Blog Changes, Life Updates, and Upcoming Posts
I’d like to turn this blog into a useful reference for my future self, a living document of what I’m thinking about, and a commitment device that forces me to follow through on my objectives. As a result, you can expect a lot more in the coming months.
Problems with my current workflow
- There are times when I need to dig up old work because I’ve solved a problem in it that I need to solve
again. Sometimes I worry that I’ll end up wasting time re-deriving the solution to something I’ve already
solved before.
- This tacit knowledge that I have doesn’t really benefit other people because no one will know where to look unless they are me.
- I feel like I’m not contributing the full variety of perspectives that I have because the friction is too high.
Opportunities with my current workflow
- Sometimes I’ll google something that feels like it’s a question that a reference work can easily answer.
- E.g. “Go function syntax”
What I’ll be doing differently
- Increasing the proportion of my thoughts which are public / open
- Have more working documents, such as post idea lists, reference works, and what I’m calling atomic posts 1
- Turning the website into more of a reference work, by
- consolidating as many of my existing notes into one place as possible
- documenting the answers to questions I’ve googled as posts
- making the website a default collection point for writing capture.
What I’ve been up to
Programming
- I might do a master’s in PL and AI Software Verification
- Functional programming (especially Haskell)
- Hacking on spreadsheets and distributed systems
Life
- Just did a 10k yesterday
- Getting my M license this summer
- Hanging out with friends
Other
- The aforementioned friends have a working group for memex software2 that I’m a part of.
Stuff that I’ve been enjoying recently
- The Go programming language
- The roguelike game Gambonanza
Post ideas
- Why I want to do a master’s in PL and AI Software Verification
- Pierce, programming languages, and functional programming
- Lambda calculus implementation code-along
- Regarding spreadsheets:
- How to build a performant html5 datatable component (hint: it’s not virtualization!)
- CRDT notes
- Regarding website changes:
- Unstatic-ing my website and adding search (will be a super short 2 part series, documenting my progress towards the next thing)
- Regarding ultra-short reference works:
- Go function syntax, anything else I think of.
Atomic posts are alternatives to drafts that are written such that they can be considered “complete” between writing sessions. In other words, in an atomic post, the priority is minimizing the number of iterations which are not fit for a general audience. This idea is inspired by the fact that posts can be treated like programs, in the sense that it’s better to write a minimal post expressing a complete idea and improve it in every session rather than accumulate sessions writing parts of a longer, more detailed post, that may not see the light of day because of shifting priorities. ↩︎
Think interlinked notetaking a la Notion, Obsidian, Roam Research. ↩︎