Twitter Archive: 2020

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.

These days, you can find me on Bluesky or Mastodon.

By year

…or see popular posts.

2020

Tomorrow is my last official day at Lyft Level 5. It's been an interesting (and often fun) 3 years! Gonna miss working with a great team but it's time for something new.

Not sure yet what's next. DMs are open if you've got ideas :-)
December 30, 2020 · 28 · 1
Still pretty happy with the memo table visualizations I made for our "Incremental Packrat Parsing" paper from SLE '17: ohmlang.github.io/pubs/sle2017/i…
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December 28, 2020 · 4
Years ago I wrote a small npm package (npmjs.com/package/marksc…) to enable executable documentation for Ohm. This way, we can ensure that every code snippet actually works as described.

It's a bit clunky but man has it saved my 🥓 over the years.
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December 27, 2020 · 5
I'm curious what people feel are the biggest pain points in software development today.

E.g., if someone you trust said "it totally solves X", you'd definitely give it a try…what is X?
December 22, 2020 · 32 · 6

I'll add one to the mix: UI testing.

While there are lots of great tools out there (e.g. testing-library.com & cypress.io for web), every team I've ever seen paid a significant tax for either a lack of tests, or the tests themselves.
December 23, 2020 · 13

Also relevant to this thread: twitter.com/mipsytipsy/sta…
December 23, 2020 · 3
A fun little language created in Ohm. twitter.com/joshmarinacci/…
December 21, 2020 · 5
This is an amazing resource! twitter.com/codefrau/statu…
December 18, 2020 · 5
I'd argue that our high-level goal right now is not "do science" but "survive a pandemic".

As Rittel & Webber pointed out in "Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning" (urbanpolicy.net/wp-content/upl…), public policy problems are fundamentally different: twitter.com/patrickc/statu…
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December 15, 2020 · 3
🤔 Is there a noun for "thing nobody ever got fired for using"?

Like, there's "best practice" and then there's…acceptable practice? Not-the-worst practice? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯-practice? twitter.com/dubroy/status/…
Nobody ever got fired for using callbacks. But what are some better ways of handling user input?

One idea is *interactors* — see "A New Model for Handling User Input" by @bradamyers: cs.cmu.edu/~amulet/papers….
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Nov 30
November 30, 2020 · 6
Nobody ever got fired for using callbacks. But what are some better ways of handling user input?

One idea is *interactors* — see "A New Model for Handling User Input" by @bradamyers: cs.cmu.edu/~amulet/papers….
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November 30, 2020 · 61 · 5

Another one I like is "Polyphony: Programming Interfaces and Interactions with the Entity-Component-System Model": hal.inria.fr/hal-02147180/d…
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November 30, 2020 · 9

Of course there are also approaches based on state machines / statecharts. Steve Oney's "Interstate" is a great recent example: from.so/Oney_et_al-UIS…
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November 30, 2020 · 5

I also love the idea of treating event handling as a parsing problem. I first saw this in "Proton: Multitouch Gestures as Regular Expressions" at CHI 2012: graphics.pixar.com/library/Proton…
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December 1, 2020 · 11 · 2
cuelang.org looks super interesting:

"CUE is a data validation language and inference engine with its roots in logic programming. A key thing that sets CUE apart from its peer languages is that it merges types and values into a single concept."

(via @ajbouh)
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November 24, 2020 · 9 · 1
It's nice to have names for the things I do on Google Scholar.

I also like how 'journal run' sounds mildly pejorative: "Pfff, they didn't even cite our paper…probably just did a journal run on ICFP and called it a day."

(from pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/bates/… via @tylerangert)
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November 19, 2020 · 1
This is actually brilliant. twitter.com/USSRdad/status…
November 18, 2020 · 5
Today's project: prototyping some ideas for *collective sense-making*.

When I spend time deeply investigating a topic, I want to build a map of my thoughts, conclusions, and open questions — then share it with others to critique, challenge, and build upon it.
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November 17, 2020 · 13

Some inspiration:

- reactive documents (worrydream.com/Tangle/)
- decision support systems (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_…)
- Github pull requests

More to come soon hopefully!
November 17, 2020 · 3

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November 19, 2020 · 1
📋The results are in: looks like most people prefer a good, old-fashioned mailing list.

Thanks for the suggestions — got a few votes each for Discourse and Matrix. twitter.com/dubroy/status/…
What's the best option these days for a discussion/support forum for open source projects?

(We need to migrate the Ohm mailing list.)
Nov 14
November 16, 2020 · 3
Github discussions! Didn't know about this, but it seems like it might be a good replacement for the mailing list. twitter.com/davazp/status/…
November 14, 2020
What's the best option these days for a discussion/support forum for open source projects?

(We need to migrate the Ohm mailing list.)
November 14, 2020

Lots of alternative suggestions so far, keep 'em coming! 🙏

I should also mention that I am heavily biased towards something that is (nearly) free and that I don't have to host myself.
November 14, 2020
I'm on leave from Lyft for the rest of November…let's try something out:

📢 Want to chat about Ohm, programming languages, HCI, etc.? Or pair on something? 👉 calendly.com/pdubroy

Happy to meet new friends or catch up with old ones!
November 12, 2020 · 7

and if the times on their don't work for you, send me a DM and we'll figure something out!
November 12, 2020
"In Viewpoint, the pixels on the screen are literally the state of the system."

Viewpoint: toward a computer system for visual thinkers — youtube.com/watch?v=9G0r7j… by @scottekim
November 10, 2020 · 7

See also Scott's full dissertation, which is a delight: …ottkim.com.previewc40.carrierzone.com/viewpoint/view…
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November 10, 2020 · 7
This sentence (from Egan's "The Educated Mind") neatly describes an issue I have with a lot of the "tools for thought" work.
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November 9, 2020 · 19 · 1

"Understanding Computers and Cognition" by Winograd & Flores (amazon.com/s?k=9780893910…) offers a different perspective which I quite like:
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November 9, 2020 · 5

More concretely, I think that empowering groups has a much higher ceiling than empowering individuals.

For example, compare the impact of Github vs any individual text editor or IDE.
November 9, 2020 · 10
Interesting paper from CSCW '18: "Hackers, Computers, and Cooperation:
A Critical History of Logo and Constructionist Learning "
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November 7, 2020 · 37 · 3

Forgot to include a link to the paper: morganya.org/research/2018-…
November 7, 2020 · 3
If you're a podcast person and are looking for some diversion right now, I can highly recommend Metamuse with @mmcgrana and @_adamwiggins_. 👌 twitter.com/MuseAppHQ/stat…
November 5, 2020 · 7
Super exciting work! Reminds me a bit of aprt.us in AR. twitter.com/ryosuzk/status…
October 29, 2020 · 32 · 5

This also makes me think of Alan Kay's "Galileo children" and using a video camera to see the behavior of a dropping weight: vpri.org/pdf/m2004002_c…
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October 29, 2020 · 5
You could do something similar in many Smalltalk environments too. I really miss this. twitter.com/mortenjust/sta…
October 29, 2020 · 16
Imagining flipping through a friend's record collection, except with old CHI & UIST papers.

Bubble clusters (UIST '07) would definitely be on my shelf: youtube.com/watch?v=WhlU-L…

📝www-ui.is.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~takeo/papers/…
October 28, 2020 · 24 · 2

Also "Edit Wear and Read Wear" from CHI '92: smg.media.mit.edu/classes/Social…
October 28, 2020 · 3

A more recent one is @HaijunXia's "Object-Oriented Drawing" from CHI 2006: youtube.com/watch?v=WgzdFo…

📄 Paper: haijunxia.ucsd.edu/assets/project…
October 30, 2020 · 10 · 1
Pretty cool to see that an Ohm-based language (Browse by @pranaygp / @windsorio) won the "value" category in the @Replit language jam: blog.repl.it/pljamresults #ohmcult
October 21, 2020 · 11 · 3
It's been…*ahem*…a while, but Ohm development has picked up again! Just pushed v15.1.0 yesterday. 🚢

If you need a quick way to build parsers, interpreters, etc. in JS, you should check it out: github.com/harc/ohm
September 25, 2020 · 16

Also, this week I learned about two interesting startups that are using Ohm.

Would love to hear from other users — what are you using Ohm for? And what would you like to see in future versions?
September 25, 2020 · 1