Notices by Nolan (nolan@toot.cafe)

Every time I mess around with sysadmin stuff, I'm always flummoxed by dumb things like "what is the difference between /usr/bin and /usr/local/bin, what the heck is an LD_LIBRARY_PATH, should I use sudo for this build tool or not," etc.). I guess this is how backend devs feel when they have to tweak a Webpack config.

Maybe this is why I'm a little skeptical of the whole "move everything to Rust/Zig/Go/etc" movement in the JS ecosystem. I like JavaScript, I understand JavaScript. If I have to debug some JS tool, I'm well-equipped. Whereas if I have to dip down into some weird error like "libfoo.so.42: cannot open shared object file" then I know I'm gonna get lost.

Plus I don't think we've come close to exhausting all the ways to optimize JS deps: https://marvinh.dev/blog/speeding-up-javascript-ecosystem/

A while ago I was looking at the Element properties that reflect to attributes (title, role, tabindex, etc.) and which ones remove the attribute when you set it to null or undefined, and whether the default value is null or the empty string or 0 or something else, and I came away reflecting that you could really drive yourself nuts with all this stuff

The worst part of building a JavaScript framework is that you really gotta sweat the details:

- some tags are self-closing (<input>), others are not (<div>)
- SVG is case sensitive, HTML is not
- `! important` is valid CSS (yes with the whitespace)

I feel like I discover some weird thing every other week.

"Write code for the web" by Manav Rathi https://mrmr.io/apple

This is from an iOS developer, but as an Android developer, I came to basically the same conclusion 10 years ago. The web isn't perfect, but it's a near-universal platform not owned by anybody.

New blog post: "Let’s learn how modern JavaScript frameworks work by building one" https://nolanlawson.com/2023/12/02/lets-learn-how-modern-javascript-frameworks-work-by-building-one/

Some step-by-step instructions on how to build a new JavaScript framework, if you're so inclined. Or just my way of learning how they all work!

"Resource Loading at the Cutting Edge" by @programmingart https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MV034VqHv5Q

Entertaining and slightly horrifying talk about how buggy HTTP resource priorities are across browsers, servers, HTTP versions… My takeaway is that I will probably just defer to the experts on this stuff instead of trying to go mucking around in the priorities myself.

OK I take it back, Safari might be the new IE: https://github.com/nolanlawson/emoji-picker-element/pull/379

The WebKit team has been doing amazing work recently, but it doesn't help users stuck on old versions of the OS.

E.g. Safari 16.4 was a massive release from back in March, but about a third of Safari users are still on <=16.3. This accounts for 6.5% of *all* browsers! https://caniuse.com/mdn-api_elementinternals

I know the solution is "just buy a new iPhone," but how much e-waste is that going to generate? And how many people can afford it?

@alex I gave it a shot, I really did. But the whole "let me handle all your module loading and script transformation and also simulate a whole browser for you, but slowly" just drives me nuts

I know they have "experimental" ESM support, but it's been that way forever and just doesn't inspire me with confidence. https://jestjs.io/docs/ecmascript-modules

"CommonJS is hurting JavaScript" by Andy Jiang https://deno.com/blog/commonjs-is-hurting-javascript

The biggest thing holding back CommonJS deprecation in my current projects is Jest. I really have to figure out how to migrate off of it.

"AI is killing the old web, and the new web struggles to be born" by James Vincent https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/26/23773914/ai-large-language-models-data-scraping-generation-remaking-web

Really feels like we're starting to reach some kind of breaking point with the web.

One weird (possible) downstream impact of the recent chaos at Twitter: I notice that Twemoji is still stuck on Emoji v14, and the contributor graph shows no significant updates since 2022.

If you use Firefox, this means you can't see the shaking face emoji (🫨), or you see the version provided by the OS/website instead of the one built in to Firefox.

https://github.com/twitter/twemoji

It looks like there is a fork, but I wonder what Mozilla or other apps/websites that depend on Twemoji will do. Go with the fork? Switch to OpenMoji? (Which is also only on v14 it seems.)

Emoji are (ostensibly) a commons overseen by the Unicode Consortium; it seems weird that so many took a dependency on Twemoji, which may now be backfiring.

- https://github.com/twitter/twemoji/issues/615#issuecomment-1565984122
- https://github.com/hfg-gmuend/openmoji/issues/446

In related news, emoji-picker-element is now updated to Emoji v15, and I am just now noticing some weird things like how Apple's "saluting face" (🫡) is only half a face for some reason

- https://github.com/nolanlawson/emoji-picker-element/pull/333
- https://github.com/nolanlawson/emoji-picker-element/issues/337

@strypey @shauna Yeah pretty much all of these ring true for me

"The Complete History of the A Button Challenge" https://youtu.be/yXbJe-rUNP8

I'm sure some people would think this is incredibly stupid, but to me the passion and dedication here is amazing. It's like finding the perfect way to fold 1,000 paper cranes or something.

It's also fascinating to watch as a programmer, to see how "integer overflow" could become "parallel universes." ?

New blog post: "Retiring Pinafore" https://nolanlawson.com/2023/01/09/retiring-pinafore/

Probably not going to surprise anyone, but I'm stepping back from Pinafore. Thanks to everyone who followed along with this project over the years!

@flaki asked me for this, so here's a short guide on scaling Mastodon *down*: https://gist.github.com/nolanlawson/fc027de03a7cc0b674dcdc655eb5f2cb

Note that I'm not a Ruby/Sidekiq expert and probably don't know what I'm talking about. But these tips worked for me.

The server is back up to running at full capacity. If you see any more load issues, please let me know.

Unfortunately, some folks who migrated away from toot.cafe when the server was swamped have reported some problems: missing followers, wrong followers. I can only assume that Mastodon dropped some of the Sidekiq jobs because of the massive load. I'm not aware of any way to solve this problem. I'm really sorry about that. ?