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This is the newsletter version of [my website](https://www.hillelwayne.com). I post all website updates here. I also post regular content just for the newsletter, on topics like * Formal Methods and applications of math to programming * Software History and Culture * Fringetech and exotic tooling, and deep dives into niche topics * The philosophy and theory of software engineering You can see the archive of all public essays [here](https://buttondown.email/hillelwayne/archive/).
Site URL: buttondown.email/hillelwayne
Feed URL: buttondown.email/hillelwayne/rss
Posts: 11
Followers: 2
How to convince engineers that formal methods is cool
https://buttondown.com/hillelwayne/archive/how-to-convince-engineers-that-formal-methods-is/
Published: October 8, 2024 16:18
Sorry there was no newsletter last week! I got COVID. Still got it, which is why this one's also short. Logic for Programmers v0.4 Now available! This version adds a chapter on TLA+, significantly expands the constraint solver chapter, and adds a "planner…
Refactoring Invariants
https://buttondown.com/hillelwayne/archive/refactoring-invariants/
Published: September 24, 2024 20:06
(Feeling a little sick so this one will be short.) I'm often asked by clients to review their (usually TLA+) formal specifications. These specs are generally slower and more convoluted than an expert would write. I want to fix them up without changing the…
Goodhart's Law in Software Engineering
https://buttondown.com/hillelwayne/archive/goodharts-law-in-software-engineering/
Published: September 17, 2024 16:33
Blog Hiatus You might have noticed I haven't been updating my website. I haven't even looked at any of my drafts for the past three months. All that time is instead going into Logic for Programmers. I'll get back to the site when that's done or in 2025,…
Why Not Comments
https://buttondown.com/hillelwayne/archive/why-not-comments/
Published: September 10, 2024 19:40
Logic For Programmers v0.3 Now available! It's a light release as I learn more about formatting a nice-looking book. You can see some of the differences between v2 and v3 here. Why Not Comments Code is written in a structured machine language, comments are…
Thoughts on "The Future of TLA+"
https://buttondown.com/hillelwayne/archive/what-could-be-added-to-tla/
Published: September 4, 2024 17:00
Last week Leslie Lamport posted The Future of TLA+, saying "the future of TLA+ is in the hands of the TLA+ foundation". Lamport released TLA+ in 1999 and shepherded its development for the past 25 years. Transferring ownership of TLA+ to the official…
State and time are the same thing
https://buttondown.com/hillelwayne/archive/state-and-time-are-the-same-thing/
Published: August 27, 2024 18:13
Time is state Imagine I put an ordinary ticking quartz clock in an empty room. I walk in, and ten minutes later I walk out with two photograph prints.1 In the 1st one, the second hand is pointing at the top of the clock, in the 2nd it's pointing at the…
An idea for teaching formal methods better
https://buttondown.com/hillelwayne/archive/an-idea-for-teaching-formal-methods-better/
Published: August 21, 2024 16:05
I was recently commissioned by a company to make a bespoke TLA+ workshop with a strong emphasis on reading specifications. I normally emphasize writing specs, so this one will need a different approach. While working on it, I had an idea that might make…
Texttools dot py
https://buttondown.email/hillelwayne/archive/texttools-dot-py/
Published: August 14, 2024 17:19
I make a lot of personal software tools. One of these is "texttools.py", which is easiest to explain with an image: Paste text in the top box, choose a transform, output appears in the bottom box. I can already do most of these transformations in vim, or…
Why I prefer rST to markdown
https://buttondown.email/hillelwayne/archive/why-i-prefer-rst-to-markdown/
Published: July 31, 2024 15:34
I just published a new version of Logic for Programmers! v0.2 has epub support, content on constraint solving and formal specification, and more! Get it here. This is my second book written with Sphinx, after the new Learn TLA+. Sphinx uses a peculiar…
My patented Miracle Tonic would have prevented the CrowdStrike meltdown
https://buttondown.email/hillelwayne/archive/my-patented-miracle-tonic-would-have-prevented/
Published: July 23, 2024 15:22
Last Friday CrowdStrike did something really bad and it destroyed every airport in the world. I didn't bother to learn anything else about it because I was too busy writing my 10k whitepaper about how all the problems were all caused by one simple mistake:…
Keep perfecting your config
https://buttondown.email/hillelwayne/archive/keep-perfecting-your-config/
Published: July 16, 2024 19:18
First of all, I wanted to extend a huge and heartfelt thank you to all of the people who bought Logic for Programmers. Seeing the interest is incredible motivation to continue improving it. If you read it and have feedback, please share it with me! Second,…