honestly just saving this one so that I can point to the phrase “tactical tornado” and have big, bad feelings about it

Tools and stuff for the interactive fiction scripting language, ink.

an older GDC talk about 1 page design documents as opposed to design bibles, etc. – generally relevant to anyone who has to write spec./req. documentation, I think.

A talk from 1992 that posits an alternative design philosophy to copilots and agents.

Quick fun post about reviving an old software project and getting it to build under modern conditions.

quick write up on an approach to compiling OCaml code for weird targets, very very approachable

This means it’s finally possible to build and deploy iOS apps from Linux and Windows (WSL). At the same time, xtool is SwiftPM-based and fully declarative, which means you can also use it to replace Xcode on macOS for building iOS software!

In practice, the only thing that makes web experiences good is caring about the user experience — specifically, the experience of folks at the margins. Technologies come and go, but what always makes the difference is giving a toss about the user.

A good follow up to Ink and Switch’s Local First Software, https://www.inkandswitch.com/local-first/

This blog post records some thoughts on how to architect a real-time collaborative app when you do have a central server.

Over the last year or two, I’ve seen an increasing numbers of these folks pop up. Most from a small set of companies like Vercel, Linear, The Browser Company and Replit, known for their attention to interface design detail and slick product interactions, who are clearly encouraging and cultivating design-engineer hybrids.

I’ve been working on Kinopio for over 4 years now. It’s felt more like building a house, piling up little bricks and wood planks, just a little bit each day. Except that, this house is never finished.

What this story tells us is that software has consequences. It’s easy to look at a missile guidance system or High Frequency Trading and say “that’s unethical!”, but far more mundane software performing far more mundane tasks can also have dangerous or even lethal failure modes.

We’ve found some of the best ways to get people engaged in accessibility are by hosting events that highlight usability impact, providing lightweight tools that point out easy-to-fix bugs, and celebrating the work of successful projects.

A collection of bitmap fonts for Playdate , the tiny handheld game system from Panic

Learn how you can make spatial computing apps that work well for everyone

I’ve learned that when I break down my large tasks in chunks that result in seeing tangible forward progress, I tend to finish my work and retain my excitement throughout the project. People are all motivated and driven in different ways, so this may not work for you, but as a broad generalization I’ve not found an engineer who doesn’t get excited by a good demo. And the goal is to always give yourself a good demo.

The major compilers have an enormous number of knobs. Most are highly specialized, but others are generally useful even if uncommon. For warnings, the venerable -Wall -Wextra is a good start, but circumstances improve by tweaking this warning set. This article covers high-hitting development-time options in GCC, Clang, and MSVC that ought to get more consideration.

It’s this process that we want to discuss here, in the form of a few examples that give a sense of how we work to ensure that Signal is as useful as possible in diverse contexts, and to push back on regional norms that can often double as tech industry common sense.

I’m going to tell you about how I took a job building software to kill people.

Wiki devoted to OS dev. Provides a very opinionated tour and guide for how to dive in.