Computer Things

Earlier this year I worked on a couple of AI-generated TLA+ specifications, and one thing I've noticed was that they all used the word "spine" somewhere.

Logic for Programmers has now been out for a month!

Newsletter updates were sporadic in July because of two weddings, two conferences (with two different talks!)

It's done.

Between travel obligations and this last heads-down-gotta-get-the-book-done stretch I haven't had time to write any newsletters or even look at social media.

There's a new release of Logic for Programmers!

This is valid JSON: { "a": 1, "b": 2, "c": 3 } This is invalid JSON: { "a": 1, "b": 2, "c": 3, } The difference is the last comma.

So I said there wasn’t a proper newsletter this week, since I’m in Budapest prepping for a conference.

Short one this week because I'm way behind on book and conference prep.

In some tests are stronger than others, I defined STRONG => WEAK to mean "any system passing test STRONG is also guaranteed to pass WEAK".

I'm in the middle of redoing the Logic for Programmers diagrams and this has surfaced a really annoying problem.

So first the immediate news: I just released version 0.14 of Logic for Programmers!

An illegal state is a state we never want our system to be in.

Take the following Python program: # x = 1, y = 2 x = 0 y = x print([x, y]) It'll print [0, 0].

Sorry for missing last week!

Happy April Cools!

The famous article Choose Boring Technology lists two problems with using innovative technology: There are too many "unknown unknowns" in a new technology, whereas in boring technology the pitfalls are already well-known.

No newsletter next week I'll be speaking at InfoQ London.

Spinning a lot of plates this week so skipping the newsletter.

Now that I'm not spending all my time on Logic for Programmers, I have time to update my website again!

This is something I just tried out last week but it seems to have enough potential to be worth showing unpolished.

As a formal methods consultant I have to mathematically express properties of systems.

It's taken four months, but the next release of Logic for Programmers is now available!

Imagine we have a SQL database with a user table, and users have a non-nullable is_activated boolean column.

For the next release of Logic for Programmers, I'm finally adding the sections on Answer Set Programming and Constraint Logic Programming that I TODOd back in version 0.9.

Happy New Year!

Last newsletter of the year!

A couple of weeks ago I started a fundraiser for the Greater Chicago Food Depository: get Logic for Programmers 50% off and all the royalties will go to charity.1 Since then, we've raised a bit over $1600.

From now until the end of the month, you can get Logic for Programmers at half price with the coupon feedchicago.

Hi everyone, I've been getting burnt out on writing a weekly software essay.

A while back my friend Pablo Meier was reviewing some 2024 videogames and wrote this: I feel like some artists, if they didn't exist, would have the resulting void filled in by someone similar (e.g. if Katy Perry didn't exist, someone like her would have).