Some more info on that ' #AI coded C compiler':

> Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.6 spends $20K trying to write a C compiler. AI agents build something that mostly works but worries the project's creator. https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2026/02/09/claude_opus_46_compiler/

Twenty grand? That's two months of developer time. So maybe a *little* cheaper than hiring a coder. But not hugely cheaper and that's just the AI costs. Humans were still in the loop.

And what if they had to pay for the training data? They *stole* that.

#programming

We should all aspire to be so "unhinged"...

https://github.com/starfederation/datastar/issues/1131

We should all aspire to be so "unhinged"...

https://github.com/starfederation/datastar/issues/1131

Did I spend far too much time on this table just to get to the punchline at the bottom for something I'll spend perhaps 20 seconds on during lecture?
Yes, yes I did.

Do I regret it?
No, I do not.

#ProgrammingLanguages #TypeSystems #Assembly #Programming #ComputerScience

🦉 Hoot: Scheme on WebAssembly — Spritely Institute

｢ Hoot is a Spritely project for running Scheme code on Wasm GC-capable web browsers, featuring a Scheme to Wasm compiler and a full-featured Wasm toolchain.

Hoot is built on Guile and has no additional dependencies. The toolchain is self-contained and even features a Wasm interpreter for testing Hoot binaries without leaving the Guile REPL ｣

https://www.spritely.institute/hoot/

#scheme #wasm #programming

🦉 Hoot: Scheme on WebAssembly — Spritely Institute

｢ Hoot is a Spritely project for running Scheme code on Wasm GC-capable web browsers, featuring a Scheme to Wasm compiler and a full-featured Wasm toolchain.

Hoot is built on Guile and has no additional dependencies. The toolchain is self-contained and even features a Wasm interpreter for testing Hoot binaries without leaving the Guile REPL ｣

https://www.spritely.institute/hoot/

#scheme #wasm #programming

The experience of Alan Henning @jalanhenning with coding a game in BASIC by applying the lessons from his past as a professional programmer.

https://troypress.com/coding-for-fun-using-lessons-from-work

#basic #GameProgramming #programming

although i very much appreciate this is a 0.00001% public interest bit of knowledge, i just found the web's only surviving example of MetaPlace's markup language which its MetaScript interpreted.

in the late 90s and early 2000s, data streams sent between the server and client on mmo's was almost always a handtuned custom binary stream. e.g. UO was tuned down to the byte, because the target minimum connection speed was 14400 baud at some point (which is 1.3 kb/s).

by the late 2000s bandwidth had loosened up quite a bit, so it wasn't as critical to write super compressed data streams. in other words: you could start sending entire text streams instead just like http.

while most developers today angle for json or xml, raph said these were too heavy for use back in the late 00s.

instead, his team wrote a mini tag-based markup language.

in other words: you could just connect to an metaplace server and it would start barfing a stream of markup at you. it was up to your client software to interpret the markup language into graphics, 2d tile maps, GUIs, etc.

i'm so thankful that @crwth thought to capture that text stream. it turns out to be incredibly straightforward:

https://camelpate.blogspot.com/2009/06/outputtouser.html
[O_HERE]|10013|0:308|5|4|0|0|Crwth|0:1|0| |0

[P_ZOOM]|1.000000
[W_SPRITE]|24080:135|0.375|0.140625|255|255|255|http://assets.metaplace.com/worlds/0/24/24079/assets/images/dwnbtnpress.png|dwnbtnpresspng_|2|0|.|4|0|0

in the above three examples, each line of text is broken up into two parts:

[tagname]|argument1|argument2|argument3|argument4|...

the tag name goes in the brackets, and the arguments that you want to apply to that tag go between the pipes that follow it. unlike xml or json, there is no concept of nested properties (that i can see anyway).

#metaplace #ultima #ultimaOnline #programming

although i very much appreciate this is a 0.00001% public interest bit of knowledge, i just found the web's only surviving example of MetaPlace's markup language which its MetaScript interpreted.

in the late 90s and early 2000s, data streams sent between the server and client on mmo's was almost always a handtuned custom binary stream. e.g. UO was tuned down to the byte, because the target minimum connection speed was 14400 baud at some point (which is 1.3 kb/s).

by the late 2000s bandwidth had loosened up quite a bit, so it wasn't as critical to write super compressed data streams. in other words: you could start sending entire text streams instead just like http.

while most developers today angle for json or xml, raph said these were too heavy for use back in the late 00s.

instead, his team wrote a mini tag-based markup language.

in other words: you could just connect to an metaplace server and it would start barfing a stream of markup at you. it was up to your client software to interpret the markup language into graphics, 2d tile maps, GUIs, etc.

i'm so thankful that @crwth thought to capture that text stream. it turns out to be incredibly straightforward:

https://camelpate.blogspot.com/2009/06/outputtouser.html
[O_HERE]|10013|0:308|5|4|0|0|Crwth|0:1|0| |0

[P_ZOOM]|1.000000
[W_SPRITE]|24080:135|0.375|0.140625|255|255|255|http://assets.metaplace.com/worlds/0/24/24079/assets/images/dwnbtnpress.png|dwnbtnpresspng_|2|0|.|4|0|0

in the above three examples, each line of text is broken up into two parts:

[tagname]|argument1|argument2|argument3|argument4|...

the tag name goes in the brackets, and the arguments that you want to apply to that tag go between the pipes that follow it. unlike xml or json, there is no concept of nested properties (that i can see anyway).

#metaplace #ultima #ultimaOnline #programming

Last weekend, I was reading the State of JS 2025 survey and started wondering how those popular JavaScript syntax features translate to PHP.

I turned it into a small article comparing JS features with their PHP equivalents, with examples and explanations.

A curious weekend exercise ☕️

https://dev.to/robertobutti/state-of-js-2025-popular-syntax-features-explained-with-php-equivalents-4ffp

#JavaScript #PHP #WebDev #StateOfJS #DevCommunity #programming @thepracticaldev

I'm #colorblind and I use https://xkcd.com/color/rgb/ frequently.

Randall 'xkcd' Monroe did a survey of over 100,000 readers where he showed them random rgb colors and said "what would you call this?" and afterwards he did his best to sort the results into the most popular color names and the colors they refer to.

It's like a box of Crayola for the internet. Finally, my colorblind self can grab a sample of "dark magenta" that doesn't just look like "grape purple" to everyone else.

The data is freely available as a .txt file under CC0, which I've converted into a .css file here: https://git.hatspace.net/nycki/nycki.net/src/branch/main/static/xkcd.css

so now when I want a color on my website I can just write `color: var(--xkcd-off-white)` or so on. it's really convenient :)

#programming #color #css #website

I may regret this at some point, but I felt the need to put down in writing how I feel about this moment in the tech industry.

It is not kind. You may well be insulted by it. If you are... then you really should question yourself.

https://www.garfieldtech.com/blog/selfish-ai

#AI #LLM #Programming

Where do you draw the line? ( of Software User Freedom )

An article by Troler about Libre Software made me remember an email conversation I had with Richard Stallman the other day. I suggested to have a sort of freedom ladder analogue, to encourage non-libre software developers to, at least, move closer towards user-freedom. I thought ranking software based on how close they are at achieving user-freedom. How close they are to being Libre. If they have source code published, but no license. This is still better than having no source code published at all. Stallman firmly stood his ground against my idea, claiming that anything less than Libre, anything less than software that grants all 4 essential freedoms to the user, is automatically not good enough. But then in that article by @Troler I saw something interesting. Maybe merely granting the 4 essential freedoms, might be not good enough, either.

Where do you draw the line? ( of Software User Freedom )

An article by Troler about Libre Software made me remember an email conversation I had with Richard Stallman the other day. I suggested to have a sort of freedom ladder analogue, to encourage non-libre software developers to, at least, move closer towards user-freedom. I thought ranking software based on how close they are at achieving user-freedom. How close they are to being Libre. If they have source code published, but no license. This is still better than having no source code published at all. Stallman firmly stood his ground against my idea, claiming that anything less than Libre, anything less than software that grants all 4 essential freedoms to the user, is automatically not good enough. But then in that article by @Troler I saw something interesting. Maybe merely granting the 4 essential freedoms, might be not good enough, either.

Where do you draw the line? ( of Software User Freedom )

An article by Troler about Libre Software made me remember an email conversation I had with Richard Stallman the other day. I suggested to have a sort of freedom ladder analogue, to encourage non-libre software developers to, at least, move closer towards user-freedom. I thought ranking software based on how close they are at achieving user-freedom. How close they are to being Libre. If they have source code published, but no license. This is still better than having no source code published at all. Stallman firmly stood his ground against my idea, claiming that anything less than Libre, anything less than software that grants all 4 essential freedoms to the user, is automatically not good enough. But then in that article by @Troler I saw something interesting. Maybe merely granting the 4 essential freedoms, might be not good enough, either.