Perhaps I wrote that I don’t know how to create a website, but glancing back, I certainlyhave built a lot. And oh boy, there’s quite the variety of technology involved. I thought […]
A Parade of Web Tech
A programmer’s introduction to user portraits
As programmers, it’s vitally important for us to understand what our code should be doing. This knowledge starts with knowing the people using our product. While we’re deep in the code, […]
The amortized cost of vector insert is 3
C++ requires many algorithms to be implemented in amortized constant time. I was curious about what this meant for vector insertion. To get started I first wrote an article about amortized time […]
Invented here syndrome
Are you afraid to write code? Does the thought linger in your brain that somewhere out there somebody has already done this? Do you find yourself trapped in an analysis cycle where […]
Essential code for lists and vectors in an interview
“Lists are perhaps the fundamental data structure in code. There’s virtually no program that doesn’t use lists. Interviewers love asking questions that involve lists, either intentionally, or just because almost everything uses […]
Stop waving the wand of magic numbers
37. You have no idea what that number is, do you? A number without context nor a label is a random value. It doesn’t tell us anything. Imagine walking by a billboard, […]
How does a mutex work? What does it cost?
Concurrent programming requires synchronization. We can’t have more than one thread accessing data at the same time; otherwise, we end up with a data race. The most common solution is to wrap […]
We don’t need a ternary operator
A staple of compact code, the ternary operator ?: feels like it’s earned a place any programming language. I use it often; you should use it often. However, I don’t like the […]
ELI5: The filter, map, zip, and reduce operations
You’ve baked a fresh batch of gingerbread cookies. A bunch of little men, snowmen, stars, and bells are cooling on some trays. You clean up the table and lay out the colours […]
Sadly, I must say goodbye to Leaf (my programming language)
This is hard to write, or rather, it’s a hard decision to make. After investing many years on Leaf — a programming language, a major life project — I need to take […]
ELI5: Algorithmic time complexity
Our favourite hobbies, like baking cookies or painting pictures, take time. Let’s ask a question though, does it take longer to bake one cookie or paint one picture? It’s hard to answer. […]
How I use `variant` in the Leaf compiler
Variants are data types that can store different types of values in them, as opposed to one fixed type. In contrast to a generic object or an untyped variable, there is a […]
Core Layout Protocol API (UI Engine)
Let’s get into some technical details about how a layout engine works. We assume that we have a tree of elements that comprise the UI. Starting from the root node, we request […]
Fitting an image to its element frame
Images require various sizing modes to fit in a responsive layout. Here we’ll look at the relationship between the element and visual and the basic sizing options. I’ll also look at […]
