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Emacs as a computing platform

14.08.2019 20:53

Most emacs power users would probably agree with the statement from the Emacs Manual about Emacs being more of a computing platform than just a text editor.

If you know a Emacs power users you have probably noticed how we sometimes try to move stuff to emacs that seems a little bit weird to do in a text editor. Like reading email or rss feeds. Those are two of the things I recently have moved back into emacs.

When something works in emacs I really love doing it there, because I prefer having as much as possible in there because it makes my workflows and setup a lot easier. But if it doesn’t work that well there I just get rid of it. One example of something I want to do in emacs that doesn’t work at all is browsing. And one thing I don’t do a lot in emacs is shell stuff, because I haven’t really found a good enough way to do it.

The effects of a MVP

11.08.2019 19:00

When you build a product outside of a MVP mindset you define what you’re trying to make. And then you make a list of features that makes sense based on that. But also based on what people expect to have there. Back in the day we all always expected to be able to import and export data in all online services.

But when you are doing things like an MVP and follow incremental improvement, instead you try to find what are the minimum we can make that are useful to our users and that give them enough value to continue using it. And then you start adding features based on feedback and where you see pain points.

This means that a lot of “obvious” features will probably never make it, because they are nice to have, but neither you see the pain points or the users ask for them enough.

I’m of the mindset that some features should be there, not because you need them or because people want them, but rather because it is the right thing to do.

It is interesting to look at the effects different ways of working can have on your product.

As always, the most important thing is do build stuff in a way that makes sense to you. If something would annoy you if it wasn’t there, add it.

Likes

09.08.2019 06:12

Powershell

07.08.2019 20:54

Powershell is something I have to deal with at work, because we’re on windows, and all our internal tooling is written for it. Not a huge fan of it, but it is what it is.

I think it is a great interface to write scripts and automate stuff. But I do not enjoy using it as a shell.

True Detective

04.08.2019 10:17

I just re-watched all of it, perfectly timed to the third season ending.

  • The first season was amazing, and felt like something completly new. It was so amazing the first time I watched it, less so the second time, but still great.
  • The second season was not bad, but everyone hated it. There are a lot of problems with the writing of it, but I think people would have liked it a lot better if it wasn’t called True Detective. And it didn’t follow the same format etc.
  • The third season is a lot closer to the first one in terms of how the story works. And I liked it a lot better. It is probably as good as the first one, except for it isn’t the first time it is being done. * True Detective

I just re-watched all of it, perfectly timed to the third season ending.

  • The first season was amazing, and felt like something completly new. It was so amazing the first time I watched it, less so the second time, but still great.
  • The second season was not bad, but everyone hated it. There are a lot of problems with the writing of it, but I think people would have liked it a lot better if it wasn’t called True Detective. And it didn’t follow the same format etc.
  • The third season is a lot closer to the first one in terms of how the story works. And I liked it a lot better. It is probably as good as the first one, except for it isn’t the first time it is being done.

Likes

02.08.2019 18:03

Not a lot of links this week, I have mostly been reading a bunch of books from GNU I got in the mail on monday. Like the Emacs Manual. And I have decided to stop sharing medium links.

The Deadwood ending.

31.07.2019 19:10

I’ve seen the Deadwood ending a few times since it came out, and I think it is one of my favorite endings ever. The whole thing just wraps more or less everything up unlike anything I have seen before.

This is something I would love to see more of in the future, creators taking time to just wrap it all up. Either in a movie after the show or in a short mini season.

CSS In JS

28.07.2019 10:29

CSS in JS is a kind of new thing everything considered. Instead of writing your CSS in a CSS file you write it in some kind of JavaScript object. It can be like as simple as the default React style objects that is just a javascript object where you define css properties like color, border etc. Or something like styled-components where you write regular css, but it is scoped and you can pass properties / parameters to it. There are more too, but these are the ones I am familiar with. The big difference between them is that using a plain js object to represent css styling excludes a large portion of the CSS syntax. Like media queries for example. While everything that is possible in CSS can also be done with something like styled components.

A lot of people hate css in js. And there are good reasons for it. Writing regular CSS is the ideal, because then you can just take your styling and bring it along when you change from React to the next big thing. And you can also combine different technology and use the same styling. But when someone are using CSS in javascript and have thought through way they are doing it there is a really good reason for it. A problem with CSS when you are building large web sites or web applications is that the stylesheets you are loading are global. And my experience is that it is really hard to build systems that are easy to use, extend, maintain etc with regular CSS. This is the thing CSS in JS solves. It is always easier to build good software when you only have to think about a small part of it. This is why we do micro frontend, microservices and css in js.

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26.07.2019 10:41

I have been playing with the format a lot behind the scenes over the last week or so, one of the things I thought about was to have a section with the links I thought was the most important. But I ended up not going with any of it because I think it is better that you who reads this to figure that out yourself.

p- Linux Performance: Why You Should Almost Always Add Swap Space

Brass pens.

22.07.2019 11:58

I recently got a Ystudio fountain pen. It is a brass pen, and I love it. Especially how cool it starts to look as the black paint starts to wear off.

But there is something I really enjoy about it, and that is how the grip section warms up when you use it for a longer periods.

I do think metal pens have some great properties that you simply don’t get with pens made out of plastic materials