Five Years of Running a Systems Reading Group at Microsoft
March 2026 I started a reading group in 2021, a few months after joining Microsoft as a new grad on the Azure Databases team. The group was initially focused on database internals, which was my favorite subject at UW. Databases touch so many areas of CS: compiler construction in the query engine, memory management with […]
MAUI Is Coming to Linux
Alongside Avalonia 12 and the .NET 11 Previews, I am pleased to announce the first preview of our Avalonia backend for .NET MAUI. Now, you can leverage Avalonia to deploy .NET MAUI apps to new platforms, like Linux and WebAssembly. Since last fall, we’ve made great strides in bringing the power of Avalonia to .NET […]
Two Studies in Compiler Optimisations
Table of contents Introduction While many performance-oriented programmers are intimately acquainted with the almost preternatural ability of modern compilers to optimise their code, and many of us have spent countless hours on Compiler Explorer examining the differences between the Assembly generated by different versions of gcc and clang, most have likely not looked under the […]
A Coherent Vision for the Future of Version Control
I’m releasing Manyana, a project which I believe presents a coherent vision for the future of version control — and a compelling case for building it. It’s based on the fundamentally sound approach of using CRDTs for version control, which is long overdue but hasn’t happened yet because of subtle UX issues. A CRDT merge […]
I Hate: Programming Wayland Applications
A quick introduction: If you want to program a graphical application for linux, your primary choices are using either X11 or Wayland. According to Wikipedia, X11 had its first release in 1984. X11 follows a client-server-model. I assume it’s because the whole computational environment, was very different back then. If you have a central server […]
iBook Clamshell
Welcome! Details The iBook Clamshell was produced by Apple Computers from September 1999 until May 2001 in five colours and several configurations. Because of the distinctive design and relialble hardware components the original iBooks has still a lot of aficionados around the world – i am one of them. I started this website in 2006 […]
Nintendo’s not-AI, not-a-game toy
Nintendo released a Talking Flower desk toy on March 12 — a $35 plastic flower from Super Mario Bros. Wonder that chirps random quips roughly twice an hour. It has no internet connection, no AI, no microphone, and no practical purpose beyond a built-in clock and a temperature sensor. It runs on two AA batteries. […]
Testing the Swift C compatibility with Raylib (+WASM)
Since Ladybird team abandoned their Swift adoption for the browser I heard a lot of criticism about the Swift ecosystem and the interaction between Swift and C/C++ projects. My usage of Swift is mainly for command line tools, recreational programming (like Advent of Code 2023 and previous years) or Metal programming. In my previous experiments […]
Building an FPGA 3dfx Voodoo with Modern RTL Tools
Describing the design is only half of RTL work. The other half is debugging it. The bug that really sold me on this workflow showed up in translucent overlays and text. Most of the frame looked correct, but small clusters of pixels would go mysteriously missing. Because destination-color blending reads the existing framebuffer value, the […]
Bored of eating your own dogfood? Try smelling your own farts
I called a large company the other day. Did I know the information I wanted could be found on their website?0 And was I aware that I could manage my account online?1 And would I like to receive a link to chat with their AI assistant via WhatsApp?2 Naturally, call volumes were higher than expected. […]