Author | Lightnews

Tom MacWright (archive) @archive.macwright.com · Feb 28

come for the easy tool to track metrics about codebases over time, stay for the tedious discussion about how our node_modules directory is big partially because some NPM packages include three copies of all their code http://blog.val.town/blog/devstats/

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Tom MacWright (archive) @archive.macwright.com · Feb 28

recently: https://macwright.com/2024/11/03/recently

Tom MacWright (archive) @archive.macwright.com · Feb 28

thoughts on the news from @browsercompany, which announced that they're building a new product and parking the arc browser https://macwright.com/2024/10/25/arc-browser

Tom MacWright (archive) @archive.macwright.com · Feb 28

i used the knip module to find & delete a bunch of unused code from the val town codebase today, and it was very good: https://macwright.com/2024/10/25/good-software-knip

Tom MacWright (archive) @archive.macwright.com · Feb 28

if you use react, do you use the startTransition API for anything:

Tom MacWright (archive) @archive.macwright.com · Feb 28

this place keeps getting worse. really trying to migrate over to https://mastodon.social/@tmcw

Tom MacWright (archive) @archive.macwright.com · Feb 28

i feel like this is not getting that much buzz, despite being one half of one billion dollars american https://x.com/poolsideai/status/1841529216711397661

Tom MacWright (archive) @archive.macwright.com · Feb 28

recently: https://macwright.com/2024/10/01/recently

Tom MacWright (archive) @archive.macwright.com · Feb 28

netlify has been what i use to run http://macwright.com for years now, and i almost never talk about it, because it just works.

so let me take this occasion to say: it's been great and congrats to them! https://x.com/biilmann/status/1838970803154792875

Tom MacWright (archive) @archive.macwright.com · Feb 28

whether something changes for every render or is constant between renders is both (1) really important and usually the difference between a page glitching and infinite-looping (2) something that react, and frameworks, hate to specify, for some reason!

Tom MacWright (archive) @archive.macwright.com · Feb 28

in which i argue that react's documentation of useEffect is not good: https://macwright.com/2024/09/19/the-extra-rules-of-hooks

Tom MacWright (archive) @archive.macwright.com · Feb 28

google's really been sidelined for front-end tech across the board: it's all written in microsoft's language, in microsoft's editor, with facebook's framework, whereas dart, clojure compiler, angular are all withering away. does not seem like google wants to compete.

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Tom MacWright (archive) @archive.macwright.com · Feb 28

kinda crazy that google didn't respond to vs code by building a vs code competitor inside of chrome on top of devtools

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Tom MacWright (archive) @archive.macwright.com · Feb 28

the arms war of ai tools to spam job applications and ai tools to evaluate job applications is really heating up

Tom MacWright (archive) @archive.macwright.com · Feb 28

oh heck ya https://x.com/transitapp/status/1833947514833150167

Tom MacWright (archive) @archive.macwright.com · Feb 28

housing folks: a good friend of mine pitches the idea that rental agreements should be required to have lease-to-own provisions - renting for x years legally gives the renter some % of equity

has this been tried? would it work?

Tom MacWright (archive) @archive.macwright.com · Feb 28

the new iphone is a phone

Tom MacWright (archive) @archive.macwright.com · Feb 28

wrote a short thing about what taxes are for https://macwright.com/2024/09/07/what-are-taxes-for

Tom MacWright (archive) @archive.macwright.com · Feb 28

recently: https://macwright.com/2024/09/05/recently

Tom MacWright (archive) @archive.macwright.com · Feb 28

local brooklyn transpo anecdata: the livingston st bus-rapid-transit lanes seem to be working, those buses are zippin

Tom MacWright (archive) @archive.macwright.com · Feb 28

val town is built on open source. we need it, so we started paying for it ($9.6k so far this year) and joined the open source pledge: https://blog.val.town/blog/oss/

Tom MacWright (archive) @archive.macwright.com · Feb 28

in hindsight, @thegrid was 7 years too early, if they launched right now it'd pop off, ai-driven web design etc

Tom MacWright (archive) @archive.macwright.com · Feb 28

typescript is both supremely complex, and it's also (afaik) not based on a formal specification but rather the behavior of the typescript compiler / checker is the definition of what typescript is. the lack of a second implementation matters a lot or not at all depending.

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Tom MacWright (archive) @archive.macwright.com · Feb 28

the context is that most parts of the 'web development stack' have gotten a lot of competing implementations, a lot of them fast and in rust with lots of competition. the typescript type checker has not, there was one attempt to write another version and it fizzled.

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Tom MacWright (archive) @archive.macwright.com · Feb 28

will there ever be another implementation of typescript

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