David Beazley

Educator and musician living in Evanston, Illinois. I wrote some Python books, but you'll probably find me yapping on about bikes, trombones, dogs, and other random stuff here. Currently pursuing a MAT in Secondary Education with the hope of becoming a high school math teacher.

Website: https://dabeaz.com
Github: https://github.com/dabeaz

Public Key

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dabeaz_at_mastodon.social@momostr.pink

Profile Code

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relay.momostr.pink

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Last Notes

2026-04-09 10:50:27 UTC

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And the world being on fire.

2026-04-09 10:47:05 UTC

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I am seriously depressed about this whole situation. And don't even get me started about the cost of college. Or the current employment prospects for entry level people on the other side of it.

2026-04-09 10:39:58 UTC

Must say, it's a hell of a time to be the parent of a moody student making a college decision when I've got a whole lot of thoughts about what AI has done to education. Not to mention all of my other thoughts about what Trump has done to research. And the nature of academia that was already around before any of this recent stuff. Kid, can you please just fucking pick the friendly small liberal arts school already?!?

2026-03-20 11:50:43 UTC

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It could be its own code review... "the code looks pretty buffaloed to me. Have fun with that."

2026-03-20 11:47:50 UTC

Idle thought: "buffalo" would be a good name for a coding agent. Then you could say things like "buffaloed buffalo", "buffalo buffaloed", "buffaloing buffulo", "unbuffaloed buffalo", "buffaloed buffalo buffaloed", "buffalo rebuffaloed", "buffalo buffaloes buffalo", and so on.
When fed back into buffalo's training, maybe all this writing would eventually drive buffalo into the singularity or some kind of other BS.

2026-03-19 17:05:36 UTC

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As a resident of the 9th district, it was pretty interesting to watch her campaign. She always struck me as authentic. I got a bit of a behind-the-scenes view of how she handled herself with 4th of July parades as well (I was in a group that marched just behind her and her entourage in one parade actually).
I'm just not sure she was able to fully cut through the chaos of that campaign--media exposure seemed thin to me near the end.

2026-03-14 17:55:49 UTC

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Thanks everyone for the kind words! This is by no means guaranteed--I have to take about 24 semester hours of classes, complete "field work" in HS classrooms, and eventually go through 10 weeks of student teaching. Plus there's the challenge of finding a job as a late career switcher. I like my odds (and math is a decently solid place to be as far as teacher demand), but I definitely don't think it's going to be easy.
At the very least, it's unlikely to be boring ;-).

2026-03-14 14:34:53 UTC

It just occurred to me that Pi-day might be the most appropriate day to make this kind of announcement about my future plans. https://dabeaz.com/next.html

2026-03-12 03:05:23 UTC

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Nah, I was just portending some future Python syntax involving triple-star--the behavior of which is to be determined. A pre-PEP maybe.

2026-03-11 21:11:09 UTC

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Have you considered using `** = ***`?

2026-03-08 22:24:47 UTC

The fact that there's so many tech people against daylight savings time tells me that it's probably a pretty good idea actually.

2026-03-06 12:20:54 UTC

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Neat! Kid was admitted to UMN and Macalester so we're checking things out. I have my thoughts on such things, but I'm not the one going.

2026-03-06 10:37:09 UTC

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So, with the purpose of this trip being a visit to nice quiet liberal arts college, we somehow found ourselves here last night. Uh.....
We had a great time. The key to a really good road trip, I think, is to impulsely do weird stuff that's outside your norm. Like that time I visited the Lawrence Welk childhood home and Graceland on the same road trip.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/181/757/318/618/841/original/575dc6faebaadd34.png

2026-03-05 18:29:32 UTC

Johnny Cash really is the perfect soundtrack for a college visit road trip with kid.

2026-03-04 14:17:56 UTC

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Rust is very different and it took me quite a lot of time to wrap my brain around what was happening. However, there is an overall consistency of vision about it that pays off I think.

2026-03-04 14:11:54 UTC

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I don't mind dynamic typing and I don't mind static typing, but gradual typing is just not a very enjoyable experience for me.
With regards to flexibility, I have found Rust to be pretty enjoyable--and there's a lot of things you can do if you get into things like macros.

2026-03-04 13:50:34 UTC

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I guess it depends on who you talk to. I think gradual typing is, in general, kind of a circus.

2026-03-04 13:24:32 UTC

"It fits your brain". https://peps.python.org/pep-0827/

2026-03-02 11:58:02 UTC

Wonder if I should install docker.

2026-03-02 02:15:12 UTC

In trying to make programming predictable, computer scientists have mostly succeeded in making programmers predictable.

2026-02-27 15:51:16 UTC

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I've been thinking about getting a T-shirt that says "Those who can't Claude" on it. If asked, I'd just complain about it missing the comma.

2026-02-25 15:48:52 UTC

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Because I'm cynical and think regulation is going to follow the money. They will literally regulate the worst possible outcome.

2026-02-25 15:37:05 UTC

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The likely outcome of any regulation is that software engineers will be forced to prove that they used AI.

2026-02-10 12:32:10 UTC

Age verification challenge: I know how to print things.

2026-02-08 14:18:08 UTC

What if there never was any craft?

2026-02-05 11:54:42 UTC

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Well, there is the whole extra super-fun bonus of aging parents thrown in here too ;-).

2026-02-05 11:51:51 UTC

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This babbling inspired by some recent conversation around "well, couldn't you keep the business going for awhile?" It's not entirely clear that there *is* anything to keep going.

2026-02-05 11:42:23 UTC

I find myself at a crossroads with respect to my business. I've always thought of myself as a kind of "academic", but I've long had a lot of misgivings about the whole system of academia as currently practiced. So, I'm fine with being out of the University.
I've been able to happily occupy a strange niche of independent teaching, but the recent headwinds have been undeniably fierce and I don't really think I'd enjoy a pivot to "prompting." So.... anyways, I'm babbling.

2026-02-03 01:24:00 UTC

Well, after 14 years, my Write a Compiler course is having its final curtain call February 16-20. You can still get in on the action though http://dabeaz.com/compiler.html.
Honestly, it's hard for me to believe that taking a class like this out of a university setting would even work for as long as it did. I definitely had a blast teaching it! But, alas, all good things eventually come to an end. Time to rotate the crops.

2026-01-21 14:58:27 UTC

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The problem is that I'm pretty niche and I also have a moral compass. I generally don't advertise at all. Very occasionally, I've made use of things like EthicalAds.

2026-01-21 14:39:20 UTC

I know about the collapse of traffic to sites like Stack Overflow, but is that also being seen on sites like ReadTheDocs?
This question partly motivated by a discussion I was having with someone about "where would one actually advertise?" in relation to the drop in my own business.

2026-01-15 13:36:51 UTC

The thing is, there's a big difference between code written by someone who doesn't know what they're doing versus code written by someone who doesn't care about what they're doing.

2026-01-05 12:31:48 UTC

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I've mostly just been quieting unfollowing people.

2026-01-05 11:57:38 UTC

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It occurs to me that ed would be a really great candidate for the Raft "application." That is, implement the Raft algorithm so that you can make a fault-tolerant replicated version of ed.

2026-01-05 11:51:08 UTC

Getting ready for this week's Raft course. I'll probably use emacs for this, but at any moment, I'll know that I could confidently switch to ed if I wanted to.

2026-01-03 01:33:46 UTC

Feeling completely brain-shattered by my whole epic Rust-ed coding adventure. What even was that? I have no idea. Still processing it.
Even more crazy is that I have the whole affair recorded end-to-end. Both on video and as a complete terminal history. All of the coding, debugging, testing, and refactoring is there. I'm figuring out what to do with that.
For now though.... sleepy time.

2025-12-31 12:21:14 UTC

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Like biking in the snow at 4:30am, when you code with ed, you know you'll code alone in a blissful state of flow.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/814/142/198/487/950/original/83f9c3e03b6be6ce.png

2025-12-31 10:34:19 UTC

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Too wired to sleep, but now a dilemma. Do I code more on the garbage collector or do I go out biking in the snow? Hmmm. Maybe both!

2025-12-30 23:59:57 UTC

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Well, I definitely coded up some garbage after that. Think that ends the day for now. Good progress overall.

2025-12-30 20:03:28 UTC

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Garbage collection is always better after a nap.

2025-12-30 18:15:29 UTC

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Well, Mabel's intuition on the HashMap proved insightful. I now seems to have closures working and Chapter 25 complete.
Oh, chapter 26 coming up. Garbage collection. How hard could that be?
(In theory, if I've been working my abstractions correctly, this will not be THAT hard. Famous last words).

2025-12-30 17:01:53 UTC

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Oh, AND NULL POINTERS.
Took a bit of a short break to rub Mabel's belly. She then whispered something that sounded sort of like "HashMap". So...

2025-12-30 16:51:02 UTC

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OKAY THEN. LET'S HAVE EVEN MORE MUTABLE LINKED LISTS!
The fact that this chapter ends with a little part titled "Challenges" is not lost on me...

2025-12-30 12:11:18 UTC

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Did I mention that there's not even any syntax highlighting?

2025-12-30 10:23:52 UTC

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As I get up for day 7....
Crafting Interpreters: "Here's this pointer to this thing that points at this other thing. But it doesn't own that. But don't worry, we'll fix that dangling pointer later. Oh, and note that it's kind of wild how we're mutating the thing in the middle of these other things inside this linked thing. LOL!"
Rust: <Icy Stare>
Ed: "I'm just sitting here laughing while I watch you try to edit/debug the thing."
Me: "Here, hold my beer."

2025-12-29 23:15:32 UTC

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Is there a hidden level beyond unsafe?

2025-12-29 23:10:35 UTC

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Yep, ended up undoing all of that. However, now really into some deep quicksand working on the implementation of closures (chapter 25). Pointers, linked lists, recursion, and mutability everywhere in all directions. This is some very happy Rust coding.

2025-12-29 18:09:57 UTC

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The fact that I just put two lifetime specifiers on a single structure and managed to get everything to compile and run again is a sure sign it might be time to take another break. I feel this part might be ending badly in the not too distant future... (and I will be undoing aforementioned lifetimes).

2025-12-29 15:39:32 UTC

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Made it to the end of chapter 24. An initial benchmark has me running 75% slower than Python 3.13 on a fibonacci example. Honestly not bad consider the primary focus up to now has been on getting it work at all.

2025-12-29 13:38:24 UTC

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As I go into day 6 of my big coding project comprising of a single `ed` session, the activity monitor tells me that `ed` has now used a cumulative total of 1.46s of CPU time.

2025-12-29 12:04:51 UTC

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Woke at 4am with a fix in mind so I coded that. It worked. Now, maybe an exercise break before getting native functions implemented.

2025-12-29 02:11:12 UTC

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Welp, hit a wall on the borrow checker with something. Time for sleep I think.

2025-12-29 00:29:54 UTC

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Well, this chapter 24 on functions is definitely "a beast" as self-described in the opening sentence. I've made it to the part of trying to call functions (not yet working). Debating whether to try and power through after dinner or take a break until tomorrow.
Aside: The "flow state" of coding in ed is far more intense than I would have anticipated. Time disappears.

2025-12-28 22:05:31 UTC

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Ah yes. All manner of "hard" stuff (i.e., ownership issues) can be solved with macros. As foretold.

2025-12-28 18:16:42 UTC

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Maybe a bit of reading and some basic preliminaries first. Then a nap. Then work on the hard stuff. That sounds like a plan.

2025-12-28 17:41:22 UTC

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Well, I've made it through Chapter 23 on control flow and have loops working. Functions await. I suspect things are going to get bad now. Maybe a break for lunch first. And maybe a nap.
"What do you think Mabel?"

2025-12-28 14:24:21 UTC

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Meanwhile, I woke up in the middle of the night and mumbled something about "macros." Think I'll warm up with that--in ed (as previously noted).

2025-12-28 14:06:58 UTC

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Say what you will about dogs, but they'll gladly sit there and eagerly listen to your "ideas."

2025-12-28 14:05:33 UTC

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"So Mabel, hear me out for a moment. Because of memory safety--Rust. Because of memory prices--ed."
"Yeah, the standard editor."
"Anyways Mabel, day 5 of my project awaits."
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/797/562/496/447/648/original/a32c26a30cc80883.png

2025-12-27 23:51:52 UTC

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Day 4 is done and I'm up to about 20 hours of effort now. I've made it through local variables and am preparing to start Chapter 23 on control flow. I can't even express how much fun this project is with the crazy tooling--or lack of tooling as the case may be. The "standard editor" indeed.

2025-12-27 01:57:46 UTC

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Okay. Day 3 is done. Made it to the part just before global variables are defined. So, tomorrow will probably be dedicated to all things variables. About 15 hours into the project now.

2025-12-26 23:11:19 UTC

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So, I've decided to do my own GC. Have now reached the hash table chapter. Rust already has its own HashMap. I could use that as a shortcut. Or I could try to roll with the book and make my own.
At the moment, the Hash in the book seems somewhat disconnected from everything else. And I don't recall Lox as having HashMap as a kind of value that you could use in user code. Somewhat inclined to use Rust HashMap<> for this until I run into a reason not to.

2025-12-26 19:27:29 UTC

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The book sets up linked lists of heap-allocated objects (in C). Could be dicey trying to replicate that. Part of me says the whole problem could be avoided by slapping Rc<> on everything. But, that feels like cheating and not in the spirit of the overall affair. So.... hmmm.

2025-12-26 19:19:17 UTC

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Well, I seem to have made it as far as the great abyss--the point where Crafting Interpreters wants me to think about garbage collection. Coding in Rust, this is about to get "interesting." Maybe a short nap is in order first.

2025-12-26 13:32:02 UTC

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Well, up for day 3 of the crusted-ed project. Had a very sloppy bike ride in the rain to prepared for the day. Will now clean up and take care of the pooch before plowing onward into some code cleanup and further chapters.

2025-12-26 02:50:30 UTC

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Looks like the next few sections implement features that Rust already has (strings, hashmap, etc.). As instructive as that might be, I'm not going to reimplement all of that from scratch. At least I don't think so.

2025-12-26 02:44:05 UTC

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Finally made it through the first part of parsing (chapter 17). I'm about 8 hours into the whole project so far. But, done for today.

2025-12-25 17:26:18 UTC

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Welp, I've made it through scanning. Take a break in preparation for parsing. Still haven't left the original `ed` session I started yesterday.

2025-12-25 15:12:18 UTC

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Ok, let's continue onward with scanning! I already continue this once before in Rust, but the implementation in the second half of Crafting Interpreters takes a different approach with ownership. So, I'll try to stay in the spirit of that as I go.

2025-12-25 02:25:54 UTC

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Not sure how long this is going to take, but I'm guess it's definitely going to be a multi-day project (maybe even a week). Pondering: Should I upload the video in progress or wait until the whole thing is done?

2025-12-25 02:12:53 UTC

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About 3 hours in now. Made it to the start of scanning (section 16.1.2 in Crafting Interpreters). Wrote a Rust macro. Floundered about with some ed regex for a bit. However, making steady progress.

2025-12-24 21:54:21 UTC

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And, in the middle of working on this crazy Rust/ed coding thing, I get an AI-generated email from "Claude" thanking me for my Python work? WTF?!?!?

2025-12-24 21:50:09 UTC

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Also, mixing up ed regular expressions with Rust syntax is proving to be an interesting head trip.

2025-12-24 21:48:58 UTC

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Well, I'm about 90 minutes into this project so far. It's, uh, freaky. But, I'm making progress. Translating C to Rust is a whole different game than translating Java. I don't really feel like doing all of this low-level byte oriented free/malloc business. No, I'll just use Vec<> and other nice Rust stuff.

2025-12-24 13:00:03 UTC

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After some playing around, I definitely think this needs to happen. Maybe I'll work through the 2nd half of Crafting Interpreters with Rust/ed. Maybe I should record this frivolity as some kind of 20 hour YouTube video.

2025-12-22 13:18:53 UTC

I don't know why, but Im feeling a strange urge to try and program Rust using ed. It's probably not a useful skill, but it might qualify as an unusual skill.

2025-12-21 13:19:40 UTC

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No, no, no. The trick to a yearly goal is to make it a nice big round number. You know, like 5000 Jira tickets.

2025-12-21 11:23:29 UTC

I'm starting to think that the main problem with having an unfinished year-end cycling goal is that bikes don't ride themselves.

2025-12-10 13:11:12 UTC

Yes, I just had to change a flat tire on my bike in freezing rain, in the dark, about 6 miles from my house. I arrived back home a wet mess, covered head to toe with road grime, and a big freaking smile on my face knowing that I was able to get myself out of that sloppy mess without calling for help or taking the train.
And you really think I'm going to use an AI assistant for coding?!? You don't get good stories with AI. Like that time I figured out that wicked bug by thinking.

2025-12-01 11:56:32 UTC

Getting ready for a week of compiler writing. Debating if I should give it a go in Rust again ;-).

2025-11-22 14:54:16 UTC

Debate: do a bit of work or sleep all day?

2025-11-18 14:39:04 UTC

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Just say that if you don't do it, one of your coworkers will.

2025-11-18 13:53:49 UTC

As far as I can tell, the CGI script that lets you register to write a compiler (and you know you want to) is still working. https://dabeaz.com/compiler.html

2025-11-05 21:16:13 UTC

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I remember at one point I was the only person in the CS department who could print documents on Windows machine to a printer attached to a Unix machine. When asked about this sorcery, I just said I used Windows "help" and followed its instructions exactly.

2025-10-12 12:01:37 UTC

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Also: Slow. Clap.

2025-10-12 12:01:11 UTC

When I hear about the Apple Calculator app casually leaking 32GB of memory, I'm not thinking that's a lot of memory--I'm thinking that's a Connection Machine 5 amount of memory.
(The 1024 node CM-5 supercomputer at Los Alamos had 32GB of memory when I used it).

2025-10-10 21:56:52 UTC

Apropos of nothing, not a single landscaping crew to be seen or heard in the neighborhood today. I can only hope that it's because they were raptured, but I fear otherwise given the weird helicopter circling around while walking the dog just now. Hell.

2025-10-05 19:03:23 UTC

Wondering: What would be the most compelling reason for a Python programmer to want to code something in Rust? And don't say "memory safety"--that is *NOT* at all compelling to someone coming from Python IMO.

2025-10-03 13:28:49 UTC

When people were talking about Python optional typing in 1997, I always had an inkling of a gut feeling that it would probably cause a wide range of unforeseen issues. In hindsight, I think I lacked the experience and imagination to fully foresee the true magnitude of it.

2025-09-07 11:38:29 UTC

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I also have the dog lurking about (still sleeping). Ha!

2025-09-07 11:31:19 UTC

Freaking allergies are too intense for me to go biking this morning. So, an early morning of Rust macros instead.

2025-08-19 00:20:42 UTC

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I do NOT recommend writing a book.

2025-08-09 14:14:06 UTC

Kid: "I'm going to concert with friends later."
Me: "Who are you seeing?"
Kid: "You probably wouldn't know."
Me: "Try me."
Kid: "Toto and Men at Work."
Me: Stupified stare...

2025-04-18 14:03:20 UTC

Generic expert Python programming advice: "Or, you could just not do any of that."

2025-01-23 11:39:59 UTC

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Although I will concede that coding Rust without an IDE might be a contributing factor as to why I suddenly can't recall your name.

2025-01-23 11:31:40 UTC

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Apropos of nothing, I recently saw someone claiming that if you coded Rust without an IDE, you were insane. I like to look at it the other way. If I can code Rust without an IDE, I'm probably not suffering from early onset dementia.

2025-01-23 11:03:33 UTC

There must be something wrong with me with respect to IDEs. Felt relief after uninstalling the fancy Rust LSP thing for emacs and going back to the basic syntax highlighting thing.

2024-12-30 13:16:12 UTC

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Apparently Arun was at UChicago pursuing a PhD when he decided to start this restaurant. Doing a bit of math in my head, if I were to "retire" at the same age of 78, then I also would have run my business for 39 years after leaving UChicago. Freaky.
Although given the current direction of "tech", there's no way I'm waiting until 78 to retire. Sorry. No.

2024-12-30 04:41:23 UTC

Well, that was weird. Go out for our anniversary unknowing that we booked a table at the last *ever* service at the famous Arun's Thai restaurant, closing after 39 years. Met Arun. Ended up on the local news as well. https://www.fox32chicago.com/news/aruns-thai-restaurant-closes-after-almost-four-decades-chicagos-northwest-side

2024-12-27 13:38:56 UTC

Thought: Calling it AI slop is kind of insulting to slop.