In computing, we take imagination and make it manifest in the form of software and hardware.
28.02.2026 08:25
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In computing, we take imagination and make it manifest in the form of software and hardware.
Picture of Marjane Satrapi alongside a quote from her. The quote reads: The world is not divided into countries. The world is not divided between East and West. You are American, I am Iranian, we don't know each other, but we talk together and we understand each other perfectly. The difference between you and your government is much bigger than the difference between you and me. And the difference between me and my government is much bigger than the difference between me and you. And our governments are very much the same... - Marjane Satrapi, Iranian-French graphic novelist
Thinking about this quote from Persepolis creator Marjane Satrapi again.
Agentic engineering is driving the cost of code to zero but the cost of good taste and product sense is going to go sky-high.
A reminder to all military service members out there that “I was just following orders” was not a valid defense at Nuremberg and it won’t be here either.
I worked on a few fairly prominent efforts in open source (Istio, OpenAPI), but I think of all of them, it’s gRPC that I think has the coolest story. Pull up a chair and set for a spell (any inaccuracies in what follows are 100% my fault for having a bad memory!).
@booch.com The link to check architecture books is broken
handbookofsoftwarearchitecture.com/books/. If possible, please fix it. I tried on Chrome and Safari. Wanted to check your library/recommendations of books on software architecture. Thanks.
If you're interested in diving deeper, this is still a pretty good gist (shared each time another part of the world decides to do age verification...)
gist.github.com/mary-ext/6e2...
Thanks to @scott.hanselman.com for showing me Handy (handy.computer) — a free, open-source speech-to-text tool that runs locally on your machine. Push-to-talk, privacy-focused, and just works. Check it out!
Programming with Algebra (Course Notes) kmicinski.com/cis352-s26/a...
Happy Christmas to all those celebrating!
A Mughal virgin and child, by Ghulam Shah Salim before 1605, after an engraving by Flemish artist Bernard van Orley (1492-1542). Dedication to Prince Shah Salim who became the emperor Jahangir 1695–27.
The open access version of Cultures of Programming is now available online. Just in time for the holiday break!
Read it here: www.cambridge.org/core/books/c...
If you prefer a real book, use PETRICK26 for a 20% discount (valid until January 31) at: www.cambridge.org/9781009492348
Raft has a real problem guaranteeing Read Your Writes, because there might be two leaders serving reads at once. In theory, you could use a timed lease to ensure there's only one leader.
🏛️ We launched the DuckDB Library: a curated collection of papers, podcasts, talks and books about DuckDB.
📚 We already have a collection of almost one hundred entities. The thumbnails show whether a piece is from the DuckDB team (yellow) or from others (purple).
➡️ duckdb.org/library/
Over the years I've been asked many times for advice on pedagogy, what to read to learn more, etc. I've finally put together a bunch of materials into one blog post: Key Advice • Readings • Neuromyths • For Computer Scientists • Classroom Tips. Enjoy!
parentheticallyspeaking.org/articles/ped...
My colleague Sanjay Ghemawat & I have done a fair bit of performance tuning of various pieces of code. We wrote an internal Performance Hints document ~2 years ago as a way of identifying some general principles & we've recently published a version of it externally.
Doc: abseil.io/fast/hints.h...
Michael C. Rockefeller got shipwrecked in 1963, washed up on an island, and was promptly eaten by cannibals.
How modern database systems can leverage the Linux io_uring interface for efficient, low-overhead I/O
arxiv.org/pdf/2512.048...
What defines a correct program? What education makes a good programmer? The answer depends on what culture of programming you subscribe to!
This has been a long time in the making, but my open access book on the history of programming is available for pre-order!
www.cambridge.org/core/books/c...
📺 "Ins and Outs of the Outbox Pattern"
An invaluable pattern to ensure a service can update its own database and send messages to other services via Kafka, consistently. In this talk I'm discussing implementation options, backfills, alternatives, etc.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pkrz...
Told my husband that working with ChatGPT is like working with a semi-invested intern who’s never going to think about you or your business again when their internship ends.
🎉 Unison 1.0 has landed!
After years of engineering, design, and community collaboration, we’re excited to announce this milestone!
Spread the word!
"Help! My LocalDate Isn’t Flattened"
Enjoyed reading this post by @horstmann.com about the subtleties of turning Java's LocalDate into a value type for Project Valhalla. Null-ability and built-in object serialization keep haunting us.
horstmann.com/unblog/2025-...
The Ashes - known to me as my biennial attempt to pass myself off as a cricket fan - gets underway this week.
There's something really very wonderful about 5 day, unlimited over test cricket that, for me at least, cannot be reproduced in T20, ODIs or any other audience friendly format.
Reading about Corrosion: a Rust project that replicates a SQLite database using a gossip protocol. Really cool intersection of SQLite, CRDTs and SWIM. I also appreciate how openly they document their gnarlier failure modes and war stories so far fly.io/blog/corrosi...
Tracking Time Without Clock
A couple of code patterns for handling time, by matklad
tigerbeetle.com/blog/2025-10...
‘One of the oldest urban centres on the planet’: Gaza’s rich history in ruins.
My @guardian piece on the erasure of Gaza's past. As we mourn incalculable human losses, learning about its past can help us better understand the present
www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...
Some other material on this subject.
The Chinese fan palm and cobra lily by Vishnuprasad from Henry Noltie’s Flora Indica, a masterpiece of botanical-art-historical detective work.
The book accompanies a stunning exhibition at Kew Gardens.
@rbgkew.bsky.social @willdalrymple.bsky.social
@sathnam.bsky.social
@eicathomefinn.bsky.social
Occasionally I do a deep dive of thinking about whether AI will really fundamentally eliminate the need for software engineers and my conclusion remains the same: it won't. Might change the employment curve in some ways but barring the big singularity or w/e I don't see it removing the job
Nate Silver @NateSilver538 • 5h •.° I'm just one person, and my programming needs are somewhat unusual (building various kinds of statistical forecasting models). But I'm just not seeing the consistent productivity gains from LLMs that I would have expected if you'd asked me 6 months ago.
AI has lost the dunce vote. It’s over