Tag: programming

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

2026-04-23 · 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

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