RSS Parrot

Fast is better than slow

https://dubroy.com/blog/fast-is-better-than-slow/

Published: May 23, 2026 00:00

Don’t question why. Fast is better than slow. That’s just how it is. Your job is to take everything you can already do and do it faster. If you can embrace the idea that fast is intrinsically better than slow, you’re halfway home. If you can get an entire…

devlog: compatibility packages

https://dubroy.com/blog/compatibility-packages/

Published: February 6, 2026 00:00

[this is a devlog post — a quick, lightly-edited post about stuff I’m working on right now] I’ll be introducing some breaking changes in the next major version of Ohm and I’d like to make the upgrade path as smooth as possible. So I’ve been investigating…

Look for what's true

https://dubroy.com/blog/look-for-whats-true/

Published: January 28, 2026 00:00

A few times in my career I’ve gotten feedback that really knocked me on my ass. The first few times it happened, I wasn’t mature enough to learn much from it. But eventually I discovered a little trick — something that helps me set my ego aside and…

De-Googling

https://dubroy.com/blog/de-googling/

Published: January 16, 2026 00:00

Since early last year, I’ve been trying to reduce my dependency on the big US tech companies, and US companies in general. Following Tim Bray, I’ve been thinking of this as de-Googling. I don’t really want to get into the reasons, except to say that I’m…

devlog: garbage collection is useful

https://dubroy.com/blog/garbage-collection-is-useful/

Published: November 14, 2025 00:00

A long time ago, I spent a few years working on garbage collection in the J9 Java VM.1 And even though I’ve since done mostly done higher-level stuff, having a deeper knowledge of GC has continued to come in useful. Yesterday, it was an insight from one of…

Reflections on writing a book

https://dubroy.com/blog/reflections-on-writing-a-book

Published: March 24, 2025 00:00

I wrote a book! It’s called WebAssembly from the Ground Up — it’s an online book where you learn Wasm by writing a simpler compiler in JavaScript. You can read a free sample if it tickles your fancy. Together with my friend Mariano, I’ve been working on…

Make it happen

https://dubroy.com/blog/make-it-happen

Published: February 11, 2025 00:00

In 2012 I was working at Google on the Chrome team in Munich. I was writing a lot of JavaScript code and constantly having to wait for code reviews from a team in Los Angeles. On one of my trips to Mountain View, I thought: screw it, I’m going to LA to…

Five coding hats

https://dubroy.com/blog/five-coding-hats

Published: February 3, 2025 00:00

Early in my career, I was convinced there was “good code” and “bad code”. That you could look at something and — without knowing anything about the context — pass judgement on it. These days, my views are much more nuanced. I try to adapt my style to the…

One way to do applied research

https://dubroy.com/blog/one-way-to-do-applied-research

Published: November 7, 2024 00:00

In some of the communities I hang around in1, there’s a fondness for the kind of industrial research that happened at places like PARC and Bell Labs. Things like Smalltalk, Mesa/Cedar, and Plan 9 not only introduced new ideas but demonstrated them in…

Memories of some fantastic internships

https://dubroy.com/blog/memories-of-some-fantastic-internships

Published: July 31, 2024 00:00

During my CS undergrad at Carleton University, I had the opportunity to do a bunch of internships.1 Looking back, I can’t help but think how lucky I was! I got to work on some great teams, learned a ton, and had a lot of fun. Corel My first real internship…