Programming

Lambda Calculus in Janet - Jun 2026

While implementing languages in Lisp is easy, implementing Lambda calculus in Lisp is even easier!

Unity of Paradigms - Dec 2025

Map/filter/reduce, APL and Relational Algebra seem to be the same

Janet Commonplace - Jul 2025

Questions, resources and thoughts about Janet, a minimalist Clojure-like with native binaries.

WIP Coupling Language and Geography - May 2025

Historical linguistics has a lot to teach us about API/DSL design. While a decades old codebase may be a crime scene, human languages have endured magnitudes more churn!

Lisp Curriculum - Sep 2024

Learn Scheme, Common Lisp ->maybe Clojure, with these books.

To Forge Deeper Thought - Jul 2024

The curiosity to bravely multisociate insights from all fields breeds innovation.

Revolt of the Simple - Jan 2024

tl;dr: Recklessly adopting tools because big tech uses them is the biggest problem in tech.

Colophon - Jun 2023

I overthought designing this blog.

Big Open Source - May 2023

tl;dr: Open source is a moat for big tech. SaaS is the best startups can do right now.

Walmart's Hybdrid Cloud - Feb 2023

Walmart Cloud Native Platform (WCNP) is an interesting case study (though proliferating buzzwords garner the odd chuckle).

SaaS Propaganda - Jan 2023

I play devil’s advocate, steelmanning SaaS’ business use.

Antikubernetes Propaganda - Oct 2022

Once upon a time in a simpler world, there were but system admins. All these middleware, DNS, SMTP, firewall, network and security admins hadn’t yet splintered - the sysadmin responsable for all, gluing all teams together, making a system of discrete parts made by engineers and DBAs. Rare is the organization which has reached the scale to benefit from this specifications. More commonly, we poor moderns create systems too complex to wrap our heads around or escape (shackled to the costliest compute known to man).

Anticloud Propaganda - Jul 2022

tl;dr: What’s your cost per request (cpr)? How much does more monitoring and logging cost for what gain in uptime/reliability/visibility and more importantly, customer satisfaction?

How to Learn Go - May 2022

First Steps

  • For new programmers:
    Alex Edwards' Let's Go and Let's Go Further teach core patterns, project structure and API development. They're the best introduction for a new programmer.

  • For experienced programmers:

What’s next?

  • Cloud Native Go - Titmus
  • 100 Go Mistakes
  • Style guides by Uber and Google
  • Writing an Interpreter in Go & Writing a Compiler in Go - Thorsten Ball

Make a server, but not some demo thing, go all the way.

The Customer is Always Wrong - Jun 2021

How many times have you thought or heard: “What if there were a tool so powerful you could write your specifications in it, it would make them happen?” Well… That’s what a programming languageis! “No, no. I mean in human language, for real people!” Well, that’s COBOL!