knlb2022

Yeah, it's very far from usable by other people at the moment =/.

The readme at https://github.com/kunalb/termdex/tree/main/markdown_files is probably the best bit.

I've built a couple for myself so far; the most recent is in zig (sqlite extension that treats markdown files / frontmatter as virtual tables) and it's lasted me. I plan to rewrite it soon to adapt to how I've been using it :)

https://github.com/kunalb/termdex

I gave a small talk on how to really push using hooks for logging intermediate values (including capturing gradients from torch & fx scripted modules) that may be useful: https://static.sched.com/hosted_files/pytorch2023/40/Interme...

This was the first time I bought a font, and -- surprisingly -- I haven't regretted it at all. Every time I look at my terminal there's always a little bit of happiness at how elegant the font looks.

Happy to hear that!

Heh, definitely depends on the software itself but I generally find the contents /schema of tables used to save the data very illuminating: you can see the UX, whatever form it takes -- and then what is saved to the backend so it makes things slightly more understandable for me.

https://explog.in

I've been writing here sporadically for more than 10 years at this point, at ~1 post a year. The more recent posts took months to write, and tend to cover things I find myself repeating frequently while working with other engineers.

- https://explog.in/notes/elephants/index.html: Tips for ramping up on large projects

- https://explog.in/notes/devtools/index.html: Building developer tools

Planning to overhaul it later this year.

I'll throw in my own too: https://github.com/kunalb/panopticon

Build my own project with it, ideally for fun -- if it's a tool or a programming language. Try to apply it immediately if I'm learning something new.

"you don't have to code all parts of your design".

That's an excellent articulation of what I think as "invisible seams" when I write code: they're soft points of extensions that don't need a separate interface/function/class _yet_. Sometimes I just mark them for myself with an extra newline within a function.

Huh, I wrote about this a few months ago too (with a lot more whimsy): Eating Elephants -- https://docs.google.com/document/d/1c07-Zj6bUbYPwx7Zttd1N74o...

The thrust of both our articles is similar, except I think I ended up using many more words.

Agreed, writing is necessary but not sufficient. But writing is still much better than nothing.

As much as I enjoy writing to think, simply writing doesn't lead to reality testing -- I've found even greater clarity by trying to add numbers or simulations and trying to program around what I'm writing. Writing with real data intertwined and numbers applied is much better.

I used this in AoC for the first time a couple of years ago, as a consequence of diving deeply into asyncio. https://explog.in/static/aoc2019/AoC23.html

Small Gods by Terry Pratchett, and the whole series on Discworld greatly affected how I think about life, and to look beyond first assumptions.

I have 3 suggestions! because that's how I tend to work too

- Scapple (mac/windows only) https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scapple/overview I love how minimal it is, but wish there was a linux/web version. I'll probably make my own some day.

- kinopio (web/mobile) kinopio.club Works well, but has a strong, quirky personality which sometimes gets annoying for me; I prefer the minimalism of scapple.

- draw.io / diagrams.net You can configure it to hide most of the toolbars and then just use it as mind mapping software, this is what I'm trying at the moment.

I haven't yet cleaned up the slipbox code enough to publish it, but I do have my site generation code public: https://explog.in/config.html -- which does something similar but doesn't generate the cross links.

The slipbox code is just a bunch of python to pre-process the org files and "fix" links, which then passes them on to emacs subprocesses to generate html.

I use logseq to take study notes in org mode, which are then published to my public slipbox by post-processing with emacs in a github action. The consistent part of this has been plain text notes -- the slipbox has stuck for the past year, and hopefully will continue.

https://explog.in/slipbox/

I built https://github.com/kunalb/panopticon to export perfetto/chrome compatible traces and also draw arrows between async functions. (I think the arrows are only supported in about://tracing though).

https://explog.in -- a few posts over the past decade. I've tried to keep it fairly simple and straightforward.

Generated with emacs running in a Github action (https://explog.in/config.html); comes with a slipbox (https://explog.in/slipbox/index.html) that I fill in using LogSeq and export to a flat website using emacs again.