Abhinav 🌏

The postmodern build system (updated 2025) computers i guess

Bookmarked: [jade.fyi] The postmodern build system

https://jade.fyi/blog/the-postmodern-build-system/

See more links at https://abhinavsarkar.net/linkblog #linkblog #linkblogging

Bookmarked: [jnkr.tech] The Church and Scott Encodings of Algebraic Data Types

https://jnkr.tech/blog/church-scott-encodings-of-adts

See more links at https://abhinavsarkar.net/linkblog #linkblog #linkblogging

photo of a mountain peak surrounded by clouds, with blue skies above.

Over the mountain #photography #silentsunday

Claude is an Electron App because we’ve lost native Article argues that Claude is not an Electron app not because LLMs can’t do it, but because there are no advantages left for native

I was meaning to write a reply to “Why is Claude an Electron App?” for a few days. Today is that day:

https://tonsky.me/blog/fall-of-native/

I wrote a new note: "Reading Time Estimates for #Pandoc Based Blog Generators" https://notes.abhinavsarkar.net/2025/pandoc-reading-time

#haskell #hakyll #programming #Blogging

Bookmarked: [free.cofree.io] Understanding Space Leaks From StateT

https://free.cofree.io/2021/12/13/space-leak/

See more links at https://abhinavsarkar.net/linkblog #linkblog #linkblogging

While I have no ill will toward the “ATmosphere” (Bluesky/AT Protocol), the contrast in funding models is hard to ignore. The fediverse’s support from strategic investments in open infrastructure (like NLnet or STF) feels far healthier than ATmosphere's heavy backing from crypto-linked VCs—a […]

I wrote a note about my process of writing on the internet. https://notes.abhinavsarkar.net/2025/writing-process
#note #Blogging #writing

We've got something to Share! We hope you'll find it useful. https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2026/03/a-new-share-button/

Over the weekend, I spent a couple of hours reading through Patrick Thomson's series of blog posts on Recursion Schemes with #Haskell https://blog.sumtypeofway.com/posts/recursion-schemes-part-6.html, and it has been most helpful in understanding the topic. I have tried reading the docs of the […]

Screenshot of the documentation of the Haskell function accursedUnutterablePerformIO: accursedUnutterablePerformIO :: IO a -> a This "function" has a superficial similarity to unsafePerformIO but it is in fact a malevolent agent of chaos. It unpicks the seams of reality (and the IO monad) so that the normal rules no longer apply. It lulls you into thinking it is reasonable, but when you are not looking it stabs you in the back and aliases all of your mutable buffers. The carcass of many a seasoned Haskell programmer lie strewn at its feet. Witness the trail of destruction: https://github.com/haskell/bytestring/commit/71c4b438c675aa360c79d79acc9a491e7bbc26e7 https://github.com/haskell/bytestring/commit/210c656390ae617d9ee3b8bcff5c88dd17cef8da https://github.com/haskell/aeson/commit/720b857e2e0acf2edc4f5512f2b217a89449a89d https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/3486 https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/3487 https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/7270 https://gitlab.haskell.org/ghc/ghc/-/issues/22204 Do not talk about "safe"! You do not know what is safe! Yield not to its blasphemous call! Flee traveller! Flee or you will be corrupted and devoured!

It is a good day to unleash the agent of chaos. #Haskell #programming

Notes for the Week #9 (2026) This week note covers the week of 23rd February–1st March. ## Life# This week has been a slow one. Not much to update on this time. Life is moving at usual pace; home-work-walk-build-watch-read. My sleep has improved but I’m still not waking up fully refreshed; at least I am able to drive now. I kept sneaking in walks here and there, even spent some time on a treadmill because the summer is here in Bangalore. I finished February with 10225 daily average steps, which is a tad bit better than January. With the heat increasing, I’ll have to spend more time walking on the treadmill. We got all the ACs serviced just in time. A and my wife made popsicles twice this week with fruit juices, which turned out to be absolutely delectable. Looking forward to more of those this summer. Holi is around the corner, and this year A is old enough to play with water. Got to get her a pichkari. ## Personal Projects# This week I worked on `feed-repeat`, the small tool I made to repeat the posts from my favourite feeds into new feeds so that I can reread them forever. I’m planning to open source it so I added a few features that I felt were missing, and refactored it a bit. In particular: * I added support for conditional feed fetches. * I added a parameter to tune the entry selection probability. I think it is in a good shape now for opening. I’ve been running it for myself for three months and it has been performing as expected. Rest of my free time was spent on an urgent issue. Turns out RAM is very expensive now, causing my VPS provider Hetzner to increase their prices. My VPS that hosts my website and a few more services mostly sits idle, so it doesn’t make sense for me to pay so much for it. The only reason I was using an 8GB server was because my website generator was too memory hungry. I wrote it in a time when memory was cheap but compute was expensive. So I cached the hell out of everything. This worked well for 5 or so years, but now that I have over hundred posts and memory is scarce, I decided to optimize. I moved many caches from memory to on-disk and trimmed down things that were cached. I batched some build targets together. I also reduced the build concurrency. Over 16 commits, I brought down the memory use from 7GB to 2GB. It can still be improved but this is good enough now that I can rescale the VPS to 4GB RAM, and save some bucks. Interestingly, this also cut down the run time by about 40%, even when running with 8 thread instead of 50. Turns out, if you reduce memory use, the program will run faster because the garbage collector does not have to work as hard. Here are details for the curious: Before run stats 157,185,195,096 bytes allocated in the heap 87,212,373,968 bytes copied during GC 2,097,087,272 bytes maximum residency (60 sample(s)) 213,954,456 bytes maximum slop 7071 MiB total memory in use (0 MiB lost due to fragmentation) Tot time (elapsed) Avg pause Max pause Gen 0 106 colls, 106 par 301.063s 5.451s 0.0514s 0.2627s Gen 1 60 colls, 59 par 78.511s 24.207s 0.4035s 1.4609s Parallel GC work balance: 93.98% (serial 0%, perfect 100%) TASKS: 216 (1 bound, 215 peak workers (215 total), using -N50) SPARKS: 0 (0 converted, 0 overflowed, 0 dud, 0 GC'd, 0 fizzled) INIT time 0.004s ( 0.003s elapsed) MUT time 0.000s (120.139s elapsed) GC time 379.574s ( 29.659s elapsed) EXIT time 0.181s ( 0.015s elapsed) Total time 200.424s (149.816s elapsed) Alloc rate 0 bytes per MUT second Productivity -89.5% of total user, 80.2% of total elapsed After run stats 86,561,960,248 bytes allocated in the heap 13,599,700,352 bytes copied during GC 885,401,912 bytes maximum residency (45 sample(s)) 71,571,144 bytes maximum slop 2015 MiB total memory in use (0 MiB lost due to fragmentation) Tot time (elapsed) Avg pause Max pause Gen 0 323 colls, 323 par 10.476s 3.928s 0.0122s 0.0667s Gen 1 45 colls, 44 par 8.457s 2.668s 0.0593s 0.2832s Parallel GC work balance: 82.49% (serial 0%, perfect 100%) TASKS: 34 (1 bound, 33 peak workers (33 total), using -N8) SPARKS: 0 (0 converted, 0 overflowed, 0 dud, 0 GC'd, 0 fizzled) INIT time 0.003s ( 0.003s elapsed) MUT time 60.034s ( 82.092s elapsed) GC time 18.933s ( 6.596s elapsed) EXIT time 0.032s ( 0.002s elapsed) Total time 79.003s ( 88.693s elapsed) Alloc rate 1,441,880,584 bytes per MUT second Productivity 76.0% of total user, 92.6% of total elapsed ## Reading & Watching# I’m slowly making headway in reading _Proto_. It’s not going as fast as I’d like but it’s better than nothing. Wife and I started watching Love Through a Prism and I stared watching Lord of Mysteries. Still unsure about both but let’s see. ## Social Media# I see that I’m almost at 1000 original posts on my microblog. I also crossed 500 followers on Mastodon. I posted a new photo that I took on the day of my wedding. I’m not passing much time on social media these days 🤷🏽‍♂️. ## Interesting Internet Links# * How far back in time can you understand English? * Four Kinds of Optimisation * 10 Commandments: Compiler in Haskell Edition That’s all for this week. You can subscribe to the feed of my week notes for updates. If you have any questions or comments, please leave a comment below. If you liked this post, please share it. Thanks for reading!

New #weeknote about summer, feeds and optimizations https://abhinavsarkar.net/notes/2026-weeknotes-03-01/

#blogging #weeknotes

IndieWebClub Bangalore Website of the IndieWebClub Bangalore community

The website of #IndieWeb Club #Bangalore is finally up at https://blr.indiewebclub.org

Bookmarked: [mcyoung.xyz] Why SSA?

https://mcyoung.xyz/2025/10/21/ssa-1/

See more links at https://abhinavsarkar.net/linkblog #linkblog #linkblogging

Starting a new video series on #CategoryTheory. Please provide feedback. Brickbats welcome, especially of the constructive kind! #FunctionalProgramming

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKIu09RH_dk&list=PLKRL4Pfe2WhopZG1paDPIGtBZszSQFWky

Bookmarked: [tratt.net] Laurence Tratt: Four Kinds of Optimisation

https://tratt.net/laurie/blog/2023/four_kinds_of_optimisation.html

See more links at https://abhinavsarkar.net/linkblog #linkblog #linkblogging

Thumbnail showing me in Bangalore

I spent 3 weeks in India's tech capital, Bangalore, trying out every type of transportation, visiting startups, organizing a meetup and a lot more. Check it out!

https://nebula.tv/videos/techaltar-what-indias-silicon-valley-is-like

YouTube version coming soon

Bookmarked: [lexi-lambda.github.io] [lexi-lambda.github.io] Parse, don’t validate

https://lexi-lambda.github.io/blog/2019/11/05/parse-don-t-validate/

See more links at https://abhinavsarkar.net/linkblog #linkblog #linkblogging

one of my favorite things on fedi is seeing an enormous infodump that is almost totally incomprehensible to me, where someone is just pouring out their heart about a topic that they love, in some gigantic thread of intense nerdery. sometimes I see people post self-consciously as if they feel […]

Polls I Ran on Mastodon in 2025 In 2025, I ran ten polls on Mastodon exploring various topics, mostly to outsource my research to the hivemind. Here are the poll results organized by topic, with commentary. ### Contents 1. General Programming 1. JSON Pronunciation 2. Compilers 1. Compiler Backend Targets 2. Haskell Parsing Libraries 3. Compiler in Haskell with Lenses 3. Blogging & Web 1. Blog Post Length Preferences 2. Blog Post Print Support 3. Résumés on Personal Website 4. “Writing a C Compiler” Blog Series 4. Self-hosting 1. Service Packaging Preferences 2. Hetzner Backup Strategy ## General Programming ### JSON Pronunciation How do you pronounce JSON? January 15, 2025 See as table Option | Votes ---|--- Jay-Son, O as in Otter | 66 Jay-Son, O as in Utter | 27 Jay-Son, O as in Oh | 5 something else, comment | 5 Jay-Ess-On | 1 **Total** | **104** I’m in the “Jay-Son, O as in Otter” camp, which is the majority response. It seems like most Americans prefer the “Jay-Son, O as in Utter” option. Thankfully, only one person in the whole world says “Jay-Ess-On”. ## Compilers ### Compiler Backend Targets If someone were to write a new compiler book today, what would you prefer the backend to emit? October 31, 2025 See as table Option | Votes ---|--- LLVM | 42 WASM | 22 Arm assembly | 14 C | 12 X86 assembly | 6 Lua | 5 JavaScript | 4 JVM bytecode | 3 QBE | 2 CIL | 2 **Total** | **112** LLVM wins this poll hands down. It is interesting to see WASM beating other targets. ### Haskell Parsing Libraries Which is your favourite Haskell parsing library? November 3, 2025 See as table Option | Votes ---|--- Attoparsec | 7 Megaparsec | 7 Parsec | 5 ReadP | 3 Alex + Happy | 1 Flatparse | 1 Streamly | 1 Polyparse | 1 Earley | 0 Parsley | 0 **Total** | **26** I didn’t expect Attoparsec to go toe-to-toe with Megaparsec. I did some digging, and it seems like Megaparsec is the clear winner when it comes to parsing programming languages in Haskell. However, for parsing file formats and network protocols, Attoparsec is the most popular one. I think that’s wise, and I’m inclined to make the same choice. ### Compiler in Haskell with Lenses If you were to write a compiler in Haskell, would you use a lens library to transform the data structures? July 11, 2025 See as table Option | Votes ---|--- maybe | 10 no | 8 yes | 5 comment | 0 **Total** | **23** This one has mixed results. Personally, I’d like to use a minimal lens library if I’m writing a compiler in Haskell. ## Blogging & Web ### Blog Post Length Preferences What do you think is the right length of programming related blog posts (containing code) in terms of reading time? May 18, 2025 See as table Option | Votes ---|--- ~ 5 minutes | 15 ~ 10 minutes | 37 ~ 20 minutes | 28 ~ 30 minutes | 5 ~ 45 minutes | 0 ~ 1 hour | 3 **Total** | **88** As a writer of programming related blog posts, this poll was very informative for me. 10 minute long posts seem to be the most popular option, but my own posts are a bit longer, usually between 15–20 minutes. ### Blog Post Print Support Do you print blog posts or save them as PDFs for offline reading? March 8, 2025 See as table Option | Votes ---|--- Never | 38 Sometimes | 12 Other, comment in reply | 3 Often | 1 **Total** | **54** Most people do not seem to care about saving or printing blog posts. But I went ahead and added (decent) printing support for my blog posts anyway. ### Résumés on Personal Website If you have a personal website and you do not work in academia, do you have your résumé or CV on your website? August 30, 2025 See as table Option | Votes ---|--- No | 25 Yes, with a public link | 6 Yes, with a private link | 1 **Total** | **32** I don’t have a public résumé on my website either. I’d like to, but I don’t think anyone visiting my website would read it. ### “Writing a C Compiler” Blog Series Would people be interested in a series of blog posts where I implement the C compiler from “Writing a C Compiler” book by Nora Sandler in Haskell? November 11, 2025 See as table Option | Votes ---|--- Yes | 21 No | 3 I hate book implementations | 1 **Total** | **25** Well, 84% people voted “Yes”, so this is (most certainly) happening in 2026! ## Self-hosting ### Service Packaging Preferences If I were to release a service to run on servers, how would you prefer I package it? December 30, 2025 See as table Option | Votes ---|--- Docker image | 35 Source + build instructions | 30 Statically linked executable | 22 Nix package + module | 8 Dynamically linked executable | 6 Something else? | 4 **Total** | **105** Well, people surely love their Docker images. Surprisingly, many are okay with just source code and build instructions. Statically linked executable are more popular now, probably because of the ease of deployment. Many also commented that they’d prefer OS specify package like deb or rpm. However, my personal preference is Nix package and NixOS module. ### Hetzner Backup Strategy If you run services on Hetzner, do you keep a backup of your data entirely off Hetzner? August 9, 2025 See as table Option | Votes ---|--- I have a backup entirely off Hetzner | 19 I have a backup on Hetzner | 8 I have no backups | 5 **Total** | **32** It is definitely wise to have an offsite backup. I’m still figuring out the backup strategy for my VPS. * * * That’s all for this year. Let’s see what polls I come up with in 2026. If you have any questions or comments, please leave a comment below. If you liked this post, please share it. Thanks for reading!

I ran some polls on #Mastodon this year, and wrote a #note about them: https://abhinavsarkar.net/notes/2025-mastodon-polls/

#Blogging

BIT-101: Coding Curves Is Live After nearly 13 years, I self-published a new book!

After nearly 13 years, I self-published a new book! (blog post)

https://bit-101.com/blog/posts/2026-02-23/coding-curves-is-live/

The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of unimaginably stupid shit every fucking day

Now that Hetzner has increased their rental fees, I must utilize my VPS resources. Any suggestions on which services to run? I can't run anything that takes too much disk space as I don't have much. That means no file hosting, officeware, music or podcast, videos etc. But I have plenty of free […]

photo of a mechanical keyboard with white, black, light and dark green keycaps.

Gave my aging #MechanicalKeyboard a makeover by changing keycaps. The mix of colors looks pretty cool.

Server providers are raising their prices due to rising hardware and energy costs (RAM and SSD prices up to +500% since 2025). If you use a free or donation-based Mastodon server, keep in mind that hosting costs are going up, support your instance if you can.

#Mastodon #MastoAdmin […]

photo of a wall mural that is the dinosaur game you can play in Google Chrome browser at chrome://dino

Where are the controls for this game? #photography

#QT https://fantastic.earth/@abnv/115530941197451127

I wonder if there is still interest in this in 2026. #compilerw