TL;DR summary of stories on the internet
Recur is a command-line tool that runs a single command repeatedly until it succeeds or no more attempts are left, offering optional exponential backoff with configurable jitter. A unique feature is the ability to write the success condition in Starlark, a scripting language derived from Python. It provides prebuilt binaries for various operating systems and […]
Read more »
Welcome to issue 97 of the Polymathic Engineer, where we delve into the fallacies of distributed systems, debunking common assumptions made by developers. Project-based learning, like on CodeCrafters, is the key to honing technical skills by recreating systems like Redis and Kafka from scratch. Remember, networks are unreliable, which requires strategies like retransmission mechanisms and […]
In his wide-ranging book “The Fallen Angels on the Wing,” Orlando Reade explores the tumultuous history of John Milton’s epic poem “Paradise Lost” and its impact on various ideologies and movements throughout history. Reade’s clever and sardonic writing style, immersed in Miltonic poetry, highlights the ways in which the poem has been interpreted and repurposed […]
BM25, a widely used full text search algorithm, is default in Lucene/Elasticsearch and SQLite. It combines full text search and vector similarity search in hybrid search. The author attempted to understand BM25 by exploring its components and how it ranks documents probabilistically. BM25 cleverly ranks by probability without calculating probability, assuming most documents are irrelevant. […]
Alan Mackenzie announces his resignation from Emacs development due to conflicts with the maintainer of CC Mode, Eli Zaretskii. The crux of the issue revolves around symbols being used without consultation, leading to a breakdown in communication and a lack of adherence to Emacs conventions. Mackenzie highlights the importance of names and the misuse of […]
A full-featured RPC framework for IPC may seem excessive for processes running on the same machine, but it’s beneficial for public APIs and schema-based serialization. FlashCam software on DAQ servers has an intricately structured high-level architecture with special processes handling control and monitoring. A State Supervisor orchestrates interconnected subsystems and provides a single entry point […]
GNU Artanis, a web application framework developed in 2013, is written in Guile Scheme. Inspired by Ruby on Rails and Sinatra, Artanis emphasizes simplicity and ease of use. Notably, Artanis is designed to be “Scheme only,” avoiding C code extensions whenever possible. Instead, contributors may provide extensions in C, but the core remains pure Scheme […]
In this constantly evolving note, the author emphasizes the importance of simplicity and privacy in writing apps. They stress the significance of making updates that enhance user experience without complicating it. The note encourages personalization and avoiding overwhelming users with too many options. The goal is to create a polished, beautiful app that feels like […]
The author, a hedge fund professional, praises the Pandas library for its efficiency in dealing with financial data. However, the emergence of the Polars library, written in Rust, caught their attention due to its impressive speed and performance. The author hesitates to switch from Pandas to Polars due to the significant effort required to refactor […]
Unbug is a crate that provides macros to programmatically invoke debugging breakpoints, helping developers catch errors during debugging sessions more effectively. The crate’s internals are disabled by default and can be used throughout the code without the need to conditionally compile them out. However, activating the breakpoints requires Nightly Rust and enabling the experimental core_intrinsics […]