This is the newsletter version of my website. I post all website updates here. I also post regular content just for the newsletter, on topics like
Formal Methods and applications of math to programming
Software History and Culture
Fringetech and exotic tooling, and deep dives into niche topics
The philosophy and theory of software engineering
You can see the archive of all public essays here. Here are some of my favorites:
Why UML “Really” Died: The long history of the rise and fall of UML, where it came from, and why it slowly went away.
Syntax highlighting is a waste of an information channel: No, not bad. There’s just so much more we can use highlighting for in addition to showing syntax! Like differentiating types, or functions part of the last stack trace.
How knowing math helps you write better software: It’s not the math proofs that are most valuable, it’s the math machinery. Sometimes the right math trick can take a business problem from “impossible” to “trivial”.
That time Indiana almost made π 3.2: The full, sordid history of that affair, including what the false proof actually was and why it almost got passed in the first place.
Edge Case Poisoning: How edge cases in the problem domain lead to more complex code even in the general case.