Twitter Archive: 2013
Twitter dot com was a microblogging and social networking service, where users could share short posts (commonly known as “tweets”) with text, images, and video.
This is an archive of all my tweets from 2008–2025 (my username was @dubroy).
These days, you can find me on Bluesky or Mastodon.
By year
- 2025 33 posts
- 2024 203
- 2023 97
- 2022 91
- 2021 89
- 2020 26
- 2019 0
- 2018 6
- 2017 56
- 2016 108
- 2015 71
- 2014 197
- 2013 180
- 2012 160
- 2011 162
- 2010 171
- 2009 238
- 2008 101
…or see popular posts.
2013
Typical user-blaming on HN: “every time i see a criticism of git it’s about the way you use it not the tool itself.” news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6984012
“Global, shared spaces where [state] can be represented independently of program logic.” awelonblue.wordpress.com/2012/10/21/loc…
“Silicon Valley has a seemingly endless capacity to mistake social and political problems for technological ones” al3x.net/2013/12/18/bit…
"The costume party of fonts that swept aside [Engelbart's] ideas of structure and collaboration." bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/16/an-… via @johanjessen
"If you find yourself forced to introduce settings for purely visual UI changes…there might be something going wrong" ignorethecode.net/blog/2013/12/1…
"I think there is an equally diffuse malaise today - waiting for a new kind of journalism to bring it into focus." bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurt…
"Symbols, whose values are looked up in the court of the LORD’s glory." kingjamesprogramming.tumblr.com
Can you guess whether this headline is from 2013 or 1999? "Internet-based home cleaning company raises $38M in funding."
Apparently my main contribution to Chromium is to point out text alignment problems: code.google.com/p/chromium/iss…
Whoah: "a Turing-complete execution env. driven solely by […] interrupt handling and memory translation tables" usenix.org/conference/woo…
Interested in experimenting with programming languages? Hyperglot looks really cool: tmcnab.github.io/Hyperglot/
“The point of namecoin is to create a global, distributed, secure key-value store.” blog.mediocregopher.com/namecoind-ssl.…
"Metro and iOS7 [...] signify that we’re beginning to accept a flexible medium on its own terms." frankchimero.com/what-screens-w…
@dubroy "The web isn’t young anymore…Increasingly, it feels like we decided to pave the wilderness, turn it into a suburb, and build a mall"
Programming using storyboards: people.csail.mit.edu/rishabh/papers…
I predict that our grandchildren are going to find it weird that people used to look into the camera and smile for photos.
Weird that there are entire conference presentations on Git workflow. Soon we'll have Certified Rebase Masters and Merge Workflow Coaches.
Tiny Excel-like app in less than 30 lines of JavaScript: jsfiddle.net/ondras/hYfN3/. via @fogus
"Code expands into social and psychological realms, regulating behavior b/w people & the machines they interact with" criticalengineering.org
@scottjenson Welcome to the team!
When I hear the term "breakout area", I can't help but think of this: upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c…
OH: “Did I introduce this bug? Yes. Probably in one of my drunken stupors.”
Really great talk by @garybernhardt on software architecture and "functional core, imperative shell" destroyallsoftware.com/talks/boundari…
Plankalkül: the first high-level non-von Neumann language -- catb.org/retro/plankalk…. Most interesting to me is the 2D code layout.
Awesome. As of Chrome 32+, no more 300ms click delay on mobile and responsive web sites: groups.google.com/a/chromium.org…
"Code is our current tool of choice, but we must make better tools." The End of Coding: alexn.id.au/2013/10/30/the…
"dsl: where code is written in one language and errors are given in another." The Devil's Dictionary of Programming -programmingisterrible.com/post/657810741…
My current oblique strategy: "embrace ambiguity".
.@hoodiehq has an cool model for making money off an open source project -- sponsorships in Git commits! hood.ie/sponsoring.html
“Beware of innocent phrases...behind whose nonchalance is hidden the entire mystery of the human mind.” theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…
"We believe there is a great opportunity for these Futurist principles to be applied to computer programming." graficaobscura.com/future/index.h…
Also, notes on Futurist Programming: graficaobscura.com/future/futnote…
Interesting thoughts on designing "interactive conversation interfaces": The Jack Principles -- cdn.jellyvisionlab.com/pdfs/The_Jack_….
This. RT: @awelonblue: @puffnfresh @JobVranish We cannot write "bug-free" software without playing word games, ignoring some classes of bug.
Ok, I've decided it's finally time to learn Clojure. Too many smart people I know are using it. Suggestions for a good place to start?
"The Pirahã have a term for all languages not their own; it translates as 'crooked head'...a clear pejorative" pocket.co/sjZuk
Aardappel is a graphical PL "which computes by concurrently reducing trees, which sit together in tree-spaces" strlen.com/aardappel-lang…
"Toys are not really as innocent as they look. Toys and games are the preludes to serious ideas." -Charles Eames (via @mwichary)
Anyone know of programming languages that have tried to solve "dependency hell" at the language/module level, instead of in the package mgr?
@dubroy A bit more detail on the kind of problem I'm referring to in the previous tweet: gist.github.com/pdubroy/7003974
On Building Systems That Will Fail (Turing Award Lecture by Fernando J. Corbató): larch-www.lcs.mit.edu:8001/~corbato/turin…
BTW, for those at #leetspeak, links from my talk yesterday: developers.google.com/chrome-develop… jankfree.org html5rocks.com
Had a great time yesterday at #leetspeak in Stockholm, put on by the awesome team at @tretton37. Now, to check out the city a bit!
Reminder: the universe is not statically typed.
Reading @nntaleb's "Antifragile" and wondering: can we make software that is not just robust, but antifragile? /cc @rainypixels
"The screwed-up way we approach software development is because of what we have done with programming languages." dreamsongs.com/ArtOfLisp.html
“The advertising economics of the web inhibit design excellence.” unitscale.com/mb/bomb-in-the…
Paul Graham says that programming is like painting. In reality, it's more like Jenga.
Also, is "Massively Collaborative Programming" a thing yet?
What do you call it when you generalize the idea of pair programming to more than two programmers?
"If writing correct algorithms is difficult, writing correct implicit algorithms is *very* difficult." stlab.adobe.com/wiki/images/0/…
Journalism is to Twitter as programming is to …?
Is it just me, or is there a lot more really great long-form content on the web these days? Either way, I'm happy.
"The enchantment of the Internet is that it’s a lot of fun. And fun, even in poor countries, is a profound human need"nytimes.com/2013/09/17/opi…
Taking a quick break from @jsconfeu for some coffee tourism. Today: @THEBARNBERLIN.
Slides from my talk on Static Metaprogramming @jsconfeu: speakerdeck.com/pdubroy/parsin…. And the code is on GitHub: github.com/pdubroy/jsconf….
Beautiful setup in the main hall @jsconfeu.
The only way to travel.
En route to @jsconfeu in Berlin. Come see my talk on static metaprogramming bright and early on Saturday morning! 2013.jsconf.eu/speakers/patri…
"Every detail was meticulously considered."
Ken Thompson's "Reflections on Trusting Trust" is a great story that also happens to be extremely topical: scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2007/…
Say hello to the hideous new USB 3.0 cable your new smartphone or tablet will come with: androidbeat.com/2013/09/say-he…
Subtext: "I am willing to throw away everything we know about programming and start from scratch." subtext-lang.org
@mames BTW, meant to tell you that you enjoy Dreaming in Code (dreamingincode.com) if you haven't read it yet.
Why Programming is a Good Medium for Expressing Poorly Understood and Sloppily-Formulated Ideas pocket.co/ssARz
Floating-Point Is So Insane Even a Ten-Year Old Can See It: exploringbinary.com/floating-point…
“By using negativity, you’re betraying your own cause […] making it too easy for people to dismiss you” –@workjon medium.com/lessons-learne…
"The compiler…will understand the meaning of your code and generate new code, depending on the surrounding context." coect.net/metajs/
.@dubroy Working link for the paper on Harmony-Oriented Programming: dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8341/p819-fl…. It's a fascinating concept.
"Harmony-oriented programming is a new programming paradigm based on concepts found in Eastern philosophy." delivery.acm.org/10.1145/145000…
I look forward to being able to unlock my door with an elaborate hand-waving gesture: techcrunch.com/2013/09/03/nym…
From Andy Hertzfeld's notes from a 1982 Alan Kay talk: "The whole notion of 'programming language' is wrong." folklore.org/StoryView.py?p…
“[Computing] has finally moved from conserving resources ingeniously to squandering them creatively.” pocket.co/ssJhe
"Programmers learn to see their environment as a creative space, a source for inspiration and improvisation" pocket.co/ssJ8d
It's a special day when I discover a paper by Richard Gabriel that I haven't read yet: pleiad.dcc.uchile.cl/_media/bic2007…
Sometimes I get sick of Twitter, but then stuff like @KimKierkegaard makes me love it all over again.
I decided I should write up my thoughts on the whole "learning to program" thing: plus.google.com/11175968791525…
Not sure whether to laugh or cry that @codinghorror thinks that understanding computation is like knowing plumbing: codinghorror.com/blog/2012/05/p…
"Ignore the monks in the monasteries complaining that teaching the plebeians to write won’t give us better software." programmingisterrible.com/post/596755455…
Interesting questions around the historical preservation of software: cooperhewitt.org/object-of-the-… via @swannodette
@swannodette BTW, have you read aaronland.info/weblog/2013/07…? Some interesting thoughts on what historical preservation of software means.
The great thing about Git is that I work with it every day, and I continue to find new ways to confuse myself.
"By 2020 software will return to a cottage industry, with bespoke applications made by many." forbes.com/2010/04/08/joh…
Oh man, I want a fridge with a Lazy Susan. Fridge of the Future: flip.it/bK8Lm
Such a good idea -- Code Painter is a JavaScript beautifier that can infer coding style from a code sample: github.com/fawek/codepain…
Ugh, just spent 10 minutes try to figure out why "x = 3; if x? 'y' else 'n'" returns 'n'. Turns out CS requires "then" for a 1-line if stmt.
Ironically, I'm finally trying Coffeescript while writing some code for my @jsconfeu talk: github.com/pdubroy/jsconf…
"Technologies are not simply inventions which people employ, but are the means by which people are re-invented."
–Marshall McLuhan
–Marshall McLuhan
It’s ridiculous to think that everyone should learn algebra. How would algebra make Michael Bloomberg better at his job? #mathyear
The syntax of @stevedekorte's io is beautifully simple: iolanguage.org/scm/io/docs/Io…. It'll make a great example for my talk on parsers @jsconfeu.
Somehow, "the same encryption used by the US government" doesn't feel very comforting anymore. online.wsj.com/article/SB1000…
The purpose of progress bars: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6247171
"[We] wanted to talk about high end bourbon. Brody McBroderson wanted to get hammered. The true master obliges both." teddziuba.com/post/580033698…
Refocusing the tech industry on fulfillment: greatmending.quora.com/Towards-an-Hon…
Nice, my GitHub identicon is a pink power plug: identicons.github.com/pdubroy.png
“In the future, you will need to download security updates for your toilet.” pocket.co/s4ZLD
"Without proper design, any new technology can be terrifying. The task of making it can’t be left to engineers alone" buff.ly/1d5XzTb
@marcoarment In case you care, your issue with Chrome's keychain requests is a known regression & should get fixed: code.google.com/p/chromium/iss…
‘Social media touches, like “liking” an e-mail to show you’ve read it instead of writing a response…’ nytimes.com/2013/08/01/tec…
“We are entering unknown territory, and much of what is being done is simply because it can be done.” pocket.co/s4QUW
Looking forward to speaking at JSConf EU in Berlin in September: 2013.jsconf.eu/speakers/patri…
Any good examples of a pattern matching syntax for arbitrarily deep descendants? E.g. the equivalent of "body li" in CSS.
Proof that we have a software crisis: number of headlines that begin with “Google Finally…” or “Apple Finally…”
@jb_kaffee Irgandwo in München Ihre Bohnen zu kaufen, solange @BaldNEU in Urlaub ist?
Nice follow-up on "Why mobile web apps are slow": excelsior-usa.com/blog/java/5plu…
“On their deathbed, our users won’t be thinking, ‘If only I’d spent more time engaging with brands.'” seriouspony.com/blog/2013/7/24…
Steele and Sussman on abstraction, from The Art of the Interpreter: buff.ly/1aSu84J
Today's reading: The Art of the Interpreter c2.com/cgi/wiki?TheAr…
How Munich cools off. #fb
Just for fun -- dynamic scoping in JavaScript, no syntax extensions github.com/pdubroy/dasJS/… /cc @jashkenas
"Code has always been a strange artifact, a single piece of text intended for both computers and people to read" ashkenas.com/literate-coffe…
Forgotten programming language features: the Common Lisp condition system -- gigamonkeys.com/book/beyond-ex…
@jashkenas Here’s a good overview of Icon, which I mentioned tonight: cs.arizona.edu/icon/docs/ipd2…
Sweet, generators now in V8: wingolog.org/archives/2013/…. Remember folks, with Traceur you can use ES6 features today! code.google.com/p/traceur-comp…
"Any conceptual foundation sets up a current, against which those who build on that foundation swim at their peril." loper-os.org/?p=448
Dear Twitterverse, I'll be in Tokyo next week. Send me your recommendations for cool things to see and do!
"The best and perhaps only way to make programming easier is to dramatically lower the learning curve." alarmingdevelopment.org/?p=766#more-766
The idea that everyone should learn to program is ridiculous! Just like the idea that everyone should learn to use a computer.
"Empathy is a core engineering value." listbox.com/member/archive…
Guys: a monad is just a monoid in the category of endofunctors. C'mon.
If you build or design digital stuff, you owe it to yourself to read @atduskgreg's On Thingpunk: urbanhonking.com/ideasfordozens…. (via @al3x)
"I spend most of my life pressing buttons to make the pattern of lights change however I want." xkcd.com/722/
"Good UX work requires a genuine interest in observing, listening to, and learning from other people" creativegood.com/blog/what-is-c…
@svnjmr Relevant to our conversation tonight: mobile.slate.com/articles/busin…
Great story from Don Norman: "Here is a product so bad that she was practically in tears as she struggled with it." jnd.org/dn.mss/emotion…
Alan Perlis: "Interfaces keep things tidy, but don't accelerate growth: Functions do." cs.yale.edu/quotes.html
Latest talk posted by @worrydream has some interesting examples of visual programming: vimeo.com/64895205.
Great story about the history of the Mac command key icon: folklore.org/StoryView.py?s… /via @mrgan
I love that the Cocoa Autolayout system allows you to use ASCII-art formatting strings. developer.apple.com/library/mac/#r…
Recovery-Oriented Computing: pocket.co/seeYr
@davewiner Trying Fargo out - nice! Any reason you chose double-click to expand? Double-click feels weird to me in a web app
"Making beautiful code ugly—& maybe impossible to prove correct—by making things easier for the user is a good thing" ow.ly/khbM4
"I expect natural language programming will eventually become ubiquitous as a way of telling computers what to do." blog.wolfram.com/2010/11/16/pro…
The importance of open code in science: blog.jgc.org/2013/04/the-im…
"I strongly believe in the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis when it comes to
computer language design." freelists.org/post/luajit/Ra…
computer language design." freelists.org/post/luajit/Ra…
Ok, I can't *not* post this. Microsoft Excel - Revolutionary 3D Game Engine? gamasutra.com/view/feature/1…
"It is common to blame oneself in an abuse situation, and abuse of devs by poor programming tools is no different." lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/4075#comm…
Toronto student creates RPG video game in Excel: metronews.ca/news/toronto/6…
"A degree of groupthink in language design means that we haven't explored the design space as well as we should have" tratt.net/laurie/tech_ar…
"Git…doesn't try to make life easy for the programmer. It simply provides tools that can be used to make life easy." reddit.com/r/programming/…
Working with CodeMirror is so nice. A simple API, good documentation, and everything just seems well thought out. @marijnjh - thanks!
"Electronic media over the last 100+ years have actually removed some of the day-to-day needs for reading & writing." pocket.co/s9lG7
A fun discussion on Branch about redesigning the save icon: branch.com/b/redesigning-…. /via @aza
If I find an unlocked door & snoop around inside before leaving a note that the door was unlocked, does that make me a security researcher?
"The thing is that I've known for a couple of decades that managing
*memory* is the key to good performance." erlang.org/pipermail/erla…
*memory* is the key to good performance." erlang.org/pipermail/erla…
Re: FB Home -- "What does all this look like when your friends aren't as attractive/good at photography?" news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5494022
Yup :-)
Ok, Facebook definitely wins points for using the Unicorns as backing music for the Facebook Home video: youtube.com/watch?v=tWKE0H…
Beautiful spring weather in Munich.
Fascinating. Photos of the Paramount Studios backlot in LA, with spot-on recreations of 8 NYC hoods: buff.ly/11SKo0S
"Lots of people still talk about shitty new stuff, because they're still trying to figure out if it's shitty or not." frankchimero.com/blog/2013/03/l…
Pretty sure @worrydream is going to blow all our minds again soon. See the last bit of vimeo.com/62049081.
I wish there was a site like @blam's The Wirecutter, but for software: someone with good taste recommending 2-3 options for each category.
That moment where you notice that someone you used to respect types two spaces after a period.
Ha! Working on my talk for @uxmunich, I google "show don't tell design" and land on @leisa's blog. She's speaking there too.
@brrian @nickmain_ ...so I don't think the answer is just a touch-friendly IDE or a visual language like Scratch.
My last two tweets may or may not be related. /cc @uxmunich
I'm excited to be speaking at @uxmunich in a couple weeks, with @iA, @rainypixels, @boxman, @konstantinhaase + more! uxmunich.com
If I ever get to have an entrance song as I walk on stage, it will be the first four bars of Bastards of Young: dailymotion.com/video/xh9x7c_b….
“Programming isn’t like digging trenches. The amount you get done isn’t directly proportional to the amount you work” threads2.scripting.com/2013/february/…
This is great -- The Little Manual of API Design, by Qt developer Jasmin Blanchette. plus.google.com/11175968791525…
Petting Zoo by @abstractsunday is one of the few apps I've used that can truly be called delightful: fastcodesign.com/1671950/pettin… /via @iA
Some nice stuff in Chrome 26 beta: <template> tag, CSS calc(), and CSS transitions are unprefixed. blog.chromium.org/2013/02/chrome…
@jb_kaffee Wo kann ich am besten Ihre Bohnen in München kaufen? War gestern bei Bald Neu, es gab nur Espressobohnen.
"It is, of course, a faux-leather-bound, vintage TV with a side-protruding, retro camera lens" solita.tumblr.com/post/314178926…
There's not a single app on my computer that beach balls more often than Finder.
"Excel is the non-programmer's Perl, basically. […] I'd love to see the non-programmer's Python." news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5221333
"There is no such place as cyberspace. It is not a parallel universe … it is just a bad metaphor." salon.com/2013/02/12/the…
"The entire Turbo Pascal 3.02 executable—the compiler and IDE—was 39,731 bytes." prog21.dadgum.com/116.html
"قلب is a new programming language exploring the role of human culture in coding. Code is written entirely in Arabic." qlblang.org
"Today there is an unhealthy concentration on language and efficiency and NOT on how things fit together and protocols" erlang.org/pipermail/erla…
I disagree with @espiekermann & @gruber that the pixel grid is irrelevant on Retina displays. An example:
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. Original Byte article is on page 181 of ia601201.us.archive.org/5/items/byte-m…
I found a 1985 Byte article saying we need functional langs because CPU speeds will soon hit a natural barrier. dl.dropbox.com/u/8341/Byte%20…
"Speaking with reporters, web users expressed a near unanimous desire to visit a website and simply look at it" theonion.com/articles/inter…
I hope I never become one of those people that writes "&c." instead of "etc."
The world doesn't need more programming languages -- it needs more programming *environments*.
Those who do not remember the lessons of Smalltalk are condemned to repeat them: shopify.github.com/superdb/
@brrian Just a heads up, I noticed a couple mistakes on liveprogramming.github.com/2013/team.html: Gilad and JJB both work for Google :-)
"Scheme [...] was born from an attempt in 1975 to explicate OOP in terms that Gerry Sussman & I could understand" dreamsongs.com/ObjectsHaveNot…
Buttons stuck in a pressed state: something is wrong when we can’t get even get the simplest example of mutable state correct.
“It’s not that OO type systems force fractal complexity to happen, but they encourage it” damienkatz.net/2013/01/the_un…
@jashkenas Re: literate programming, I’m curious what you think of plus.google.com/11175968791525…