Damian’s notes

‘As the primary net effect of software is to facilitate bureaucratic complexity it is therefore essential that software projects fail if society is to function effectively.’

I guess the null hypothesis here is, would the complexity of the tax code have grown at the same rate if automatic tax calculations were not permitted?

Might be of interest to my yarn-oriented friends: a new app for keeping track of your knitting or crocheting projects and which row you are on with each of them … and also (she adds nonchalantly) catalogue your yarn collection.

Quirks of the GIF file format

Write code that is easy to throw away, rather than complicating it in the hopes of being future-proof and reusable

Django podcast about speeding up your Django tests, featuring Adam Johnson, who literally wrote the book on the subject.

Having useful tests, and having them run quickly and often, is a cornerstone to reliable web development—something I am appreciating in Django all the more now I am working on not-Django for my day job.

While we were all busy reimplementing jQuery and replacing it with more elaborate JavaScript frameworks, plain JavaScript has quietly gained features that mean you can do a lot on a small site without requiring complex frameworks at all.

Instructions for renaming the ‘master‘ branch in your Git repository to ‘main‘. There is no particular reason for the main branch of your repo to be called ‘master‘, so you might as well rename it rather spend eternity explaining to people that this isn’t a reference to ‘master–slave’ relationships; ‘main’ is as good a replacement as any.

A runtime for TypeScript or JavaScript programs that is positioned as a single-executable alternative to TypeScript + Babel + Node + NPM + ESLint + Prettier + Webpack. Modules are imported from URLs (same system as ES6 modules running in browsers), and asynchronous APIs use promises rather than those old-fashioned callbacks (so not a drop-in replacement for Node). Implemented in Rust, and aiming to be secure-by-default by restricting access to files and networks unless explicitly allowed.

Apple’s photos app does machine-learning-powered analysis of all your photos and stores the result sin SQLite files that can reveal a wealth of information if you know how.