How I Translate Feature Requests into Code
As part of my previous job I worked on a CAD/CAM package, and a very common task would be to take a vague feature description, rephrase it as a more formal software problem, then use computational …
Posts
Essays, experiments, and field notes from building software.
2020
Geometric Constraint Solvers Part 1: Algebraic Expressions
A really powerful tool in Computer Aided Design (CAD) is the ability to apply “constraints” to your drawing. Constraints are a really powerful tool, allowing the drafter to declare how parts of their …
Writing Non-Trivial Macros in Rust
Macros in Rust tend to have a reputation for being complex and magical, the likes which only seasoned wizards like @dtolnay can hope to understand, let alone master. Rust’s declarative macros provide …
Rust Closures in FFI
Every now and then when using native libraries from Rust you’ll be asked to pass a callback across the FFI boundary. The reasons are varied, but often this might be done to notify the caller when …
Creating a Robust, Reusable Link-Checker
With over 68,842 downloads, one of my most successful Rust projects is a nondescript little program called mdbook-linkcheck . This is a link-checker for mdbook , the tool powering a lot of …
How I Reverse Engineered the LastPass CLI Tool
A couple days ago I was writing an install script for my dotfiles and reached a point where I wanted to grab some secrets (my SSH keys) from my LastPass vault and copy them to the file system. This is …
Reflections on What Motivates a Person
Motivation is a funny thing. I’m someone who’s productivity levels change wildly depending on my motivation levels. When I work on something which I’m passionate about or which interests me on an …
Line Simplification with Ramer–Douglas–Peucker
The other day I needed to do a fairly routine graphical operation, to “simplify” a polyline with many points into a simpler polyline which has roughly the same shape plus or minus some tolerance …
A Pragmatic Approach To Global State
One of the first things I learned when programming professionally is that global variables are bad. We all take it for granted that it’s bad practice to write code that relies heavily on global state …
I Made A Thing: Markedit
A couple days ago I released markedit , a small crate for editing unstructured markdown documents. This is a useful enough library that I thought I’d explain the main ideas behind it and potential use …