Latest posts
- Zig's Io.Threaded is NeatAug 06, 2026Alex Kladov
Zig’s Io.Threaded is Neat Aug 6, 2026 std.Io.Threaded is one of the implementations of Zig’s new Io interface that enables concurrency. This is a boring “just use threads” impl. I personally find it neat though — it does this weird thing that I wanted to do for ages, that to my knowledge no one else is doing properly, and implements it better than I thought to be possible. Io.Threaded uses blocki
- Memory Safety's Hardest ProblemJul 20, 2026Alex Kladov
Memory Safety’s Hardest Problem Jul 20, 2026 Uplifting a lobsters comment for easier reference. The central memory safety counter example, the hardest case to solve, doesn’t have anything to do with destructors or heap: const std = @import("std"); const E = union(enum) { a: u128, b: []const u8, }; pub fn main() void { const bad_addr: u128 = @intFromPtr(&main); var e: E = .{ .b
- CSS: Unavoidable Bad PartsJun 04, 2026Alex Kladov
CSS: Unavoidable Bad Parts Jun 4, 2026 An ersatz CSS tutorial for people who need to style a web page, but aren’t web developers. I am a wrong person to write this kind of thing, as I have neither the time, nor experience. I’d much rather read a book about this. Alas, I had to learn all this stuff from trawling MDN, so perhaps it is valuable to document what I have so far. CSS, HTML and Web APIs
- TIL: Symlinking NixOS DotfilesMay 21, 2026Alex Kladov
TIL: Symlinking NixOS Dotfiles May 21, 2026 The standard answer to managing dotfiles on NixOS is home-manager. I’ve never used it, due to two aesthetic and one practical objection: The approach I like is storing dotfiles in the same repository as flake.nix / configuration.nix and symlinking them in place. The problem here is that NixOS seemingly doesn’t have a “native” way to say that /a/b/c shou
- Always Be BlamingMay 18, 2026Alex Kladov
Always Be Blaming May 18, 2026 A few tips on 4D-ing your code comprehension skills. I wrote on the importance of reading code before: Look Out For Bugs My default approach to reading is “predictive”: I don’t actually read the code line by line. Rather, I try to understand the problem that it wants to solve, then imagine my own solution, and read the “diff” between what I have in my mind and what
- Catch Flakes On MainMay 14, 2026Alex Kladov
Catch Flakes On Main May 14, 2026 A small Mechanical Habit today: When using not rocket science rule / merge queue, continue to redundantly run the full test suite on main. Maintain an easily accessible list of recent main failures — these are the flaky tests to eradicate. For an example, see the “Flakes” link on https://devhub.tigerbeetle.com Flaky tests are tests that fail intermittently, once
- Learning Software ArchitectureMay 12, 2026Alex Kladov
Learning Software Architecture May 12, 2026 In reply to an email asking about learning software design skills as a researcher physicist: I was attached to a bioinformatics lab early in my career, so I think I understand what you are talking about, the phenomenon of “scientific code”! My thoughts: First meta observation is that “software design” is something best learned by doing. While I had some
- Steering Zig FmtMay 08, 2026Alex Kladov
Steering Zig Fmt May 8, 2026 Two tips on using zig fmt effectively. Read this if you are writing Zig, or if you are implementing a code formatter. For me, zig fmt is better than any other formatter I used: rustfmt, the one in IntelliJ, deno fmt. zig fmt is steerable. For every syntactic construct, it has several variations for how it might be laid out. The variation used is selected by looking at
- Minimal Viable Zig Error ContextsMay 03, 2026Alex Kladov
Minimal Viable Zig Error Contexts May 3, 2026 fn process_file(io: Io, path: []const u8) !void { errdefer log.err("path={s}", .{path}); const fd = try Io.Dir.cwd().openFile(io, path, .{}); defer fd.close(io); // ... } Out of the box, Zig provides minimal and sufficient facilities for error handling — strongly-typed error codes. Error reporting is left to the user. Idiomatic s
- 256 Lines or Less: Test Case MinimizationApr 20, 2026Alex Kladov
256 Lines or Less: Test Case Minimization Apr 20, 2026 Property Based Testing and fuzzing are a deep and science-intensive topic. There are enough advanced techniques there for a couple of PhDs, a PBT daemon, and a client-server architecture. But I have this weird parlor-trick PBT library, implementable in a couple of hundred lines of code in one sitting. This week I’ve been thinking about a cool