Tag: hacking

2026-08-29 · 5 min read

A truth table for human-LLM cooperation, why the comment section immediately accused me of supporting both Trump and Putin, and a sarcastic, joyful breakdown of garbage-in vs. wise-out.

llm programming opinion culture hacking

2026-08-09 · 7 min read

Deconstructing the dogmatic anti-patterns section of the official Elixir library guidelines and demonstrating when every single one of them is actually needed.

elixir erlang architecture anti-patterns hacking

2026-06-17 · 2 min read

True story of the developer exploring different programming languages

elixir opinion humor hacking

2026-06-14 · 14 min read

On the lonely `status` column that quietly metastasised into a state machine, the boolean flags breeding in its shadow, and why a real finite automaton is not academic finery but the cheapest insurance you will ever decline to buy

elixir finitomata fsm architecture opinion hacking

2026-05-24 · 7 min read

A lightweight Rust library that renders CommonMark Markdown as richly styled ANSI terminal output, with syntax highlighting, full theming, and zero runtime overhead you did not ask for

rust cli markdown terminal ansi hacking

2026-05-18 · 5 min read

Several rules from my experience which would make your cooperation with AI assistants a charm

elixir erlang ai hacking

2026-05-17 · 6 min read

On treating mocks as protagonists of the testing narrative rather than disposable stand-ins hired to nod along

elixir erlang otp testing mocks hacking

2026-04-23 · 7 min read

A first-hand account of building the Cure programming language with AI agents as co-developers—what worked, what crashed spectacularly, and the distilled rules that emerged from the wreckage.

programming ai llm cure elixir development workflow hacking

2026-04-18 · 19 min read

A walk through Cure v0.16.0 through v0.19.1. A Finitomata-inspired FSM rewrite, the dependent-types core finally behaving like it promised, a pattern engine that actually matches, and a stack of ergonomics that should have been there six versions ago.

elixir cure programming compiler type-system fsm dependent-types hacking

2026-04-16 · 3 min read

Just under a year ago I started building a BEAM language with dependent types and first-class FSMs—chose the wrong implementation language, wrote spaghetti, had an LLM tell me it was garbage, shipped something embarrassing, then spent months rethinking. Here is what I learned and where Cure stands today.

elixir cure programming compiler type-system hacking

2026-04-12 · 9 min read

Every programming language stores its AST in its own idiosyncratic format. Writing a code-analysis tool means rewriting it from scratch for each new language. MetaAST—a meta-model sitting one level above any concrete AST—solves this by providing a single universal representation. One analyser, all languages, linear instead of quadratic growth. This is the score that every instrument in the orchestra can read.

elixir programming metaprogramming hacking

2026-04-08 · 5 min read

Most fears about backward compatibility are precisely that—myths, nourished by laziness, ignorance, or a banal unwillingness to think the problem through. Just ensure backward compatibility. Leave the choice between SemVer, CalVer and assorted ShitVer to the angels-on-a-pinhead crowd.

programming opinion hacking

2026-04-08 · 6 min read

Bus factor comes in two varieties. The first is provoked by saboteurs who write deliberately unreadable code. The second—far more common—arises because only one person on the team is capable of solving the hard problems, and nobody else can be bothered to learn. The cure for the second kind is not better documentation; it is better hiring.

programming teams opinion hacking

2026-04-07 · 5 min read

The accusation ‘this is slop’—applied to any body of information, be it letters, pixels, or notes—is pure, undiluted argumentum ad hominem. Let us stop counting bullet points in other people’s texts and return to judging by quality.

programming llm opinion hacking

2026-04-06 · 6 min read

Clean Code doesn't work—not because the principles are wrong, but because the real world is dirty, chaotic, unpredictable, and asynchronous. The best code I’ve ever seen violated a good half of Clean Code’s commandments.

programming opinion hacking

2026-04-06 · 12 min read

If a developer claims the badge of mid-level-plus but doesn’t feel at ease in at least the five principal paradigms—they are a pompous fool, and you should show them the door.

elixir erlang programming opinion hacking

2026-03-23 · 9 min read

Three years after the four key developer skills, a modest update: five stages of LLM grief, why the models are glorified T9, why context matters more than the model, and the surprising effectiveness of saying ‘please.’

elixir erlang programming llm opinion hacking

2025-05-14 · 5 min read

A brief description of how I made testing a charm with stream data generators supplied with my estructura library

elixir hacking

2025-05-13 · 6 min read

The history and purpose of Antenna library, providing all the features usually achieved by adding an extra message broker dependency.

elixir hacking

2025-03-09 · 6 min read

elixir hacking

2024-05-24 · 8 min read

Finitomata ships with a testing framework

elixir hacking

2024-03-03 · 3 min read

Why would one use Finite Automata for almost anything having state

elixir hacking

2023-12-26 · 5 min read

Part four of 'four key developer skills': what horizontal scaling actually means (and why Shopify is not an example of it), why FSMs are non-negotiable, and why 201 is good while 200 is dreadful.

elixir erlang programming architecture distributed-systems hacking

2023-12-25 · 5 min read

Part three of ‘four key developer skills’: why YAGNI is the laziness excuse of the decade, what the correct formulation actually is, and how dependency injection lets you be ready for tomorrow without writing a single superfluous line today.

elixir erlang programming architecture hacking

2023-11-09 · 3 min read

Part two of ‘four key developer skills’: how to break a system into isolated parts, why SRP is the only principle in SOLID worth knowing, and why anyone who says code can’t be tested in isolation should be shown the door.

elixir erlang programming architecture hacking

2023-11-04 · 6 min read

Part one of ‘four key developer skills’: how to guarantee fault tolerance even when your code has bugs—and why tests and types are a plastic bag on your head.

elixir erlang programming fault-tolerance hacking

2023-11-03 · 5 min read

Four skills that actually matter in 2023, or: a blanket glorification of Elixir masquerading as a balanced opinion piece.

elixir erlang programming opinion hacking

2023-03-06 · 3 min read

Synchronization points: the proper way to test FSM in details of how to control data flow (opinionated approach)

elixir ideas hacking

2023-01-17 · 5 min read

What to look at when you interview people (spoiler: not their imminent knowledge)

ideas erlang hacking

2023-01-01 · 4 min read

The proper way to use FSM to control data consistency (opinionated approach)

elixir ideas hacking

2022-08-14 · 3 min read

A new library to manage statefull processes as Finite Automatæ and the impudent proposal for the HTTP verbs extentions

elixir ideas hacking

2022-08-07 · 6 min read

A humanitarian story about how I decided to write my own markdown parser with a customizable grammar and how it went

elixir hacking

2022-05-27 · 5 min read

How Would You Design a URL Shortener Service Like TinyURL?

elixir hacking

2022-05-21 · 4 min read

Access is the most underrated feature of Elixir

elixir hacking

2022-05-02 · 2 min read

What’s wrong with markdown and how can we improve it

elixir hacking

2022-04-30 · 1 min read

The FSM implementation that exposes proper documentation

elixir hacking

2022-04-02 · 5 min read

The FSM implementation that’s worth it to give a try

elixir hacking

2022-02-12 · 3 min read

How to make your application to easily support plugins

elixir hacking

2022-01-30 · 3 min read

How to make your library a charm to test with a minimal effort

elixir hacking

2021-10-14 · 4 min read

Elixir library for customizable blazingly fast markup parsing with callbacks

elixir hacking

2021-08-10 · 5 min read

A rant on why I do not use IDE (and think that IDE hinders the good developers more than helps)

dwim hacking

2021-05-16 · 4 min read

A rant on why I do not like donate-based reward systems in OSS

dwim hacking

2021-04-30 · 3 min read

DynamicManager provided by Tarearbol is extremely handy for FSM implementation

elixir hacking

2021-02-28 · 2 min read

DynamicManager provided by Tarearbol is extremely handy for handling asynchronous responses from external services

elixir hacking

2021-02-18 · 4 min read

Macro to the rescue: how to build the nested function call dynamically with a bit of metaprogramming

elixir hacking

2021-02-13 · 3 min read

The trick allowing to implement the extended functionality of macros depending on the context they were called from

elixir hacking

2021-02-12 · 2 min read

The trick allowing to declare the guard that gracefully falls back on earlier versions of Elixir/OTP

elixir hacking

2021-01-12 · 5 min read

The biased set of reasons why I think IDE does not bring any good at all to the development process

elixir hacking

2020-12-05 · 5 min read

One small step towards backward compatibility, one giant leap for mankind

elixir erlang hacking

2020-09-04 · 3 min read

Tempus is a library to deal with time slots, like doctor appointments and/or room reservations

elixir erlang hacking

2020-08-04 · 4 min read

Use asynchronous traversal of a branched state graph to find a solution of a Lewis Carroll’s favorite puzzle

elixir erlang hacking

2020-07-24 · 5 min read

Use metaprogramming to deal with erlang typespec at runtime

elixir erlang hacking

2020-07-15 · 6 min read

Use metaprogramming to generate nifty types for generated structures

elixir erlang hacking

2020-07-06 · 4 min read

The library providing easy maintaining of the self-expiring cache for several time series

elixir erlang hacking

2020-05-30 · 4 min read

The handy helper to work with :telemetria library without an enormous boilerplate needed

elixir erlang hacking

2020-05-08 · 2 min read

Quick, nasty, and dirty hack to quickly grasp how the foreign code works

elixir hacking

2020-05-07 · 4 min read

The handy helper to work with distributed Erlang in dockerized environment

elixir erlang hacking

2020-02-22 · 12 min read

Prove of that Elixir/Erlang can be not a mile behind C/Haskell

elixir erlang hacking

2020-02-07 · 7 min read

No one is born a master: how to learn from masters but not fall under authority bias

erlang hacking

2020-01-18 · 5 min read

Arguably more robust way to write the good code compared to Strong Typing hype

elixir erlang hacking

2019-12-17 · 4 min read

Arguably more elegane way to save keystrokes when providing specs

elixir erlang hacking

2019-09-06 · 5 min read

Formulæ library introduction and tutorial on building lazy combinators

elixir erlang hacking

2019-08-28 · 5 min read

Post-mortem of one internal discussion on whether or not everything must be covered with tests

elixir erlang ruby hacking

2019-08-26 · 3 min read

Minimizing the boilerplate across your in-house library / applications is easy

elixir erlang hacking

2019-08-19 · 3 min read

Quick and dirty howto on setting Github CI for Elixir projects

elixir erlang hacking

2019-03-21 · 5 min read

nil / null is a perfectly valid useful first class citizen in many languages, and here is why

elixir ruby hacking

2019-03-01 · 1 min read

Long story short: Elixir MapSets are cool and shall be used widely. Empty MapSets can be pattern-matched easily.

elixir tricks tutorial hacking

2019-02-11 · 3 min read

Tiny library adding validation support, reasonable Access and Collectable implementations and more to Elixir Structs

elixir tricks opensource hacking

2019-01-19 · 5 min read

The beginner-friendly explanation of what concurrency is and why it ever matters

elixir tricks tutorial hacking

2018-12-31 · 3 min read

Using Iteraptor in test environment to test deeply nested maps/lists passed as JSON

elixir tricks hacking

2018-12-29 · 3 min read

The main advice on how to keep a supervision tree immune to members crashes

elixir tricks tutorial hacking

2018-12-28 · 2 min read

How to expose some read-only data from the already existing Elixir application with zero code

elixir tricks hacking

2018-12-26 · 3 min read

How to make custom macro `use` calls safer by checking the conditions met

elixir tricks hacking

2018-12-25 · 6 min read

The step-by-step explanation of why Go language is not good at all

elixir go tools hacking

2018-12-12 · 2 min read

Exvalibur does now allow custom guards and pattern matching of values

elixir tricks tools hacking

2018-11-16 · 4 min read

Simple way to make the struct all Enumerable, Collectable and Accessable

elixir tricks tools hacking

2018-11-05 · 4 min read

Why Abstract Syntax Tree is a core feature of any modern language

elixir lisp tricks hacking

2018-11-02 · 4 min read

Use generated module with pattern matching clauses and guards to validate any input given as a map

elixir tricks tools hacking

2018-10-30 · 7 min read

Quick how-to on bringing some ActiveRecord goodness into Elixir/Ecto

ruby tricks elixir hacking

2018-10-30 · 4 min read

Better and faster way to implement validation of incoming data than just looking it up in the global config map

elixir tricks tools hacking

2018-10-27 · 4 min read

Ruby REPL “pry” is way more powerful than “irb” and might be even better tuned

ruby tricks tools hacking

2018-10-24 · 5 min read

We developers tend to whine and claim for better life while we are extremely overpaid for doing neither complicated not important stuff

dwim coding hacking

2018-10-21 · 4 min read

When in any incomprehensible situation—raise! Do not let the uncertainty propagate through.

elixir ruby tricks hacking

2018-10-20 · 3 min read

The most intelligent library to process CSV files

ruby tricks tools hacking

2018-10-17 · 6 min read

Hacky implementation of Elixir-like specs in pure ruby with examples

elixir ruby tricks tools hacking

2018-10-11 · 2 min read

Dry-behaviour ruby library implementing Elixir protocols for Ruby going towards 1.0 release

elixir ruby tricks tools hacking

2018-10-10 · 4 min read

Property testing gives way more assurance in many cases than other testing techniques

elixir tricks tools hacking

2018-09-10 · 6 min read

Don’t blindly follow the paradigms. Here is why.

ruby elixir coding hacking

2018-08-27 · 2 min read

Ruby anti-pattern: cross references inside the same table must be avoided

ruby hacking

2018-08-03 · 2 min read

Tarearbol gracefully uses Envío’s functionality to subscribe to task execution results

elixir tricks tools hacking

2018-07-30 · 3 min read

Publishing and subscribing to events with ease

elixir tricks tools hacking

2018-05-31 · 1 min read

The selected challenges from our company’s weekly Monday greeting

ruby hacking

2018-05-29 · 4 min read

The detailed how-to on dealing with strings having accents nowadays

ruby elixir tricks tools hacking

2018-05-21 · 7 min read

Why do I consider using if operator to be a code smell

“…” elixir ruby hacking

2018-04-06 · 6 min read

The tiny elixir library to iterate/map/filter deeply nested structures in Elixir

“…” elixir tricks tools hacking

2018-03-29 · 4 min read

The tiny library (200 LOC) to iterate/map/filter deeply nested structures in Ruby

“…” ruby tricks tools hacking

2018-03-16 · 3 min read

What operators can be used in Elixir for pipelining and how

elixir tricks hacking

2018-02-23 · 1 min read

A less known patter matching feature in Elixir

elixir hacking

2018-02-22 · 2 min read

A couple of examples of flip-flop real applications

ruby hacking

2018-02-20 · 2 min read

A list of some less evident advantages of immutability

elixir ruby hacking

2018-01-12 · 3 min read

Cumbersome pattern matching might be way better than parsing strings with regexps

elixir tricks dwim hacking

2018-01-08 · 5 min read

How to bulk pattern match structs in function clauses in Elixir

elixir tricks dwim hacking

2018-01-03 · 3 min read

How to pattern match a protocol in Elixir

elixir tricks dwim hacking

2017-12-29 · 3 min read

How to tune up your project environment in Elixir

elixir tricks dwim hacking

2017-11-23 · 3 min read

How to memoize the function in Elixir

elixir tricks dwim hacking

2017-09-01 · 2 min read

How to see what erlang code was compiled to run your Elixir project

tricks elixir erlang hacking

2017-07-27 · 3 min read

building a robust FSM for a workflow

tricks ruby hacking

2017-06-20 · 7 min read

compile-time generated set of modules to ease an access to a predefined subset of UTF8 symbols

tricks elixir hacking

2017-05-12 · 8 min read

tiny library that provides the same binding mechanism as quote bind_quoted: [] does

tricks elixir hacking

2017-04-24 · 4 min read

copy-paste solution to start using credo linter in git pre-commit hook

tricks elixir hacking

2017-03-28 · 1 min read

nifty trick that provides the same functionality as [not existing] is_empty guard

tricks elixir hacking

2017-03-08 · 1 min read

what is the difference between an elegant hack and a nasty kludge on a linguistic example

tricks lingua dwim hacking

2017-02-17 · 2 min read

that is not widely known, but an Either monad is already presented in Elixir

elixir hacking

2016-12-27 · 3 min read

handy way of making tuples enumerable

elixir hacking

2016-12-22 · 2 min read

the how-to on making links to your site beautifully expanded in facebook, twitter and family

“…” ruby elixir web-components hacking

2016-12-19 · 6 min read

Tiny library inspired by Elixir protocol pattern

ruby elixir hacking

2016-12-13 · 1 min read

How to implement default_proc functionality in ruby structs

ruby hacking

2016-11-24 · 2 min read

How to make long-running rake task execution fancy

ruby hacking

2016-09-09 · 3 min read

Riak hooks are a good tool to simplify creation of views

elixir erlang hacking

2016-06-27 · 2 min read

In Ruby, we love and hereby use monkeypatching

ruby hacking

2016-04-22 · 2 min read

Why we post answers on StackOverflow and why we should keep doing it that way

ruby hacking

2016-03-09 · 1 min read

Why using new hash syntax might significantly improve the code quality

ruby hacking

2015-11-19 · 1 min read

How to test migrations with rspec, especially the migrations, that heavily change the data

ruby hacking

2015-10-29 · 1 min read

Ruby way to organize recursion with infinite loop

ruby hacking

2015-10-14 · 2 min read

Make you code to be appreciated by the offspring

ruby dwim hacking

2015-10-13 · 1 min read

How to escape quotation marks safely, or typography is coming

ruby dwim hacking

2015-09-02 · 1 min read

How to make binding.pry work when $stdin is given

ruby hacking

2015-08-29 · 1 min read

N+1 query problem might be solved in elegant way for mid-sized tables

ruby rails hacking

2015-04-14 · 2 min read

An example on how to tune a JSON parser

ruby hacking

2015-04-11 · 3 min read

A couple of tricks to make your logging experience pleasing

ruby hacking

2015-03-03 · 3 min read

Another matter why PHP is damaging brains

ruby php hacking

2014-01-24 · 1 min read

Comfort development of several gems simultaneously

ruby shell hacking

2013-12-17 · 2 min read

Ruby Memory Operation :: Pitfalls

ruby hacking

2013-11-06 · 1 min read

Problem with shell script wrappers in non-default I18N environment

ruby tricks hacking

2013-11-04 · 1 min read

Example of using PRY for inplace debugging in ruby

ruby tricks hacking

2013-09-05 · 2 min read

Basic example of Reactor pattern implementation within two threads

ruby tricks hacking

2013-08-15 · 1 min read

Monkeypatch for RMagick to produce collages

ruby tricks hacking

2013-04-26 · 1 min read

A collection of omnibox search extensions for Google Chrome™, for searching API reference documentation for a number of different languages and libraries.

tools hacking

2013-03-06 · 1 min read

Are refinements in Ruby 2.0 totally useless?— Yes they are.

ruby hacking

2013-03-03 · 1 min read

Example of using shorthand to yield keyword

ruby tricks hacking

2013-02-11 · 1 min read

Match string painless without superfluous if-then clauses

ruby tricks hacking

2013-02-09 · 1 min read

Facilitation of dealing with Logger

ruby tricks hacking

2013-02-05 · 1 min read

Provide a common mechanism to access deeply nested hash elements w/o annoying exception handling

ruby tricks hacking

2013-02-04 · 1 min read

How to enable debug for a couple of classes only

ruby tricks hacking

2013-02-03 · 1 min read

Syntactic sugar using ampersand notations

ruby tricks hacking

2013-02-02 · 1 min read

Matching all the occurences of a pattern returning MatchData

ruby tricks hacking

2013-01-19 · 3 min read

Yield ⇒ Choose one ⇒ Yield

ruby tricks hacking