Chris Dickinson
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neversaw.us
Chris Dickinson
@neversaw.us
former Node.js TSC & NPM registry eng / systems eng (❤️ rust, bash, js, tf) / sometimes illustrator / pets cats; pronouns he/him

(@isntitvacant elsewhere)
Reposted by Chris Dickinson
ideas got power
October 18, 2025 at 7:51 PM
Reposted by Chris Dickinson
wasm’ers rise up
In Telemelt, every player runs the emulator locally while peer-to-peer networking keeps state synced between players. The controller can be passed seamlessly, and the controller player is never subject to any network latency.
September 23, 2025 at 12:26 AM
gen z (probably?) doesn’t remember having to look up the new 2002 horror film, feardotcom, by navigating to feardotcom dot com
The cultural cutoff between millennials and gen Z is that Gen z doesn’t remember 9/11. That’s kinda the defining event.

But also they probably don’t remember pre Google internet. Younger gen z doesn’t remember a world where iPhones didn’t exist, either.
September 10, 2025 at 1:17 PM
hard agree on all of these, & with the implication of 6 that “no ambient platform deps can be imported” (e.g. you can’t import “node:fs” without declaring it as a dependency)
4. All packages MUST be ESM (JSR ok here)
5. MUST include docstrings on all publicly-reachable interfaces.
6. MUST NOT include any type of dependency other than a named registry dependency with a semver version (no git deps etc)
7. MUST have a non-trivial README.
8. MUST be tied to a PUBLIC repo.
September 9, 2025 at 11:13 PM
“there, it’s done, what do you think” as the camera pans over all of the interociter parts on the ground (via mst3k: the movie)
Does anyone else have an MST3K line they use regularly, even if it makes no sense out of context?

Because I have both "That'll keep your panfish down for a while." and "Come come, boys, we must confound Jerry at every turn!" from MST3K the movie alone.
August 22, 2025 at 4:01 AM
a research q: how many times has the pendulum swung between thick clients and thick servers in computing?

examples would be like: time-sharing moving to workstations, server-rendered websites moving to react/client rendered websites (and back), etc etc
August 7, 2025 at 7:26 PM
Reposted by Chris Dickinson
I know this can sound kind of silly at a time like this, but doing a war without congressional authorization is ample grounds for impeachment
June 22, 2025 at 12:03 AM
wow, github truncates file display after 1000 lines now? what a terrible idea!
May 28, 2025 at 5:52 PM
I think if I were to summarize “what’s interesting about MCP” it would be that it there’s a kernel of useful interfaces that a lot of people have agreed to implement— both in client applications and server providers.

It started as “close enough to the right thing” that it gained adoption and grew.
May 11, 2025 at 3:54 AM
having one of those days where “popping the stack” on my todo list seems to push two new items onto the stack
April 24, 2025 at 8:21 PM
Reposted by Chris Dickinson
JSPI, the wasm JavaScript Promise Integration proposal, is now at phase 4:

github.com/WebAssembly/...

That means it is considered fully standardized.

JSPI lets wasm call JS APIs that return a Promise. The wasm awaits it.

It is still behind a flag in most browsers, but hopefully not for long!
Move JSPI to phase 4 by tlively · Pull Request #207 · WebAssembly/proposals
We voted this to phase 4 at the April 8, 2025 meeting.
github.com
April 15, 2025 at 11:50 PM
huh when i open up my 401k website it just starts playing wiz khalifa’s “see you again”, is this normal
April 3, 2025 at 5:27 AM
well, I just caught up on the news and: jfc
March 25, 2025 at 2:24 AM
I absolutely loved this talk.

It's the endpoint of "programming as theory-building" – by turning software engineering into a rogue-like, the durable product of development is a better theory of how to solve the problem at hand.

www.hytradboi.com/2025/03580e1...
Throwing it all away - how extreme rewriting changed the way I build databases
www.hytradboi.com
March 3, 2025 at 7:08 PM
so, ICYMI, I've been pushing along a (spec-compliant! slow!) wasm interpreter here: github.com/chrisdickins...

I've gotten a lot of the structure incorrect. (quelle surprise!)

Part one is to start to put cut points between "machine" and "runtime". So I'm identifying organelles of a Wasm runtime.
February 26, 2025 at 6:33 PM
Reposted by Chris Dickinson
Just watched Sen King's speech on the Senate floor - thank you for that! Every American should hear this.
#CourageIsContagious

youtu.be/g2ptQFOi9Pg
“Thoughtless and Dangerous” King says on Senate Floor in Response to Trump Administration Firings
YouTube video by Senator Angus S. King, Jr.
youtu.be
February 24, 2025 at 4:33 AM
I had a thought last night about writing a follow-up to "understanding wasm": "building wasm"

which would take a comparative look at how wasm runtimes are structured, maybe trying to link that back to VM design texts, etc
February 21, 2025 at 5:09 PM
Reposted by Chris Dickinson
(Boosts encouraged!)

Hi! 👋

I’m Kat. I’ve been a professional dev for over 15 years. I maintained the NPM CLI for 5 of those. I sat in TC39. I work at Microsoft. I’m self taught w/a film degree and no formal CS edu.

Are you new to tech? What do you wish you could ask some1 like me?

Literally AMA
I wonder if early-in-career folks would appreciate folks like me doing little AMAs on here.
February 21, 2025 at 2:51 AM
TIL that the term "pie in the sky" comes from an IWW song

also that it was sung to counter the salvation army (!!) who would show up to counter-protest at strikes (!!!)
February 21, 2025 at 4:57 PM
Reposted by Chris Dickinson
🚀 Chicory 1.1.0 is here! 🚀

This release brings SIMD support, improved Android compatibility (API 28+), and overall performance boosts! ⚡

Read more: 🔗 chicory.dev/blog/chicory...

#WebAssembly #Java #Chicory #wasm
Announcing Chicory 1.1.0: Faster and More Compliant | Chicory
We’re excited to announce the release of Chicory 1.1.0! This update brings significant performance improvements, enhanced compliance, and greater flexibility—all while maintaining full backward compat...
chicory.dev
February 21, 2025 at 10:22 AM
whoda thunk that getting blood drawn would knock you out.

(me. ida thunk. i almost thunked right onto the floor, in fact)
February 18, 2025 at 7:23 PM
I'm always down for chain reaction, a film where keanu just really needs to upload something important to the internet
February 13, 2025 at 12:15 AM
only a little sad that (neo-)vim doesn't have a parallel to ":wq" for touching a file in-place to retrigger a build (":ew!")
January 24, 2025 at 7:47 PM
Reposted by Chris Dickinson
Do you work at a company you like that is actively hiring Software Engineers? do you know someone who does?

Consider referring me to them & them to me! My website homepage now has a "Hire Me!!" section with info about me, what I'm looking for, and how to contact me!

esoterra.dev
January 8, 2025 at 7:02 PM
carping for a second: typescript-lsp includes a formatter (great! good! ok!); typescript-lsp disagrees with prettier on some indentation (okay! fine! alright!); typescript-lsp doesn't seem to expose a way to call its formatter from the command line (terrible! awful! for the love of god, montresor!)
January 7, 2025 at 8:37 PM