RSS Parrot

New Blog Post: "A Perplexing Javascript Parsing Puzzle"

https://buttondown.com/hillelwayne/archive/new-blog-post-a-perplexing-javascript-parsing/

Published: March 12, 2025 14:49

I know I said we'd be back to normal newsletters this week and in fact had 80% of one already written. Then I unearthed something that was better left buried. Blog post here, Patreon notes here (Mostly an explanation of how I found this horror in the…

Five Kinds of Nondeterminism

https://buttondown.com/hillelwayne/archive/five-kinds-of-nondeterminism/

Published: February 19, 2025 19:37

No newsletter next week, I'm teaching a TLA+ workshop. Speaking of which: I spend a lot of time thinking about formal methods (and TLA+ specifically) because it's where the source of almost all my revenue. But I don't share most of the details because 90%…

Are Efficiency and Horizontal Scalability at odds?

https://buttondown.com/hillelwayne/archive/are-efficiency-and-horizontal-scalability-at-odds/

Published: February 12, 2025 18:26

Sorry for missing the newsletter last week! I started writing on Monday as normal, and by Wednesday the piece (about the hierarchy of controls ) was 2000 words and not close to done. So now it'll be a blog post sometime later this month. I also just…

What hard thing does your tech make easy?

https://buttondown.com/hillelwayne/archive/what-hard-thing-does-your-tech-make-easy/

Published: January 29, 2025 18:09

I occasionally receive emails asking me to look at the writer's new language/library/tool. Sometimes it's in an area I know well, like formal methods. Other times, I'm a complete stranger to the field. Regardless, I'm generally happy to check it out. When…

The Juggler's Curse

https://buttondown.com/hillelwayne/archive/the-jugglers-curse/

Published: January 22, 2025 18:50

I'm making a more focused effort to juggle this year. Mostly boxes, but also classic balls too.1 I've gotten to the point where I can almost consistently do a five-ball cascade, which I thought was the cutoff to being a "good juggler". "Thought" because I…

What are the Rosettas of formal specification?

https://buttondown.com/hillelwayne/archive/what-are-the-rosettas-of-formal-specification/

Published: January 15, 2025 17:34

First of all, I just released version 0.6 of Logic for Programmers! You can get it here. Release notes in the footnote.1 I've been thinking about my next project after the book's done. One idea is to do a survey of new formal specification languages.…

"Logic for Programmers" Project Update

https://buttondown.com/hillelwayne/archive/logic-for-programmers-project-update/

Published: January 7, 2025 18:49

Happy new year everyone! I released the first Logic for Programmers alpha six months ago. There's since been four new versions since then, with the November release putting us in beta. Between work and holidays I didn't make much progress in December, but…

Formally modeling dreidel, the sequel

https://buttondown.com/hillelwayne/archive/formally-modeling-dreidel-the-sequel/

Published: December 18, 2024 16:58

Channukah's next week and that means my favorite pastime, complaining about how Dreidel is a bad game. Last year I formally modeled it in PRISM to prove the game's not fun. But because I limited the model to only a small case, I couldn't prove the game was…

Stroustrop's Rule

https://buttondown.com/hillelwayne/archive/stroustrops-rule/

Published: December 11, 2024 17:32

Just finished two weeks of workshops and am exhausted, so this one will be light. Hanuka Sale Logic for Programmers is on sale until the end of Chanukah! That's Jan 2nd if you're not Jewish. Get it for 40% off here. Stroustrop's Rule I first encountered…

Hyperproperties

https://buttondown.com/hillelwayne/archive/hyperproperties/

Published: November 19, 2024 19:34

I wrote about hyperproperties on my blog four years ago, but now an intriguing client problem got me thinking about them again.1 We're using TLA+ to model a system that starts in state A, and under certain complicated conditions P, transitions to state B.…