Random 101

Technical Time Travel: On Vintage Programming Books

A look at three relics of a not-quite-bygone era. In picture-listicle form.

As technologists, we’re constantly gulping from the bleeding-edge firehose: new versions, new standards, new frameworks, new paradigms. This is largely a good thing. Most advances offer a tangible improvement over the status quo. Specialization (e.g. recent Bachelors Degrees in AI) speeds the advance of promising fields, it’s a future of exciting possibility. So long as our eager technology can be guided by effective policy.

HOT DOG Linux: Live Image Based on Slackware Live

The design goals of HOT DOG Linux include:

Graphical user interface based on retro computer systems including Windows 3.1 Hot Dog Stand, Amiga Workbench, Atari ST GEM, and Mac Classic and Aqua
Custom lightweight Objective-C foundation
Bitmapped graphics, low DPI displays
No Unicode support by design

HOT DOG Linux uses a custom lightweight Objective-C foundation on top of the GCC Objective-C runtime. The style of Objective-C is completely different from the one Apple uses, everything is basically id.

By design, Unicode is not supported.

CSS-Tricks is joining DigitalOcean

CSS-Tricks, this very website you’re looking at, has been acquired by DigitalOcean!

Demand for ornamental plants is ravaging South Africa’s rare desert flora

Poachers in South Africa raid farmers’ lands for Conophytum, rare succulents coveted by ornamental plant collectors. Confiscated conos, such as these Conophytum comptonii, are kept in secure greenhouses rather than replanted in the wild.

System: Free, open, and living public resource that aims to explain how anything in the world is connected

Today, System comprises thousands of relationships between hundreds of topics, and counting. As the world becomes increasingly complex and interdependent, our vision is to statistically relate everything as one system. We believe that seeing the whole system will help us all make better decisions — at home, at work, and as a society.

Go 1.18 is released

Today the Go team is thrilled to release Go 1.18, which you can get by visiting the download page.

Go 1.18 is a massive release that includes new features, performance improvements, and our biggest change ever to the language. It isn’t a stretch to say that the design for parts of Go 1.18 started over a decade ago when we first released Go.

Are Legendary Music Catalogues Really Worth the Money?

$550 million.

That’s the reported amount of money the Boss himself, Bruce Springsteen, commanded when he sold his recorded work and songwriting rights — or, to put it simply, the rights to his entire body of music — in a blockbuster deal last year. The sale was the largest ever for a musician’s catalogue, and many legacy artists have since followed suit: Nice fellas Bob Dylan, Sting, Neil Young, and Paul Simon have raked in hundreds of millions of dollars for their life’s work, as have tenured acts including Stevie Nicks and Red Hot Chili Peppers. It seems rarely a week goes by without a “Sells Catalogue” headline making the rounds, and with some deals going for undisclosed amounts, this doubles as a fun guessing game, too.

Type Polymorphic Functions In TypeScript

JavaScript allows functions to work flexibly when the arguments passed are of different types and/or at different positions:

The useState Hook lets you pass an initial value or a function for lazy initialization, or you can skip it altogether and pass nothing to it.
The query API from node-postgres accepts an optional callback function and returns a promise when the callback function isn’t provided.
The write function of the file system API in Node.js defines the first argument to be either a buffer of data or a string that we write to a file.
The extend API from the package node-extend enables deep copying by allowing you to pass an optional boolean flag as the first argument to the function call.

It’s been a running theme in my TypeScript career: I have to create and type functions like these, and I’ve definitely struggled. But, I’ve found a few solutions that have worked for me. In this post, I’ll walk you through some techniques I use to type polymorphic functions more easily.

Strype, a frame-based editor

Frame-based editing combines the benefits of text-based editing and block-based editing. It offers similar avoidance of syntax errors and discoverability as block-based systems, while providing readability and flexibility of editing similar to text editors.

Python-like programs are written by inserting frames, using a single key command, which represent a complete statement in the language. No syntax details need to be remembered, the speed of editing increases, freeing the programmer’s mind to concentrate on the task at hand.

By avoiding frustrating errors, Strype contributes to better progress of learners, quicker success, and more fun. Entirely keyboard-based editing options keep proficient users more productive and focused.

New WebKit Features in Safari 15.4

With over 70 additions to WebKit, Safari 15.4 is packed with new web technologies, updates, and fixes. We’ve assembled a huge release as part of our commitment to web developers, and the people who use the web. This is the first big WebKit release of 2022, and we’re just getting started.

Safari 15.4 is available today for macOS Monterey 12.3, iPadOS and iOS 15.4.