Tootfinder

🔧 Antifragile Programming and Why AI Won’t Steal Your Job
#programming

Antifragile Programming and Why AI Won’t Steal Your Job
Whenever I say I dislike debugging and organize my programming habits around avoiding it, there is always pushback: “You must not use a good debugger.” To summarize my view: I want my software to be antifragile (credit to Nassim Taleb for the concept). The longer I work on a codebase, the easier it should become … Continue reading Antifragile Programming and Why AI Won’t Steal Your Job

shots fired:
> it’s abundantly clear that the talented folks who used to work on the product have moved on to bigger and better things, with the remaining rookies eager to inflict some kind of bloated, buggy JavaScript framework on us in the name of progress. Stuff that used to be snappy is now sluggish and often entirely broken.
…

Programming in 2026:

google_web: Old Google web graph (2002)
A web graph representing a crawl of a portion of the general WWW, from a 2002 Google Programming contest.
This network has 916428 nodes and 5105039 edges.
Tags: Informational, Web graph, Unweighted
https://networks.skewed.de/net/google_web<…

The #Enclosure feedback loop or how LLMs sabotage existing programming practices by privatizing a public good:
“[…]something has been taken from the public. Not just the training data, but the public forums and practices that created this training data in the first place. […] LLM companies are now selling back to us something that used to be available for free.”

from my link log —
Swift regrets: a programming language design retrospective.
https://belkadan.com/blog/tags/swift-regrets/
saved 2025-11-26 https://

wow, #zig moves it's repo from #github to #codeberg:
ht…

🚀 Real results: Geoffrey Huntley ran a 3-month loop building a complete programming language. YC hackathon teams shipped 6 repos overnight for $297 in API costs
✅ Best for: Large refactors, batch operations, test coverage, documentation generation - tasks with clear completion criteria
⚠️ Not for: Ambiguous requirements, architectural decisions, security-sensitive code, or exploration work

I wonder if programming language innovation will drop off post-AI. Like there's not much point learning a new language if you're not programming it directly, and LLMs know less about them.
You'll just reach for the language with the most (non-LLM generated) training data which will always be the older ones.

Oh wild! Full circle moment today when I found out #jellyfin uses PlaylistsNET, a library I contributed to years before even hearing about Jellyfin 🤓
#OpenSource is so cool!
#programming

My big gripe with "AI" is that a big reason why it's sold as the second coming of Jesus is that most tech people fundamentally do not understand how it actually works.
Their reasoning goes something like, "It works sort of ok for code generation, and programming is the hardest possible thing in the world to do, every other human endeavor is trivial compared to writing code, therefore it must excel at anything else!".
So it ends up being pushed due to a mixture of ignorance and hubris; and especially being stuffed into things it should never be used for (usually when users don't have a say which software they need to use for work).
The finbros are happily along for the ride because they just need something that can be hyped to pump and dump.

Which programming languages are most token-efficient?
https://martinalderson.com/posts/which-programming-languages-are-most-token-efficient/

A programming language is low level when its programs require attention
to the irrelevant.

#Unison ist in #Haskell geschrieben und bietet außerdem eine Desktop App an die…

In which Nick Radcliffe goes very deep for a month with Claude Code and reports back. I’m convinced by some but not all of what he says, and found the whole thing a stimulating read: https://checkeagle.com/checklists/njr/a-month-of-chat-oriented-programming/…

they should make games that are more fun than programming
[note: this is not a glowing recommendation of programming]

IEEE Spectrum writer Dina Genkina compiles this list of top computing stories from 2025. The list includes subjects ranging from the year's top programming languages, to data centers on the Moon.
"The Top 8 Computing Stories of 2025"
https://spectrum.ieee.org/top-computin

"PHP is the lingua franca of affordable web hosting options; or, in other terms, the Toyota Corolla of programming languages: boring, solid, easy, and affordable. You can find, almost anywhere in the world, an affordable web hosting with the saint quadrinity of LAMP: Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP; an OS, a web server, a database server, and a scripting language, in an inexpensive package, enabling the masses to go further. Paraphrasing George Clooney, what else?"

The Toyota Corolla Of Programming
In 1995, an otherwise unknown software developer released the first version of a new scripting language whose explicit aim was to make applications for this new platform called "The World Wide Web". After starting as a small project, and thanks to the crazy dot-com years, it grew dramatically to become one of the most widely used programming languages of all time. After some stumbling first steps, it eventually got some sort of standardization in 1997, even reluctantly including some OOP featur…

@… thanks, some discussion with William J. Franck at <https://www.reddit.com/r/freebsd/comments/1m21t7o/ann_f…

My hobby: creating PRs to open source projects with ‘printf(“here! Line: xyz”);’ after every line.
Because those messages are so helpful. #programming

Out with the old, in the with new!
Here's a comparison of the current TV Season screen and the updated TV Season screen I just completed in #Jellyfin for #Roku.
#programming <…

@chadfowler.com's second post in his new Phoenix Architecture blog, called The Death and Rebirth of Programming.
Lots of quotable quotes, so hard to choose. "Soft skills" more important than ever, and this is all be a shock to people who self-identify as programmers.
https://aicoding…

from my link log —
The Austral programming language. (linear types and capability security)
https://austral-lang.org/
saved 2023-05-06 https://dotat.at/:/XU0X…

The state of programming in 2025. Anyways, off to write a CLAUDE•md…

Ich freue mich, mal wieder beim Software Architecture Summit in München dabei zu sein - ich mache einen Workshop zu "Data-Oriented Programming”, mithin zu High-Level-Domänenmodellierung.
https://software-architecture-summit.de/modeling-und-design/da…

Data-Oriented Programming - Software Architecture Summit

[End of diatribe. We now return you to your regularly scheduled
programming...]
-- Larry Wall in Configure from the perl distribution

China's MiniMax releases M2.1, an upgrade to its open-source M2 model that it says has "significantly enhanced" coding capabilities in Rust, Java, and others (MiniMax)
https://www.minimax.io/news/minimax-m21

MiniMax M2.1: Significantly Enhanced Multi-Language Programming, Built for Real-World Complex Tasks - MiniMax News

Do you (sometimes) use print() or message() for debugging your code? Next time you can use {icecream} instead: #rstats

Friday Links 25-27
This week, I enjoyed the blog about chat programming, and coding at work, which is probably related.
https://christof.damian.net/2025/11/friday-links-25-27.html

Friday Links 25-27
This week, I enjoyed the blog about chat programming, and coding at work, which is probably related.  Leadership Hybrid workers are putting ...

John is blending the world of Godot and SwiftUI-style programming in SwiftGodotBuilder, it is crazy cool and he is writing a book/guide as he goes along:
https://swiftgodotbuilder.com/

Programming peaked
#javascript #k8s

I do like a bit of #fireship so here is their take on the #history of #programming in about 6 minutes:

Rython?
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Proposal-Rust-In-CPython

Python Developers Looking At Introducing The Rust Programming Language In CPython
A proposal has been raised by two CPython core developers to introduce the Rust programming language to CPython

Some local TV stations are ending their network affiliations, freeing up money for new hires and programming, as network fees rise due to sports rights costs (Amos Barshad/Columbia Journalism Review)
https://www.cjr.org/analysis/unaffiliated-local-…

Some TV news stations are breaking their national network affiliations, and leaning into local programming.
Some TV news stations are breaking their national network affiliations, and leaning into local programming.

Nice blog in the discussion about AI & coding,
"AI can replace most of programming, but programming isn’t the job.
Programming is a task. It’s one of many things you do as part of your work. But if you’re a software engineer, your actual job is more than typing code into an editor."
https://<…

AI Can Write Your Code. It Can’t Do Your Job.
The companies building AI are spending billions to acquire engineers, not replace them. Here’s why your job is safer than you think.

#Programming #coding #codeReview

It's remarkable how much modern web page programming breaks fundamental things. Scrolling with spacebar or page down doesn't work. Or selecting text. Or doing Ctrl-F to find stuff on a page. All this basic functionality destroyed so some mediocre programmer can use a giant Javascript framework that isn't even necessary.

google_web: Old Google web graph (2002)
A web graph representing a crawl of a portion of the general WWW, from a 2002 Google Programming contest.
This network has 916428 nodes and 5105039 edges.
Tags: Informational, Web graph, Unweighted
https://networks.skewed.de/net/google_web<…

Why Engineers Can't Be Rational About #ProgrammingLanguages
https://spf13.com/p/the-hidden-conversation/

(2 statistics profs, arguing.)
Don't try to tell ME that homo and hetero are the only kinds of skedasticity out here!
RRRRRR. I got your skedastic package RIGHT HERE!
#Maths #Statistics #Programming

#FreeSoftwareAdvent finale 2025! Without these free and open source projects our pipeline couldn't exist at all:
Python, the VFX world's favourite programming language. And of course... Linux itself 🥳
Happy Holidays!

from my link log —
psychec: ML-style type inference for C.
https://github.com/ltcmelo/psychec
saved 2019-09-09 https://dotat.at/:/GN6G4.html

GitHub - ltcmelo/psychec: A compiler frontend for the C programming language
A compiler frontend for the C programming language - ltcmelo/psychec

These are three arguments for web dev serv. APIs, even if you have to take a critical look at them in detail:
»Speed Comparison: Benchmarking programming languages using the Leibniz formula for calculating π«
— 2025-12-12
📊 https://niklas-heer.github.io/speed-comparison/…

What’s really amazing about vibe-coding is how people are replacing programming languages which are strictly deterministic with human speech which is highly ambiguous and expect programming to be faster and better.
“Well only use it when you’re already an expert!”
None of the people starting their careers using this technology are experts yet, nor will the ever be.
And within some finite amount of time nether will you, the expert, be an expert anymore.

The great thing about R is that if it can't do what you want out of the box, you can program it.
So I've just put 2-3 hours into programming that should be basic functionality, but is only accessible piecemeal in a dozen different incompatible libraries.
Now n <- n 1 incompatible libraries.

Larry Ellison family run #Skydance / #Paramount plans to trim $6 Billion of synergistic #Hollywood fat from #WarnerBros studio operations sh…

Paramount outlines plans for Warner Bros. cuts
Should it win the battle for Warner Bros., Paramount said it would review real estate holdings, cut duplicative jobs and shave programming expenses to achieve $6 billion in savings.

My very first programming projects when I started self-teaching around 15 years ago were about accounting. I was unhappy with keeping track of expenses in a physical notebook, and the spreadsheet I made was also very limited. And existing #FOSS solutions like #GnuCash felt too weird for my use case and its…

I think people who use AI/LLMs for programming want to solve problems, but people who choose *not* to use AI/LLMs want to solve problems but also want to *understand* those problems.
We need more understanding in our world.

Wow, just noticed #ThingUmbrella reached 3700 stars on GitHub — I'm celebrating... 🤩🫠
Heartfelt thanks to all of you who've been helping along the way (in any shape & form) and been supporting this work for all these years and across different programming languages/camps! Merci beaucoup!!! Esp. big Thank You's to fellow fediverse people/supporters from various stages…

thi.ng/umbrella

I very much enjoyed the first third of the book "Crafting Interpreters". It's about building a tree-walk interpreter for Lox, a programming language specifically created for this book. The interpreter in the book is implemented in Java. I, of course, used Kotlin for my implementation.
https://craftinginterpreters.com/

If you just need a pretty figure from a dataset and not the full power of R, have a look at #gui

The True Magic of #Refactoring Club
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/true-magic-refactoring-club-sander-hoogendoorn--dcxse/

> We found that the “Other” category increased to 11% this year, and this was primarily driven by Hetzner (20% of Other responses); we plan to include Hetzner as a response choice in next year’s survey.
https://go.dev/blog/survey2025
Well done @…

Results from the 2025 Go Developer Survey - The Go Programming Language
The 2025 Go Developer Survey results, focused on developer sentiment towards Go, use cases, challenges, and developer environments.

In a world where most code in modern programming languages will be machine-generated, what is the role of an upper-level programming languages course?
Interesting and non-obvious answers please.

Started the official rewrite of the Sisyphus client in #golang, working on getting the Ffmpeg command-line tasks parsed and validated against the schema. This should make things easier to distribute with respect to the client as I can just distribute static binaries.
#programming

Any #Python newbies out there? (Or experts that need to teach Python)
Would you have a specific online tutorial to recommend for someone who wants to learn Python without any prior programming experience? One that also explains how to install it ?
I was thinking of something like this:

Welcome To The Python Tutorial
Learn to program with this free Python tutorial for beginners. It's free, easy to read and lets you practice with in-browser code examples.

"Climate change is melting glaciers and ice sheets faster than they can regrow"
#Climate #ClimateChange #Glaciers

Climate change is melting glaciers and ice sheets faster than they can regrow
Yale Climate Connections is a nonpartisan, multimedia service providing daily broadcast radio programming and original web-based reporting, commentary, and analysis on the issue of climate change.

It's like no one doing music programming for radio and stores this year has even heard of #Whamageddon. 😐

Multi-port programmable silicon photonics using low-loss phase change material Sb$_2$Se$_3$
Thomas W. Radford, Idris A Ajia, Latif Rozaqi, Priya Deoli, Xingzhao Yan, Mehdi Banakar, David J Thomson, Ioannis Zeimpekis, Alberto Politi, Otto L. Muskens
https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.18205 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2511.18205 https://arxiv.org/html/2511.18205
arXiv:2511.18205v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Reconfigurable photonic devices are rapidly emerging as a cornerstone of next generation optical technologies, with wide ranging applications in quantum simulation, neuromorphic computing, and large-scale photonic processors. A central challenge in this field is identifying an optimal platform to enable compact, efficient, and scalable reconfigurability. Optical phase-change materials (PCMs) offer a compelling solution by enabling non-volatile, reversible tuning of optical properties, compatible with a wide range of device platforms and current CMOS technologies. In particular, antimony tri-selenide ($\text{Sb}_{2}\text{Se}_{3}$) stands out for its ultra low-loss characteristics at telecommunication wavelengths and its reversible switching. In this work, we present an experimental platform capable of encoding multi-port operations onto the transmission matrix of a compact multimode interferometer architecture on standard 220~nm silicon photonics using \textit{in-silico} designed digital patterns. The multi-port devices are clad with a thin film of $\text{Sb}_{2}\text{Se}_{3}$, which can be optically addressed using direct laser writing to provide local perturbations to the refractive index. A range of multi-port geometries from 2$\times$2 up to 5$\times$5 couplers are demonstrated, achieving simultaneous control of up to 25 matrix elements with programming accuracy of 90% relative to simulated patterns. Patterned devices remain stable with consistent optical performance across the C-band wavelengths. Our work establishes a pathway towards the development of large scale PCM-based reconfigurable multi-port devices which will allow implementing matrix operations on three orders of magnitude smaller areas than interferometer meshes.
toXiv_bot_toot

had that moment when I did "npm install" and it found 0 vulnerabilities and I'm like... that never happens!
#software #programming #npm

In the age of "#AI" assisted programming and "vibe coding", I don't feel like calling myself a programmer anymore. In fact, I think that "an artist" is more appropriate.
All the code I write is mine entirely. It might be buggy, it might be inconsistent, but it reflects my personality. I've put my metaphorical soul into it. It's a work of art.
If people want to call themselves "software developers", and want their work described as a glorified copy-paste, so be it. I'm a software artist now.
EDIT: "craftsperson" is also a nice term, per the comments.
#NoAI #NoLLM #LLM

Series A, Episode 03 - Cygnus Alpha
BLAKE: And we can't hold out much longer. That's certain.
VILA: And they'll be getting reinforcements.
https://blake.torpidity.net/m/103/547 B7B6

https://hemaks.org/posts/why-your-obsession-with-code-linting-is-excessive/
Consider these questions when evaluating your linting setup:
- Does this rule prevent actual bugs? If not, consider removing it.
- Would a new team member understand …

@… 👀
https://mastodon.social/@kottke/115735572087447936

If you like “back and forth” with an LLM as a form of programming, may I suggest:
Pair programming.

Also: replies that say I should switch to Linux will be ignored. Too much of my non-programming workflow makes that impossible.

I’m wondering what all this software is that people now make that it wasn’t worth for them learning programming for

Patterns for Defensive Programming in #Rust
https://corrode.dev/blog/defensive-programming/

I’ve been testing a theory: many people who are high on #AI and #LLMs are just new to automation and don’t realize you can automate processes with simple programming, if/then conditions, and API calls with zero AI involved.
So far it’s been working!
Whenever I’ve been asked to make an AI flow or find a way to implement AI in our work with a client, I’ve returned back with an automation flow that uses 0 AI.
Things like “when a new document is added here, add a link to it in this spreadsheet and then create a task in our project management software assigned to X with label Y”.
And the people who were frothing at the mouth at how I must change my mind on AI have (so far) all responded with resounding enthusiasm and excitement.
They think it’s the same thing. They just don’t understand how much automation is possible without any generative tools.

CBS postpones a 60 Minutes segment on El Salvador's CECOT prison, which houses people deported by the Trump administration, just hours before it was set to air (Julia Ornedo/The Daily Beast)
https://www.thedailybeast.com/60-minutes-suddenly-dro…

‘60 Minutes’ Suddenly Drops Segment on Major Trump Controversy
The show announced a programming change just before its Sunday night timeslot.

Installing Visual Studio 2026 to see what all the buzz is about. Planning to migrate my project data web api from .NET 9 to 10, along with the new ide.
#programming #visualstudio #dotnet <…

»Introduction to CSS if() Statements and Conditional Logic«
CSS will probably become logically structurable after a long time. It's not a programming language and that's why it's all the more exciting.
🖌️ https://markodenic.com/introduction-to

Introduction to CSS if Statements and Conditional Logic
Conditional logic is a familiar concept to anyone who has written a programming language. Languages like JavaScript or Python use if/else statements to evaluate expressions and execute different blocks of code depending on whether the condition is true or false.

This is so niche and yet so relevant to my interests: "Kip is an experimental programming language that combines Turkish grammar rules with a type system. Case endings, vowel harmony, and other Turkish morphological features are an integral part of Kip's type-checking process."
https://github.com/kip-dili/kip/…

When writing a parser for a new (programming) language and you find yourself doing a lot of lookahead, and making design compromises to avoid that.. I wonder what a language would end up like if you parsed it backwards from the start? Like just reversed the code as a string. Would the language end up more humane? I guess this is already a thing but don't know the search term..

from my link log —
The Worst programming language.
http://worst.mitten.party/
saved 2020-03-02 https://dotat.at/:/8G9PB.html

"For others, the exploration of old computer magazines brings the possibility of running old software. Many computer magazines, and not only the programming kind, used to bundle reams of source code listings across their pages, and many an enthusiast would painstakingly type those code bits by hand, in order to have a new utility, to learn a new programming language, or to enjoy a new game."

Retro Gaming Museum
Reviewing old computers magazines of yore is a pastime most often associated to retrocomputing enthusiasts. It is part of that feeling of bliss that comes with the realization that there used to be a different world, when software was simpler, when corporations did not have that much power, and when programming languages were more approachable; in short, a more innocent time.

Code is not always a liability. Code does have value. The value of code is measured by how much other code doesn't need to exist as a result.
#Programming #Software

google_web: Old Google web graph (2002)
A web graph representing a crawl of a portion of the general WWW, from a 2002 Google Programming contest.
This network has 916428 nodes and 5105039 edges.
Tags: Informational, Web graph, Unweighted
https://networks.skewed.de/net/google_web<…

TIOBE Software CEO Paul Jansen shares the numbers for November 2025 in its programming popularity index. It seems like C# is almost caught up with Java with a less than 1% difference between the fourth and fifth positions. Python continues to stand in a very comfortable first place.
"TIOBE Index for November 2025 - Is C# going to surpass Java for the first time in history?"

In which I build Unicode character tables and fail to serialize large automata, “Losing 1½ Million Lines of Go“:
https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/202x/2026/01/14/Unicode-Properties
(And in which I find myself sliding into the

A curated list of awesome tools to assist 📦 development in R programming language. #rstats #📦

Someone argued with me that using higher level programming languages is just like vibe-coding because "C has race conditions"

A hyper-logical Halloween
#programming

On compute as a commodity “people might be open to a new bespoke pickle vendor. So we're pickling some compute and selling that.”
And
“Our mission is to spread the joy of programming, both in people's personal lives and at work.”
[contains quote post or other embedded content] https://bsky.app/pro…

Boris (@bmann.ca)
On compute as a commodity “people might be open to a new bespoke pickle vendor. So we're pickling some compute and selling that.” And “Our mission is to spread the joy of programming, both in people's personal lives and at work.” [contains quote post or other embedded content]

This weekend went from programming EPROMs to playing Final Fantasy 6. Not a bad way to end things overall. It also means I get to keep my cache of 27C322s for other custom carts. However, it looks great and gets to go back up on the shelf.
#retrogaming #snes

Happy National Rubber Ducky Day!
Today is the day to celebrate a programmer's best debugging tool!
#programming #rubberduckday #rubberduckyday

Programming language tradeoffs.
https://www.garfieldtech.com/blog/language-tradeoffs

Scheme, the ur programming language, is 50 years old, as Jason Hemann just reminded me.

Senior Microsoft Product Manager Wendy Breiding discusses in this recent post how you can now customize your IDE to include agentic AI to your project that is focused on tasks related to a specific language or UI stack, in this case: C# and WinForms. The results have been positive when comparing these agents to previous more general approaches.
"Introducing Custom Agents for .NET Developers: C# Expert & WinForms Expert"

Nielsen ratings for Bari Weiss' town hall with Erika Kirk were 11% below total viewership for CBS News' standard programs in the same time slot, year to date (Justin Baragona/The Independent)
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/a

Bari Weiss’ much-hyped CBS News town hall with Erika Kirk was a massive ratings flop
According to Nielsen, the Saturday night town hall saw a 41 percent decline in in the key 25-54 advertising demographic compared to the network’s standard programming in that time slot year to date.

In the beginning was the Tao. The Tao gave birth to Space and Time.
Therefore, Space and Time are the Yin and Yang of programming.
Programmers that do not comprehend the Tao are always running out of
time and space for their programs. Programmers that comprehend the Tao always
have enough time and space to accomplish their goals.
How could it be otherwise?
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"

from my link log —
Are arrays functions?
https://futhark-lang.org/blog/2026-01-16-are-arrays-functions.html
saved 2026-01-19 https:…

Primer to get you started with Optimization and Mathematical Programming in R #rstats

CRAN Task View: Optimization and Mathematical Programming
This CRAN Task View contains a list of packages that offer facilities for solving optimization problems. Although every regression model in statistics solves an optimization problem, they are not part of this view. If you are looking for regression methods, the following views will also contain useful starting points: MachineLearning, Econometrics, Robust Packages are categorized according to the following sections. See also the “Related Links” and “Other Resources” sections at the end.

google_web: Old Google web graph (2002)
A web graph representing a crawl of a portion of the general WWW, from a 2002 Google Programming contest.
This network has 916428 nodes and 5105039 edges.
Tags: Informational, Web graph, Unweighted
https://networks.skewed.de/net/google_web<…

from my link log —
Control structures in programming languages: from goto to algebraic effects.
http://xavierleroy.org/control-structures/
saved 2025-11-03

r-charts.com provides example code for a variety of chart types, both in base R and ggplot: #rstats #ggplot…

R CHARTS | A collection of charts and graphs made with the R programming language
Over 1400 graphs with reproducible code divided in 8 big categories and over 50 chart types, in addition of tools to choose and create colors and color palettes

from my link log —
Thinking with Types: type-level programming in Haskell.
https://thinkingwithtypes.com/
saved 2019-05-26 https://dotat.at/:/PZEX4.html

from my link log —
Zig programming language 0.6.0 release notes.
https://ziglang.org/download/0.6.0/release-notes.html
saved 2020-04-14 https://…

from my link log —
A unique performance optimization for a 3D geometry language.
https://cprimozic.net/notes/posts/persistent-expr-memo-optimization-for-geoscript/
saved 2026-01-11