In A Git Repository, Where Do Your Files Live?
- Julia Evans tl;dr: Julia explores the inner workings of git, specifically how it stores files in the .git/objects directory. Through Python programs, Julia investigates the location of specific files and their older versions discovering "content addressed storage," where the filename is the hash of the file's content. The article also demystifies the encoding process, showing that files are zlib compressed, and emphasizes that git stores complete files, not just the differences.featured in #449
UK Air Traffic Control Meltdown
- James Haydon tl;dr: During a routine deployment, NATS, a major UK-based air traffic management company, experienced a significant system disruption. This "meltdown" led to widespread operational challenges. The root cause was identified as a misconfiguration introduced during the deployment. James dives into root causes of the issues that caused 1,000 flights to be cancelled.featured in #448
Building A ShopifyQL Code Editor
- Trevor Harmon tl;dr: “This approach enabled us to provide ShopifyQL features to CodeMirror while continuing to maintain a grammar that serves both client and server. The custom adapter we created allows us to pass a ShopifyQL query to the language server, adapt the response, and return a Lezer parse tree to CodeMirror, making it possible to provide features like syntax highlighting, code completion, linting, and tooltips. Because our solution utilizes CodeMirror’s internal parse tree, we are able to make better decisions in the code and craft a stronger editing experience. The ShopifyQL code editor helps merchants write ShopifyQL and get access to their data in new and delightful ways.”featured in #448
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Vim Best Practices For IDE Users
- Sebastian Carlos tl;dr: “If you don’t have time to read the Vim User Manual, I sifted through it for you with a focus on IDE users.” A deep dive into all aspects of VIM.featured in #397
Some Possible Reasons For 8-Bit Byte
- Julia Evans tl;dr: Julia explores the question: why does the x86 architecture use 8-bit bytes? Why not some other size? She evaluates a couple of options: (1) It’s a historical accident, another size - like 4 or 6 or 16 bits - would work just as well. (2) 8 bits is objectively the Best Option for some reason, even if history had played out differently we would still use 8-bit bytes. (3) Mix of 1 & 2.featured in #396
The World's Smallest Hash Table
- Orson Peters tl;dr: Orson tackles an Advent of Code, which he optimizes “completely beyond the point of reason” but also contains a useful technique, showing us how to store a small lookup table with small elements as a constant, indexed using shifts.featured in #395
Squeezing A Sokoban Game Into 10 Lines Of Code
- Cole Kurashige tl;dr: Although code golfing is an ultimately frivilous endeavor, I had a lot of fun trying to fit as much as I could into my game and I’m pleased with how it turned out… While I don’t expect you to ever make (serious) use of these tips, I hope you liked them.”featured in #392
Image Stacks And iPhone Racks - Building An Internet Scale Meme Search Engine
- Matthew Bryant tl;dr: "There’s an ironic duality to most memes: the more niche they are, the more funny they tend to be… This presented an extremely common problem: I could never find the niche memes I wanted to send folks when I needed them most. Mid-conversation, spur-of-the-moment memes were always impossible to find. Scrolling through hundreds of saved images in my phone is not efficient searching as it turns out, so I decided to try to better solve the problem.”featured in #391