2023-09-16

Modernism and Gazette

Recently, I’ve been reading a fair bit about John Dos Passos, and while I haven’t still read any of his books, his approach to literature seems quite avant-garde for his time. The “USA Trilogy” is frequently cited as a significant exploration of American life in the early 20th century, using techniques like the “Newsreel” and “Camera Eye” to tell his narratives. From the discussions and summaries I’ve encountered, Dos Passos seemed to have a knack for interweaving fiction with the pressing sociopolitical issues of his era. It’s intriguing to think about the depth of his works without having directly experienced them.

john_dos_passos.jpg

Gazette and scroll

I was considering moving the entirety of the blog (not the site, just these pages) to scroll. Unfortunately, scroll is not a great fit for the rest of the site’s workflow.

At the moment, it’s a bit of a compromise. I’m using the Gazette style for the blog page, but it’s just the CSS. The underlying process of building the site is the same (still using Markdown).

A thought on !important

In CSS, !important is really not a good idea. It’s make debugging very time-consuming and fundamentally breaks the Cascading part of CSS.

Reducing software bugs

Just read Daniel J. Bernstein’s “Some thoughts on security after ten years of qmail 1.0” paper on mitigating software bugs, I found these to be the main takeaways:

  1. Code Reviews Matter: By thoroughly reviewing your code, you can get a sense of its vulnerability to bugs. This isn’t just about finding immediate errors, but evaluating the overall quality of your software-development approach. Adjust your strategies based on these reviews for better outcomes.

  2. Measuring Bugs: There are two primary ways to gauge the ‘bugginess’ of software—either by looking at the bugs per specific task or bugs per line of code. Each approach has its merits. While the former can give insights into the efficiency of a task, the latter can be an indicator of how long debugging might take.

  3. Eliminate Risky Habits: In coding, as in life, some habits are more prone to mistakes than others. Identifying these risky behaviours and addressing them head-on can dramatically cut down on errors. This might even mean reshaping the coding environment or tools used.

  4. The Virtue of Brevity: A larger codebase naturally has more room for errors. If two processes achieve the same result, but one does it with fewer lines of code, the latter is generally preferable. It’s not about cutting corners but about efficiency and clarity.

  5. Access Control: Just as you wouldn’t give every employee a key to the company safe, not all code should have unrestricted access. By architecting systems that limit code permissions, you add another layer of protection against potential issues.

In conclusion, a proactive, thoughtful approach to coding—paired with smart strategies and tools can significantly reduce software bugs.

Issue bankruptcy

Today Lodash declared “issue bankruptcy” and closed 363 issues 325 PRs to start afresh.