Posts tagged: dev

PocketCal Build Log I made a date-sharing app called PocketCal. Here cassidoo.co [1] I love this idea of tiny useful apps for yourself. In fact I’m working on a project to built out tinyapps [2] for myself to replace my common needs. I absolutely love that all of the state is stored in the url bar, nothing is stored server side. As much as I love to hate js, I really appreciate that things like this can be built to just live on the web, be accessible from anywhere, and live practically forever as they require such little hosting demand. Note This post is a thought [3]. It’s a short note that I make about someone else’s content online #thoughts References: [1]: https://cassidoo.co/post/pocketcal-build-log/ [2]: /tinyapps/ [3]: /thoughts/

GitHub - numtide/treefmt: the formatter multiplexer [maintainers=@zimbatm,@brianmcgee] the formatter multiplexer [maintainers=@zimbatm,@brianmcgee] - numtide/treefmt GitHub · github.com [1] This looks like a very useful formatting tool to keep in the back of my mind. I do a lot of python and our tool tends to be pre-commit, named after the git [2] hook pre-commit. It specifies a bunch of tools to run, you can run them in ci, manually, and opt into doing it before commit. I like the simplicity of this one not needing a whole ecosystem, but rather just leveraging the cli commands from those tools. This would probably be something that would get in the way of setup for new devs and not something I would throw on one project by itself, its another thing for everyone to figure out how to install and run on every platform, I’m sure its not hard, but being on python teams pre-commit just fits in. Note This post is a thought [3]. It’s a short note that I make about someone else’s content online #thoughts References: [1]: https://github.com/numtide/treefmt [2]: /glossary/git/ [3]: /thoughts/

- This is one of the greatest pycon keynotes I’ve ever seen, bookmarking this to come back and leave better thoughts on later. Note This post is a thought [1]. It’s a short note that I make about someone else’s content online #thoughts References: [1]: /thoughts/

- Should I go to college? Was my education worth it? Should I keep going. A question that comes in all too often accross most industries that require some level of education. DHH has such great takes on it, some I had never fully thought about. He starts out with should we have people study niche topics (using Russian Poetry as an example). Yes the world deserves people who can make their life works out of something that brings them and many other so much joy, but no you probably shouldn’t go 100k’s into debt to do it. Should I get a software engineering degree, or become a doctor also have similar answers, it needs to be somewhat justified and not outrageous as has become the norm. We used to listen in to Dave Ramsey on long car rides and he would have people call in and say, they went half a million dollars into debt to become a dentist, only to discover they did not want to do dentistry. At this point it’s too bad, you gotta suck it up and pay that off with something that makes some serious cash, and the only skill you probably got that can bring in that level of cash is … dentistry. They dive into the college experience, learning to have adult debates with classmates abou...

The ethics of README ads I’ve been considering accepting sponsorship again for my projects. Will McGugan · willmcgugan.github.io [1] I’ve long avoided running ads on my blog for the same reason. For a few months I ran an ad above the fold. It was a “Your Ad Here” kind of thing, and in the messaging I was looking for content relevant to my content, not google driven ads. This resulted in nothing, no hits, not a one. I’m kinda with Will on this one beer money is not worth degrading the project for. I seriously thought some of the big projects with a moderate level of success got a good cut for these sponsorships. Some of the companies are big companies, like how do they even go through meetings and decide who gets beer money without spending more than that in decision making resources. Maybe they have a guy with more autonomy than I would expect. Note This post is a thought [2]. It’s a short note that I make about someone else’s content online #thoughts References: [1]: https://willmcgugan.github.io/the-ethics-of-readme-ads/ [2]: /thoughts/

External Link X (formerly Twitter) · x.com [1] I need to find this podcast, was DHH this animated through the whole thing? You don’t need a mentor. There’s no secret sauce left inside anyone’s head any more. It’s all been tapped, bottled, tweeted, and shared a million times. Sample some of that, but also guard your ignorance. You’ll lose it soon enough. It takes work, one on one hand holding is a shortcut. Sometimes one that we need. Sometimes we need to level up quick, hence why your job might pair you up with someone for the first few months, but it is not something you need, you can figure shit out on your own with hard work. These days we have things like gippity to bounce ideas off, and you can generally get the sense of the direction the average of the internet it was trained on. Always add your own experience and make a choice for yourself. Note This post is a thought [2]. It’s a short note that I make about someone else’s content online #thoughts References: [1]: https://x.com/dhh/status/1928856582588076171 [2]: /thoughts/

External Link X (formerly Twitter) · x.com [1] I suffer hard from NIH, I’m cheap, I like building things, I hate reading the docs, the perfect recipe for some bad NIH. I really like DHH’s take here. If no one builds anything new we get stuck with the same old shit. I think theres a lot of things that as far as my use case is concerned feature complete and needs no more. I would just build with it or on it, but not re-invent. It’s a slippery slope. Note This post is a thought [2]. It’s a short note that I make about someone else’s content online #thoughts References: [1]: https://x.com/dhh/status/1928450457262850053 [2]: /thoughts/

External Link X (formerly Twitter) · x.com [1] Oh, I feel this. I go through the effort of removing dum ai comments so the ai looks less ai. you’re not allowed to write comments in your code anymore, because if you do everyone will just think it’s ai generated. Note This post is a thought [2]. It’s a short note that I make about someone else’s content online #thoughts References: [1]: https://x.com/ForrestPKnight/status/1927398791398719997 [2]: /thoughts/

- css if() just landed, I’m struggling to understand what I an do with this that I can’t do with something as old as classes. I can get it if I don’t have control over html [1] creation or js to add classes. The example that Una shows includes data that could directly be a classname with a set of styles in css rather than this crazy css variable unpacking out of a data attribute and an if statement. Note This post is a thought [2]. It’s a short note that I make about someone else’s content online #thoughts References: [1]: /html/ [2]: /thoughts/

I’m currently [[replacing-google-search-apps-with-self-hosted-web-apps]] and decided to create a simple b64 encoder/decoder, just start typing to enter text, escape to deselect, then e/d to encode/decode. I’m trying to make these apps super simple, self hosted [1] out of minio, static html [2], and javascript. It’s been fun to get back to some simple interactive web development like this. No build just a website that does something. No broken builds, no containers to deploy, just push to minio. encoded = btoa(content); decoded = atob(encoded); Here is the result. [3] References: [1]: /self-host/ [2]: /html/ [3]: https://b64.wayl.one

Just fucking code. justfuckingcode.com [1] This is great, beautifully captures a modern backend view of https://motherfuckingwebsite.com/. I honestly resonate with almost all of this. I have found myself in more trouble than help when trying to fully vibe out a project. It never refactors, it leaves it shit everywhere, it mostly does what you say, until you get to something that seems easy, so you try to do it yourself, but you break its brittle piece of shit into pieces any time you try to touch it. AI coding help is great, mcp seems like it really has some game changing abilities, but hands of vibe coded crap aint there yet for me. Note This post is a thought [2]. It’s a short note that I make about someone else’s content online #thoughts References: [1]: https://www.justfuckingcode.com/ [2]: /thoughts/

No docs, no bugs If your library doesn't have any documentation, it can't have any bugs. Documentation specifies what your code is supposed to do. Your tests specify what it actually does. Bugs exist … Simon Willison’s Weblog · simonwillison.net [1] Bugs exist when your test-enforced implementation fails to match the behavior described in your documentation. Without documentation a bug is just undefined behavior. This is quite an interesting thought, so does this mean that, none of my undocumented side projects have bugs? no I think there is still some implied behavior that naming things covers. a function get_bucket_contents implies doing something wtih s3, getting stuff from your local filesystem or crashing would be considered a bug. I think the argument here is that if I start mining bitcoin when you call get_bucket_contents and I have not documented it that this is a feature not a bug. If I were to take this a step further, now do I need to document that this does not also start a bitcoin miner? maybe this is more of an unwanted feature than a bug, I’m convincing myself more and more. Note This post is a thought [2]. It’s a short note that I make about someone else’s ...

What’s next? Some years ago I had the opportunity to work fulltime on project of mine. This was at a time where I fully intended to take a year off, but being able to make a living off a project of your own cre... Will McGugan · willmcgugan.github.io [1] So it’s back to plan A: taking a year off. I plan on using this time to focus on my health–something I haven’t prioritized while working as a CEO / Founder of a startup. Wish you the best Will, you have given us textual and rich, and from what I can tell left it in some great hands. All I can say for certain is that I would like to write more. Writing scratches many of the same itches as software development, and it is a skill I’d like to nurture. Go get em Will, write to your hearts desire, and resist the urge to make an SSG company this time. Note This post is a thought [2]. It’s a short note that I make about someone else’s content online #thoughts References: [1]: https://willmcgugan.github.io/whats-next/ [2]: /thoughts/

Too much magic A common criticisms of frameworks like Textual is that they have “too much magic”. Will McGugan · willmcgugan.github.io [1] Now “too much magic” is not the same thing as “bad magic”, although they are often conflated. Bad magic is when the implementation details leak out from the level below. This can manifest itself as cryptic errors that reference the magic’s implementation. Note This post is a thought [2]. It’s a short note that I make about someone else’s content online #thoughts References: [1]: https://willmcgugan.github.io/too-much-magic/ [2]: /thoughts/

- Dang Strong takes against markdown here with a strong push for bespoke content models/structures. This idea is completely foreign and wild to me. I get it that markdown has its issues with flavors, add ons and what not, but overall its mostly transportable, its a skill that works most content sites and writing tools. I am so far on the other side that I seek out tools with markdown as an option and lean away from wsiwyg tools with specialized data formats on the backend. I’ll end with, I’m also a dev that creates very simplified content and maybe seeing the backend of a site with lots of custom fields would be very eye opening for me. Note This post is a thought [1]. It’s a short note that I make about someone else’s content online #thoughts References: [1]: /thoughts/

- Under 2000 everything is happy, green field. Any decision you have made is relatively easy to back out of (barring you making a library with downstream users), but as you go, regret kicks in. Regret we didn’t make that pydantic 2 upgrade earlier, as new features become more apealing. Regret that we chose sqlite for simplicity, speed, agility, and now we might need robust and distributed. Regret that you chose a front end framework, or to have a front end at all to a backend problem. Regret that you put 6 layers of abstraction on your db early on and now that you understand the problem you want different abstractions, but all of your endpoints deeply depend on the current one. Vibe coding [1] will not save you, it will only make these wrong decisions for you without the context that you have. You will hate it’s decisions more because you had no input into some of them. Note This post is a thought [2]. It’s a short note that I make about someone else’s content online #thoughts References: [1]: /vibe-coding/ [2]: /thoughts/

- “Gradually roll out your releases to a small group of people” ~ roughly what prime said (I’m listening live) This really hit home with me, tests can be so good at making sure that we dont repeat bugs and that laser focused things work, tests are generally small and focused, but this does not replace some sort of integration testing. These days very few things are written as a monolith, and hence there are a lot of interactions that really need to play well together accross various systems. They call out Crowdstrike here, which took down the world blue screening critical windows systems everywhere in 2024. It was revealed that a small changed was rushed through and skipped critical rollout paths since it seemed like a small change. Crowdstrike also runs at a super low kernel level of access and a small memory bug can kill the system. Note This post is a thought [1]. It’s a short note that I make about someone else’s content online #thoughts References: [1]: /thoughts/

External Link fafo.fm [1] This episode really got me thinking about the difference between HA and DR and my approach to each one. They talk about it from the perspective of a cach cow kind of app rather than a homelab [2] or internal tooling, but think of HA as 9’s how many 9s are we willing to pay for, tink of DR as dollars how many dollars will we loose during the period of recovery. So much more in the episode, a lot of talk around cloud vendors and what they give you vs a purpose build platform with HA and DR in mind. Note This post is a thought [3]. It’s a short note that I make about someone else’s content online #thoughts References: [1]: https://www.fafo.fm/recovering-from-disaster-with-seth-eliot/ [2]: /homelab/ [3]: /thoughts/

P. Martin Ortiz: Web apps can easily adapt to whatever device you’re on. A single responsive website can run on your desktop, phone, tablet, or even a VR headset. What’s even more, they can be ... Chris Coyier · chriscoyier.net [1] The web is everywhere, its the one true write once and run anywhere platform. Millions sunk into browser performance and things like the v8 engine allow us to run our shitty websites anywhere and it still runs good…. most of the time Note This post is a thought [2]. It’s a short note that I make about someone else’s content online #thoughts References: [1]: https://chriscoyier.net/2025/04/30/12292/ [2]: /thoughts/

- Great talk from Lous Rossman! TLDR you don’t own it, and stop pointing the finger calling everyone else an idiot for supporting the other brand, cause your’s probably also has different issues. Note This post is a thought [1]. It’s a short note that I make about someone else’s content online #thoughts References: [1]: /thoughts/