Victoria Lacroix

Simplicity-minded software developer currently focused on building #GNOME apps. Author of Telepipe, Tally, and Parchment. Maintainer of #LuaGObject. Mad scientist of user experience.

My favourite programming language is #Lua!

Complicated software and processes disorient me—I build simpler alternatives.

Disabled by #Celiac disease. Not normal.

PFP is a pixelated photo of me.

🇨🇦🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈👩‍💻

Website: https://www.vtrlx.ca/about/
Pronouns, Age: she/her, early 30s
Languages: English (🇨🇦), Français (🇨🇦)
Support my work: https://liberapay.com/vtrlx/

Last Notes

2026-05-06 17:17:27 UTC

Parchment is now available.
Parchment is a plain text editor for #GNOME that delivers a clean and distraction-free writing experience. It stays out of your way and allows you to focus on what really matters: writing.
I have written dozens of blog posts and several software projects using Parchment, including Parchment itself.
Writeup ⇒ https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2026/parchment-now-available/
Get it on Flathub ⇒ https://flathub.org/apps/details/ca.vtrlx.Parchment
Source code ⇒ https://codeberg.org/vtrlx/parchment
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2026-04-17 18:38:51 UTC

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Maybe I just have a very, very poor concept of metaprogramming because a class system in Lua is about 30 lines of code—less if you don't need inheritance—and this is a language without any macro system, so I don't really consider it to be metaprogramming. It's all code and functions executed at run-time.

2026-04-17 17:14:01 UTC

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I understand the theory behind metaprogramming, but what eludes me are examples. What kinds of problems have been solved by metaprogramming? Could other solutions have been used? How does one learn how to spot problems which would best be solved by metaprogramming? How does one get comfortable reading code that involves macros which modify syntax in possibly unexpected ways?
(Apologies for the load of questions, your response kicked my brain into high gear there)

2026-04-17 02:09:23 UTC

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I understand that a handful of languages use metaprogramming to implement their control structures. It's impressive, but my objection is that custom syntax makes code difficult to understand.
Macros for boilerplate is like the least offensive/confusing part of metaprogramming, but I still think it's best to use them sparingly.
My preferred language of Lua is built to allow the creation of DSLs without needing macros. Also very little boilerplate, in my experience. It's nice.

2026-04-17 01:36:09 UTC

Fine, I'll admit it: I don't understand metaprogramming. I don't know why someone would want to add more control structures to their programming language. What is "extending the language" supposed to mean? You're "creating abstractions"? You can already define your own functions. You can bundle bits of code to be run later, in multiple different contexts. Why do I need to confuse a reader with alien syntax over this. Why is this such a big deal? I don't get it!

2026-03-30 16:34:48 UTC

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Why did they call it "vibecoding" when "slopware development" was right there?

2026-03-30 16:34:03 UTC

Software developers have been indifferent for a long time. Vibecoding is just the logical conclusion.
https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2026/the-inevitability-of-vibecoding/

2026-01-30 14:42:53 UTC

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This is a good point that I want to believe is genuinely in favour of IDEs which also serves to illustrate why I dislike them. Features like this a) suggest a reliance on OOP, and b) suggest that code is broken up into many small files. I shy away from both of these approaches in my own projects because I find that they make code more difficult to reason about from my natural bottom-up approach to solving problems.

2026-01-30 03:14:05 UTC

Is there any evidence that programmers are more productive when using IDEs? Fewer bugs, faster coding, minimal technical debt?

2026-01-28 23:15:00 UTC

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Usenet was before my time, so I'm not very familiar with the intricacies of how it works.
Your thesis about the low-latency Internet is interesting. I already hate low-latency communication, so this would just be another one for the pile, but I'm interested to hear *why* you think this is the case.

2026-01-28 19:42:09 UTC

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Still, it's worth pointing out that it is the Web that got enclosed the way it did, not other protocols. Something about the WWW makes it especially susceptible. In the absence of alternative networks, would other Internet protocols not at least offer some kind of safe haven from today's bullshit?

2026-01-28 19:39:28 UTC

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This is an excellent point and it echoes what [@hipsterelectron](https://circumstances.run/@hipsterelectron ) recently said about how it seems every layer of the Internet seems to have been designed to facilitate surveillance, which they surmised would make sense for what originated as a military project.

2026-01-28 19:26:49 UTC

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It's said that the Internet routes around censorship. I wonder if there will soon be a day where savvy users will route entirely around the WWW through the use of other services. The longer a technology has been around, the longer it can be expected to stay. Other internetworking technologies still in use today have not suffered nearly the same level of enclosure as has been done to the Web—except possibly e-mail—and those who want out should turn take a closer look at them.

2026-01-28 19:20:33 UTC

It's time to ask ourselves whether the World Wide Web is lost.

2025-12-09 21:23:23 UTC

Are there any good video players for Linux for TV shows? The user experience I'm seeking is:
- I select a folder to play
- I start watching
- I close the app
- Sometime later, I reopen the app and it loads the playlist I was watching, at roughly the same position
In essence, I want the Netflix viewing experience except with the media I already have.
Please don't recommend hacks. I'm looking for sane defaults. I prefer an app that targets #GNOME but, really, anything will do.

2025-12-03 17:48:00 UTC

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The attitude. Devs for GNOME itself as well as third-party apps all seem united by an idea that software can and should always be made simpler to use. Instead of piling on features to solve edge cases, the problem space is reexamined, and old solutions are replaced by simpler ones which solve more problems.

2025-05-16 16:40:36 UTC

I saw a post here that suggested that GNOME becoming "less featureful" was somehow regressive. I strongly disagree.
https://www.vtrlx.ca/posts/2025/less-features-more-productivity/

2025-02-18 21:59:30 UTC

Tally has been updated to allow the app to properly display on mobile devices. Big thanks to @npub1u36…w5c4 for contributing the code for this change—I just made a few extra tweaks from there.
Get it on Linux from Flathub at https://flathub.org/apps/ca.vlacroix.Tally/
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