Pipit is leaving the nest
Four months of extraction meant untangling assumptions about the host. Moving directories was only one part of making Pipit independent.
Thoughts
Things I’ve made and questions I’m working through. Some articles look back at things I’ve finished, but most follow whatever I’m working on at the time. Most of the older ones came over from my old blog and were tidied up along the way. I used AI to tidy them up, fixing the grammar and the structure so they’re easier to read and follow. My dyslexia made my older articles ramble quite a bit, and I think they’re much more presentable and digestible now.
2026
Proof-led development
My arena fix passed its tests, then an AI-written Coq model found four more failures. Linters, papers and checked traces give me something to work against.
Convincing myself to like sum types
Coming from Go and C, I'm reluctant to add another construct. My compiler's homemade alternatives make me reconsider what keeping the language lean actually saves.
AI is making me a less lazy tester
I used to put most of my effort into integration and regression tests. AI is helping me write the smaller checks I kept putting off.
Joining the Jev hype
A deliberately broken application and lots of small questions. I'm seeing what Jev can find, and where my own questions need work.
The invention nobody bothered to claim
A citation search follows summation from a 1964 textbook to the choices inside a modern loop.
When doing the work twice saves memory
Repeating cheap arithmetic removes a 32 MiB array and cuts elapsed time. Why I start with the cost of the whole process.
Vectorise! Vectorise! Vectoriiiise!
I try handing ordinary Go loops to compiled kernels. It feels a bit like cheating, until the memory and arithmetic dependencies need explaining.
Optimising the bytecode I already have
Reusing a calculation, removing a check and moving a read each look like small savings. Keeping the facts they depend on valid is becoming a project of its own.
Terms and conditions apply
Which arithmetic choices can an implementation change? I'm trying to write a contract that somebody else can follow, including the small print.
Give me Linux or give me death
A manifest could bound the files, facts, commands and network access an operator needs, while Piko runs its management logic.
Some assembly still required
A Rob Pike talk sends me towards a text generator for amd64 and arm64 assembly, with fewer stale numbers to chase when the Go changes.
2025
Lying through my NIC
A Linux decoy needs to lie in both directions. Getting an OS check to recognise the disguise leaves me with HTTP connections, moving clocks and the next morning to contend with.
Calling Go from interpreted Go is still a boundary
The page can declare a type the host never compiled. Making their Go calls feel ordinary means preserving type identity, copies, generic entry points and callbacks.
Testing my patience
AI proposes the cases, I edit them, then it writes the test table. Ten different inputs don't always give me ten different things to test.
Keeping the dispatch loop together
A small addition can spend much of its time being reached. Keeping dispatch inside the handlers, and calls inside assembly, changes how often the engine finds its way back.
Bringing it all together
GoSSR is becoming a home for the shared tools. I want templates, queries and the interpreter to work together, with one Piko release to keep them in step.
When a string outlives its arena
A saved label needs its own bytes. Other strings can still borrow from the arena, leaving me to work out which old slabs a continuing script actually needs.
Don't Panic
A deferred function can recover a panic and change a named result to 42. The interpreter must preserve that route back to the caller.
The variables are dead, Dave
Lending each call a region of the arena keeps returns cheap. Then a pair of closures needs a variable to outlive the call that declared it.
A penny for my types
We started the client's quoting tool with integer pence. Keeping fractional prices and transaction currencies is giving the money type more to do.
A normal page was enough to run out of registers
An ordinary GoSSR page needs more slots than an eight-bit operand can name. I try reusing finished values' slots, then spilling the values that still need a home.
It's arrays all the way down
Trees, graphs and nested lists can live in arrays. I'm exploring their access costs and a way to keep their relationships attached to the types.
Keep the data moving
Carry one tile through the calculation, then take the next. A conditional that needs a full array puts an intermediate back into memory.
When the graph knows a value is finished
I'd like the compiler to handle a kernel's memory lifecycle. Following the readers shows when a buffer can be reused, and where the plan still needs runtime information.
2024
Getting comfortable with Plan 9 assembly
Two numbers first, then a slice. I work through the registers, punctuation and calling boundary before asking assembly to run a larger loop.
What if a language just didn't?
Removing a language feature can also remove work from its runtime. Predictable lifetimes and reproducible results gave that thought experiment a direction.
I’d like my live updates back
GoSSR needs live updates, especially while I'm changing CSS. Running the page's changing Go brings an interpreter, its dependencies and another job before the client deadline.
All that glitters is not a regression
I want whole-output golden tests to help me refactor. Choosing an order, controlling changing inputs and keeping useful path details makes their diffs worth reading.
Trees, stacks and registers: three ways to run a + b
Following a tree, popping a stack, and naming register slots arrange the same addition differently. Small traces let us compare the work involved.
How a tiny interpreter works
Start with 2 + 3 * 4 and finish with fourteen. A small interpreter gives tokens, precedence and evaluation something concrete to do.
Compiling templates to Go with go/ast
Turn the template into Go expressions the compiler can check, without losing the link back to the page.
Putting Go in the template file
GoSSR keeps the page's Go and template together, replacing the generated client with direct access to Go data.
I'm tired of maintaining the glue
I want Go and TypeScript to agree, but the generators keep giving me more code and another tool to maintain. I'm looking for a different way to build the page.
2023
Love at first SELECT
I love writing SQL and letting sqlc do the repetitive Go. I'm trying a different arrangement for dialect rules, expression types and dynamic filters.
Putting up with storage
An object store's ETag looks tempting when I need a file hash. Before I use it in a shared interface, I need to check what each provider's ETag actually guarantees.
Apparently I’m making a component format
Templates, styles and logic were becoming strings inside JavaScript classes. Giving them named regions let the author work on a component as a whole.
Can you manage Linux desktops like servers?
Desktops keep changing. The company describes its development setup. Resource operators inspect each machine to work out what needs installing, upgrading or repairing.
WebAssembly isn't just for the web
One folder grant makes a server plugin’s access concrete, then gives us a way to compare isolation boundaries.
Rendering video by screenshotting a browser
An offline renderer can take its time over each frame. Driving the browser with a frame clock lets me reuse the editor's layout and painting.
2022
Hot-reloading a video without restarting it
An edit at thirty-five seconds should stay there. Component interfaces help me choose what to redraw, what to keep and how another kind of piece could fit.
Building a video out of folder names
I'm trying reusable browser pieces in a video editor, with a Go worker joining the files to the player. The first timeline is a directory listing.
2021
Letting Kube.ist go, and keeping its pieces
Clients can use the small agents without adopting the whole platform. Each keeps a shared core and adapters for the integrations that client needs.
Why I'm building Kube.ist
Kubernetes supplies the cluster. I still need traffic, certificates, images and a way to notice when an application is unhappy.
Making GitOps feel more like Terraform
An application description needs more than readable syntax. Borrowing HCL helped me work out which parts of a configuration language I wanted to own.
2020
Web components are worth betting on
A pill today, a chart when I open it. Browser components and QUIC make me wonder how much of an application needs to arrive together.
Turning a form into Kubernetes YAML, and back again
A form can quietly turn 25% into 25. Keeping Kubernetes settings intact means preserving what the user actually entered.
A platform is like an ogre; it has layers
I separate what needs to be ready first from what should survive an update. An application change should leave its data and underlying network alone.
Talking about Portbase, once the camera was on
Talking about familiar work gets surprisingly difficult when the camera is on. A workplace video, some nerves, and plenty of fun.
2019
Infrastructure as data: why I stopped trusting commands
A manual replica change separates the job of Kubernetes from the job of keeping Git and the cluster in agreement.
Developer governance: give them the keys
The application team owns its settings, releases and alerts, with infrastructure beside it.
2018
Trying to see what runs next
The lyrics arrive. I want to know which service can run next without opening them all.
Tiwio, a local soundtrack for your travels
A Spotify companion to bring music connected to the places we're travelling through into our headphones.
Can I upgrade without downtime?
I revisit the country-and-airport problem to learn deployment, keeping the old version serving while its replacement gets ready.
2017
zimb means Zimbabwe
The fuzzy-search bonus gave me a chance to reuse Sound of Jersey work. The assessment got me the Lunatech job, and a move to the Netherlands.
Sound of Jersey
The music site has users and assistant moderators. Now I'm sharing the code too.
Where a tiny island’s gigs come from
How do scattered event announcements become a useful gig guide?
Moving house, not demolishing it
How can a rebuild keep the old data while its schema changes?
2016
Alien Escape
The hackathon is over. I can go back and sort out the bits I rushed.
2014
Uploading music on a server that couldn’t afford to transcode it
How do I move audio conversion away from the web request and then the web server?
2013
Finding the band down the road
How can a visitor find nearby bands without already knowing their coordinates?
2012
NestedBird
A community site for local bands that I kept building from 2012 to 2016.
2011
The long way round
Life is full of detours, it helps if you learn to smell the flowers along the way.
2010
Empire and a world builder
An unfinished strategy game and a separate world editor for an RPG, both in C++.
X Hunter
A college menu-system assignment that I turned into a C# console game.
A* pathfinding
My proudest project as a teenager was A* pathfinding in C++.
Making my first pound with a text editor and caffeine
Paid websites, my own CMS, and a habit of rebuilding the stack to see if I could make it better.
2008
Outscape ~ The Annhilation
My first game in C++, now with forests and evil bobs from Russia with love.
War Arena
My first working game, written in DarkBASIC.
2006
It started with RuneScape
How a departing maths teacher, a friend who wouldn’t share and a RuneScape wanna be clone got me programming at twelve.