/

🕑 Nov 1, 2025

Machine code isn't scary

https://jimmyhmiller.com/machine-code-isnt-scary

🕑 Oct 31, 2025

Everything I know about good API design

https://www.seangoedecke.com/good-api-design/

🕑 Oct 30, 2025

Making USB devices - end to end guide to your first gadget

https://popovicu.com/posts/making-usb-devices/

🕑 Oct 29, 2025

Why self-taught engineers often outperform

https://michaelbastos.com/blog/why-self-taught-engineers-often-outperform

🕑 Oct 28, 2025

Build your own database

https://www.nan.fyi/database

🕑 Oct 28, 2025

It's insulting to read AI-generated blog posts

https://blog.pabloecortez.com/its-insulting-to-read-your-ai-generated-blog-post/

🕑 Oct 27, 2025

Modern Linux tools

https://ikrima.dev/dev-notes/linux/linux-modern-tools/

🕑 Oct 26, 2025

When designing software systems, do the simplest thing that could possibly work.

https://www.seangoedecke.com/the-simplest-thing-that-could-possibly-work/

🕑 Oct 25, 2025

up - the Ultimate Plumber (a tool for writing Linux pipes in a terminal-based UI interactively, with instant live preview of command results)

https://github.com/akavel/up

🕑 Oct 25, 2025

/dev/null is web scale

https://jyu.dev/blog/why-dev-null-is-an-acid-compliant-database/

🕑 Aug 18, 2025

LLMs and coding agents are a security nightmare

https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/llms-coding-agents-security-nightmare

🕑 Aug 10, 2025

Debian 13 is out: https://www.debian.org/News/2025/20250809

I've been using Debian as my main OS both on servers and desktops for over 20 years now. It's one of the very rare things in this world that has stayed consistently good throughout all those years.

🕑 Aug 5, 2025

There is no secret herbal medicine that prevents all disease sitting out in the open if you just follow the right Facebook groups. There is no AI coding revolution available if you just start vibing. You are not missing anything. Trust yourself. You are enough.

https://colton.dev/blog/curing-your-ai-10x-engineer-imposter-syndrome/

🕑 Jul 29, 2025

Learning basic electronics by building fireflies

https://a64.in/posts/learning-basic-electronics-by-building-fireflies/

🕑 Jul 28, 2025

"It is the opinion of the Board that Large Language Models (LLMs), herein referred to as Slop Generators, are unsuitable for use as software engineering tools, particularly in the Free and Open Source Software movement."

https://asahilinux.org/docs/project/policies/slop/

🕑 Jul 28, 2025

"Great news, boss! We invented this new tool that allows nontechnical people to write code in English! Now anyone can deploy applications, and we don't have to hire all those expensive developers!"

"Wow, show it to me!"

"OK here it is. We call it COBOL."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44299979

🕑 Jul 25, 2025

dwl - dwm for Wayland

A hackable (~3200 line single .c file implementation) compositor for Wayland based on wlroots.

https://codeberg.org/dwl/dwl

🕑 Jul 25, 2025

Being optimistic for technology

https://rubenerd.com/being-optimistic-for-technology/

🕑 Jul 24, 2025

AI: Over-Promise + Under-Perform = Disillusionment and Blowback

Fantasies die especially hard when the dream was over-hyped.

https://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2025/07/ai-over-promise-under-perform.html

🕑 Jul 23, 2025

What to expect from Debian/trixie

Debian v13 with codename trixie is scheduled to be published as new stable release on 9th of August 2025.

https://michael-prokop.at/blog/2025/07/20/what-to-expect-from-debian-trixie-newintrixie/

🕑 Jul 23, 2025

Cops say criminals use a Google Pixel with GrapheneOS - I say that’s freedom

Police in Spain have reportedly started profiling people based on their phones; specifically, and surprisingly, those carrying [...]

https://www.androidauthority.com/why-i-use-grapheneos-on-pixel-3575477

🕑 Jul 22, 2025

Tailwind is the worst of all worlds

https://colton.dev/blog/tailwind-is-the-worst-of-all-worlds/

🕑 Jul 21, 2025

A tsunami of burnout and quitting, both quiet and loud, is on the horizon, but it's taboo to recognize it or mention it. That the system is broken because it breaks us is the taboo that is frantically enforced at all levels of narrative control.

http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2025/01/i-quit-tsunami-of-burnout-few-see.html

🕑 Jul 20, 2025

Why a 14kB page can load much faster than a 15kB page

https://endtimes.dev/why-your-website-should-be-under-14kb-in-size/

🕑 Jul 19, 2025

It's rude to show AI output to people

https://distantprovince.by/posts/its-rude-to-show-ai-output-to-people/

🕑 Jul 19, 2025

If you own a computing device outright, you should be able to make any level of software modification you desire. hardware manufacturers should not be allowed to absolutely restrict distribution of software to their own channels under the guise of safety.

https://medhir.com/blog/right-to-root-access

🕑 Jul 17, 2025

The curse of knowing how, or; fixing everything

https://notashelf.dev/posts/curse-of-knowing

🕑 Jul 16, 2025

We are destroying software

https://antirez.com/news/145

🕑 Jul 16, 2025

Using zip bombs to protect your server

https://idiallo.com/blog/zipbomb-protection

🕑 Jul 15, 2025

LLMs and the framing of inevitability

https://tomrenner.com/posts/llm-inevitabilism/

🕑 Jul 15, 2025

What if we made advertising illegal?

https://simone.org/advertising/

🕑 Jul 14, 2025

Measurement and Numbers

https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2025/measurement-and-numbers/

🕑 Jul 14, 2025

Ask Ruben: do you use LLMs to write posts?

https://rubenerd.com/ask-rubenerd-do-you-use-llms-to-write-posts/

🕑 Jul 14, 2025

Learn Vim progressively

https://yannesposito.com/Scratch/en/blog/Learn-Vim-Progressively/

🕑 Jul 13, 2025

Computers are a feeling

https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2025/computers-are-a-feeling/

🕑 Jul 13, 2025

How i use my terminal

https://jyn.dev/how-i-use-my-terminal/

🕑 Jul 12, 2025

Harper – an open-source, privacy-friendly alternative to Grammarly

https://writewithharper.com

🕑 Jul 12, 2025

If actions by these bad actors accelerate the rate at which people lose trust in these systems and lead to the AI bubble popping faster then they have my full support. The entire space is just bad actors complaining about other bad actors while [...]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44540297

🕑 Jul 11, 2025

Plain Vanilla - an explainer for web development using only vanilla techniques. No tools, no frameworks — just HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

https://plainvanillaweb.com/index.html

🕑 Jul 10, 2025

Writing Toy Software Is A Joy

Why you should write more toy programs

https://blog.jsbarretto.com/post/software-is-joy

🕑 Jul 10, 2025

Why I don't ride the AI Hype Train

https://mertbulan.com/2025/06/26/why-i-dont-ride-the-ai-hype-train/

🕑 Jul 9, 2025

"You might be asking: why did you rewrite tmux in Rust? And yeah, I don’t really have a good reason. It’s a hobby project. Like gardening, but with more segfaults."

https://richardscollin.github.io/tmux-rs/

🕑 Jul 6, 2025

Writing code was never the bottleneck

https://ordep.dev/posts/writing-code-was-never-the-bottleneck

🕑 May 21, 2025

How convenience kills curiosity

"[...] Those friction-filled experiences are nearly extinct now. We’ve optimized them away in the name of convenience, and something important has been lost in the transition."

https://www.joanwestenberg.com/how-convenience-kills-curiosity/

🕑 May 20, 2025

Product Pseudoscience

https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2025/product-pseudoscience/

🕑 Apr 27, 2025

Cognitive load is what matters

https://minds.md/zakirullin/cognitive

🕑 Apr 25, 2025

Notation as a Tool of Thought (1979)

https://www.jsoftware.com/papers/tot.htm

🕑 Apr 24, 2025

Bet on systems, not sparks

https://www.joanwestenberg.com/bet-on-systems-not-sparks/

🕑 Feb 26, 2025

A TypeScript-types-only WebAssembly runtime

"This engine was built to service a project that aimed to demonstrate why Doom can't run in TypeScript types. Well. The funny thing is.. It can."

https://github.com/MichiganTypeScript/typescript-types-only-wasm-runtime

🕑 Feb 25, 2025

Writing a regular expression engine

https://twomorecents.org/writing-regex-engine/index.html

🕑 Feb 20, 2025

Examples of great URL design

https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2023/examples-of-great-urls/

🕑 Feb 17, 2025

Cold-blooded software

https://dubroy.com/blog/cold-blooded-software/

🕑 Feb 16, 2025

"A calculator app? Anyone could make that."

https://chadnauseam.com/coding/random/calculator-app

🕑 Feb 14, 2025

You'll regret using natural keys

https://blog.ploeh.dk/2024/06/03/youll-regret-using-natural-keys/

🕑 Feb 11, 2025

Boring tech is mature, not old

https://rubenerd.com/boring-tech-is-mature-not-old/

🕑 Feb 3, 2025

Writing a Wasm interpreter in C

https://irreducible.io/blog/my-wasm-interpreter/

🕑 Feb 2, 2025

Tools for 2025

http://yosemitesam.ch/3-tools-for-2025/

🕑 Feb 1, 2025

Thoughts on the software industry

https://linus.coffee/note/software-industry/

🕑 Jan 31, 2025

"We ran out of columns" - The best, worst codebase

https://jimmyhmiller.github.io/ugliest-beautiful-codebase

🕑 Jan 28, 2025

My afternoon project turned into four days of AI lies, USB chaos, and hard lessons

https://nemo.foo/blog/day-4-of-an-afternoon-project

🕑 Jan 27, 2025

Dualities in functional programming

https://dicioccio.fr/on-dualities.html

🕑 Jan 26, 2025

Does current AI represent a dead end?

A good TLDR on the current state of things: https://www.bcs.org/articles-opinion-and-research/does-current-ai-represent-a-dead-end/

🕑 Jan 26, 2025

Immutability Changes Everything (Pat Helland, 2016):

web version: https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2884038
pdf: https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/2857274.2884038

🕑 Jan 25, 2025

How to build your own ZX80/ZX81 and how it works:

http://searle.x10host.com/zx80/zx80.html

🕑 Jan 25, 2025

File systems: The original hypermedia

https://jon.work/og/

🕑 Jan 24, 2025

Snowdrop OS - a homebrew operating system from scratch, in assembly language

http://sebastianmihai.com/snowdrop/

🕑 Jan 24, 2025

A WebAssembly compiler that fits in a tweet

https://wasmgroundup.com/blog/wasm-compiler-in-a-tweet/

🕑 Jan 24, 2025

Ignore the grifters - AI isn't going to kill the software industry

https://dustinewers.com/ignore-the-grifters/