Notices by paul (paul@post.lurk.org)

There's a unix topological sorting utility?! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsort

From a CS paper in 1974:

"An Algol implementation of the algorithm successfully tested graphs with as many as 900 vertices in less than 12 seconds"

TIRAMISU HAS RETURNED TO TRADER JOE'S

Have there ever been "inverse forths"? Where, instead of pushing data onto the stack and using words to pop and process data, you push words onto a stack and then data triggers those words? Is this just how a regular call stack works?

Consider the dc program: 1 2 + 3 * 4 - p, which does some arithmetic and prints the result.

Same program could be written p - * + 1 2 3 4

Could get interesting because you could have words that push new words on to the stack.

I quite like my "pen and paper" phase of software development, because you can pivot out of bad ideas before they start.

Makes me feel like that 5th dimensional alien in MIB4 where they keep saying "phew, that was a close one!"

Those weird food advertisements on the NYC subway have to be subliminal messaging right?

@icedquinn I go to liliputing at least once a week. They always seem very close to what I want. Just enough to keep me coming back, not enough to commit.

If I ever were to write a book about SQLite, it would be called: "In place of a legal notice, here is a blessing."

Got totally distracted with an idea this morning involving Scheme, S-expressions, ASTs, literate programming, and knowledge graphs.

The literate program markup looks like this:

https://github.com/PaulBatchelor/Recurse/blob/main/scratch/edexp/proto.e

This builds up a s-expressions as trees (take my word for it)

It "tangles" into scheme code that looks like this:

https://github.com/PaulBatchelor/Recurse/blob/main/scratch/edexp/output.scm

It "weaves" into knowledge graph markup (dagzet), which can then be rendered into an HTML document like this one:

https://pbat.ch/recurse/dz/edexp_test/program/

Once in the knowledge graph format, I can treat every atom in the tree like a node in a graph and connect them to any other nodes in the graph. I can also use it to create emergent structures in my knowledge graph, such as this dynamically produced comments page:

https://pbat.ch/recurse/dz/edexp_test/comments/

I have officially begun a re-attempt at reading Designing Data-Intensive Applications. This time, I am doing a breadth-first approach to reading that involves skimming and populating a knowledge graph:

https://pbat.ch/recurse/dz/DDIA/toc/

Aztec Skull Whistle added to my wishlist:

https://caneuro.github.io/blog/2024/study-skullwhistle/

"studies show aztec skull whistles sound scary"

https://www.nature.com/articles/s44271-024-00157-7

Selling artisanal skull whistles on etsy.

> The category of replica skull whistles that were used in this study also included four skull whistles that were artisanal creations based on the general description of skull whistles in the literature.

"You will see a temporary TS error for the invoice prop in your terminal because invoice could be potentially undefined. Don't worry about it for now, you'll resolve it in the next chapter when you add error handling."

I looked up what "progressive enhancement" means. I found two definitions with two very different biases. The more I read tech-related writing, the more sensitive I get to this stuff.

MDN [0] has a very elitist definition, suggesting only the "best possible experience" comes from "the most modern browsers":

> Progressive enhancement is a design philosophy that provides a baseline of essential content and functionality to as many users as possible, while delivering the best possible experience only to users of the most modern browsers that can run all the required code.

Wikipedia [1], on the other, has a much "mellow" definition. This one has more of a semantic web bias, generally putting emphasis "web content first", and simply referring to anything more than that as an "enhanced version":

> Progressive enhancement is a strategy in web design that puts emphasis on web content first, allowing everyone to access the basic content and functionality of a web page, whilst users with additional browser features or faster Internet access receive the enhanced version instead.

0: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/Progressive_Enhancement

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_enhancement

If one wanted to study the source code to React, where would be a good entry point in the code base?

Credit where credit is due: Next.js docs seem quite good so far. The writing style is no-nonsense and consistent, and is quite thorough. None of this "let's have fun!" crap that I so often have to endure with these tutorials. I am not here to have fun. Nobody is doing this to have fun.

"don't worry if you don't understand everything the code is doing"

Gross, yet satisfying.

Spent most of my day yesterday staring at a colorless text editor writing in a dialect of TCL in small lines. Almost no indentation needed or required.

It was nice break from the visual carnival that is Rust in NeoVim.