Jacob Asper
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jacobasper.com
Jacob Asper
@jacobasper.com
530 followers 150 following 500 posts
Rust is a must
Cheese is scrumptious
#100Devs
he/they

https://jacobasper.com
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jacobasper.com
You can also pattern match it!
card = "3C" match card: case [value, 'C']: print(f"{value} of Clubs") case [value, 'H']: print(f"{value} of Hearts") case [value, 'D']: print(f"{value} of Diamonds") case [value, 'S']: print(f"{value} of Spades") case _: print("Invalid card format or suit")
November 11, 2025 at 1:38 AM
jacobasper.com
Now my JSON formatter has prettification and generally configurable options!

I handled
- arbitrary nesting
- better error messaging for unterminated values
- extracted object parsing from top level state machine

I am scared to handle proper string escaping 😅
#[test] fn prettify_arbitrarily_nested() { let input = r#" {"rust": {"rust": {"rust": {"rust": null } } } } "#; let expected = r#"{ "rust": { "rust": { "rust": { "rust": null } } } }"#; assert_eq!(prettify_str(input).unwrap(), expected) }
November 3, 2025 at 4:20 AM
jacobasper.com
I made a quick JSON formatter tonight!

Whenever I hear about syntax trees, I feel the need to build something related

I handled primitives and objects with primitive values and shall handle some nesting soon!
#[test] fn uglify_removes_whitespace_object() { let input = r#" { "hello hi": null , "by": "hello" } "#; let res = uglify_str(input).unwrap(); // we aren't guaranteed a key order assert!( res == r#"{"hello hi":null,"by":"hello"}"# || res == r#"{"by":"hello","hello hi":null}"# ); }
November 2, 2025 at 6:27 AM
jacobasper.com
Ironically just got an ad for them. They are steak nuggets, and an absurd amount a that
Advertisement for Arby’s new steak nuggets
November 2, 2025 at 1:25 AM
jacobasper.com
A snack tier list ranking various chips, crackers, cookies, and snack foods. From top to bottom, the tiers are labeled: “You dropped this... 👑” (Top Tier): Cheez-It, Club Crackers, Bugles, String Cheese, Rold Gold Pretzels, Premium Saltine Crackers, Goldfish, and Animal Crackers. A – Really Good: Takis, Doritos Spicy Sweet Chili, Ruffles Cheddar & Sour Cream, Cheetos Crunchy, Ritz Crackers, Cheetos Puffs, and Munchies Snack Mix. B – Good: Wheat Thins, Ruffles Original, Lay’s Classic, Pringles Original, Baked Lay’s, Planters Dry Roasted Peanuts, and Funyuns. C – Average: Rice Krispies Treats, Teddy Grahams Honey, Smartfood Popcorn, Oreo Mini Packs, Veggie Straws, Lay’s Barbecue, Powdered Donettes, Doritos Nacho Cheese, Cracker Jack, Fritos, Austin Cheese Crackers, Fritos Chili Cheese, Tostitos Scoops, Whales, Sun Chips Original, Chex Mix Traditional, Chester’s Fries, and Hot Fries. D – Bad: Welch’s Fruit Snacks, Triscuit Original, Nilla Wafers, and David Sunflower Seeds. F – Really Bad: Lay’s Kettle Cooked Chips, Jack Link’s Beef Jerky, Nutty Buddy Bars, Famous Amos Cookies, Lay’s Sour Cream & Onion, Powdered Donuts, and Grandma’s Cookies. Sickening (Bottom Tier): Girl Scout Samoas, Twinkies, Honey Buns, Swiss Rolls, Hostess Ding Dongs, Little Debbie Cosmic Brownies, Chips Ahoy Chewy, Tastykake Chocolate Cupcakes, Fig Newtons, and Little Debbie Zebra Cakes.
October 31, 2025 at 3:39 AM
jacobasper.com
Have I peaked as a developer? My power is too great

Sorry, command-not-found has crashed! Please file a bug report at: https://bugs.launchpad.net/command-not-found/+filebug Please include the following information with the report:
August 6, 2025 at 2:40 AM
jacobasper.com
The tracing crate is so beautiful. With just an instrument annotation, I can attach the video id if it exists to all the events for DB calls and HTTP requests throughout the life of my endpoint

#[instrument(skip(pool), fields(url, video_id = ?YTUrl::try_from(url.as_str())?.id()))] async fn summarize( Query(SummaryParams { url }): Query<SummaryParams>, State(pool): State<PgPool>, ) -> Result<(StatusCode, Json<Value>)> {
August 3, 2025 at 9:50 AM
jacobasper.com
This must be a new record for fixing CI!

I ran postgres in tests and it only took 4 attempts to get everything to work!

GitHub Actions workflows. 3 are failed and one passed
August 3, 2025 at 3:28 AM
jacobasper.com
I spent 30 minutes wondering why my records weren't being saved in the database 🙃

Hint: the syntax is all correct and the query runs fine
sqlx::query!( "UPDATE videos SET summary = $1 WHERE video_id = $2", summary, url.id_string(), )
August 2, 2025 at 1:33 AM
jacobasper.com
I missed "on" from Haskell in TypeScript and it was pretty straightforward to implement! Unfortunately both "fn" and "fn2" need passed at the same time for good inference, but I'm satisfied either way 😀
const len = ({length}: {length: number}) => length; const compare = <T extends number | string>(a: T, z: T) => a === z ? 0 : a > z ? 1 : -1; const on = <T, U, V>(fn: (x: T, y: T) => U, fn2: (x: V) => T) => (x: V, y: V) => fn(fn2(x), fn2(y)); ["hi", "slkdfjsldkfljsk", [10, 11]].sort(on(compare, len))
July 11, 2025 at 4:24 AM
jacobasper.com
Nice article!

It might even get me to reconsider buying this tapestry 😂
A tapestry with bubble from Barbie that reads, gaslight gatekeep girlboss
April 22, 2025 at 4:52 PM
jacobasper.com
Worm
A reddish worm that’s light red and translucent by the tail and a deep brown by the head. It’s moving on a sidewalk with greenery around
April 22, 2025 at 4:46 PM
jacobasper.com
Did a codewars in COBOL to see what all the fuss was about. I'm sure I could simplify this if I dug more into it

My review after writing an extremely simple program is that it's odd by modern standards. It's interesting to have so much control over datatypes via pictures
identification division. program-id. EVEN-OR-ODD. author. Jacob Asper. data division. working-storage section. 01 r pic s9(8). 01 q pic s9(8). linkage section. 01 num pic s9(8). 01 result pic a(4). procedure division using num result. initialize result divide num by 2 giving r remainder q if q is equal to 0 move "Even" to result else move "Odd" to result goback. end program EVEN-OR-ODD.
April 6, 2025 at 7:10 PM
jacobasper.com
Moo moo as a playable character is something I didn’t know I needed
A cow doing a wheelie a motorcycle on top of a powerline in Mario kart world trailer
April 2, 2025 at 11:35 PM
jacobasper.com
It will never stop making me laugh when I hear "slurping" in programming contexts

-- <your args> ........... to tell nodemon stop slurping arguments.
March 30, 2025 at 2:06 AM
jacobasper.com
How do y'all feel about the chatbot integrations in firefox? On a first glance it was a little odd, but it's been very nice. Sometimes it gets confused about what page I'm on, but that's to be expected with experimental features right?

A wikipedia page on ARPANET. A paragraph is highlighted, and a context menu asking with several options to prompt mistral appears. For example, quiz me, summarize, and a text box to put anything A chat window with Le Chat Mistral is open with some context about the page. It has prompted to ask for a quiz question about the selected text
March 25, 2025 at 1:06 AM
jacobasper.com
Cheesey Garlic bred time!
Garlic bread with cheese in a spiral pattern on a plate
March 21, 2025 at 2:38 PM
jacobasper.com
Wrote some terrible code to get multiple grammar errors working together! Now you can be notified of sticky lines. Sticky words hold sentences together but can make them tough to get through

Some examples are "so", "the", "that", "a"

I'm thinking about user configurable thresholds eventually!
An editor with a context menu showing an error with the message "Grammar Error Glue percentage too high: 66.7%"
March 19, 2025 at 4:22 AM
jacobasper.com
Wrote an SVG by hand since I couldn't find any tools that worked well. Now I have a very nice squiggly boy under my errors!

The top is the browser default and the below is mine

What do y'all use to edit SVGs, since random websites are not it ha
An editor with squiggly red underlines to denote errors <svg width="4" height="5" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"> <path stroke="#ff0000" fill="none" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-opacity=".75" d=" M 0,2 Q 2,5 4,2 "/> </svg>
March 18, 2025 at 2:11 AM
jacobasper.com
There are real errors coming from a real server now! I started with checking if the first word on a line was capitalized

You may notice that the underline doesn't show up under the g, and that's because underlines on Firefox just do that for some reason, so text decorations aren't viable here
An uncaptilized word has an underline under it. A context menu says that it should be capitalized
March 17, 2025 at 1:33 PM
jacobasper.com
Decided an API to mark spans as errors and added a custom context menu! Next I'll be onto making an API to send some errors over. I'm gonna go with Haskell because why not!
A text editor with red underlines under errors A context menu for an error with some mock text
March 10, 2025 at 10:22 PM
jacobasper.com
Making a (hopefully) accessible text editor! I've been frustrated by text editors that refuse to let screen readers read anything or hide the errors themselves
A red underline describes an error. A dialog popped up saying "you have made a grave error"
March 8, 2025 at 1:53 AM
jacobasper.com
Garlic bread with chese let’s go
4 slices of garlic bread with cheddar cheese
March 4, 2025 at 12:19 AM
jacobasper.com
I just hit over 100 words per minute on a typing test! It's on a subset of letters, but still an exciting milestone!

101.0 words per minute
March 1, 2025 at 8:02 PM
jacobasper.com
I just finished a codewars that was type level addition in TypeScript. It was fun until I had to do all kinds of shenanigans to get around the recursion limit

www.codewars.com/kat...
1/3
Type-level Addition v 4 kyu 13 completions DESCRIPTION: Define a type Add<M extends number, N extends number> such that Add<M, N> is equal to M + N at the type level for non-negative integer literal types M and N . Add<M, N> should work for sufficiently large values of M and N (upto 1012). Examples: const x: Add<3, const y: Add<17645829999ø, // Should be invalid: const z: Add<5, 7> 11; 614461515880> 790919815870;
February 27, 2025 at 1:10 AM