Tom MacWright (archive)

come for the easy tool to track metrics about codebases over time, stay for the tedious discussion about how our node_modules directory is big partially because some NPM packages include three copies of all their code http://blog.val.town/blog/devstats/

recently: https://macwright.com/2024/11/03/recently

thoughts on the news from @browsercompany, which announced that they're building a new product and parking the arc browser https://macwright.com/2024/10/25/arc-browser

i used the knip module to find & delete a bunch of unused code from the val town codebase today, and it was very good: https://macwright.com/2024/10/25/good-software-knip

if you use react, do you use the startTransition API for anything:

this place keeps getting worse. really trying to migrate over to https://mastodon.social/@tmcw

i feel like this is not getting that much buzz, despite being one half of one billion dollars american https://x.com/poolsideai/status/1841529216711397661

recently: https://macwright.com/2024/10/01/recently

netlify has been what i use to run http://macwright.com for years now, and i almost never talk about it, because it just works.

so let me take this occasion to say: it's been great and congrats to them! https://x.com/biilmann/status/1838970803154792875

whether something changes for every render or is constant between renders is both (1) really important and usually the difference between a page glitching and infinite-looping (2) something that react, and frameworks, hate to specify, for some reason!

in which i argue that react's documentation of useEffect is not good: https://macwright.com/2024/09/19/the-extra-rules-of-hooks

google's really been sidelined for front-end tech across the board: it's all written in microsoft's language, in microsoft's editor, with facebook's framework, whereas dart, clojure compiler, angular are all withering away. does not seem like google wants to compete.

kinda crazy that google didn't respond to vs code by building a vs code competitor inside of chrome on top of devtools

the arms war of ai tools to spam job applications and ai tools to evaluate job applications is really heating up

oh heck ya https://x.com/transitapp/status/1833947514833150167

housing folks: a good friend of mine pitches the idea that rental agreements should be required to have lease-to-own provisions - renting for x years legally gives the renter some % of equity

has this been tried? would it work?

the new iphone is a phone

wrote a short thing about what taxes are for https://macwright.com/2024/09/07/what-are-taxes-for

recently: https://macwright.com/2024/09/05/recently

local brooklyn transpo anecdata: the livingston st bus-rapid-transit lanes seem to be working, those buses are zippin

val town is built on open source. we need it, so we started paying for it ($9.6k so far this year) and joined the open source pledge: https://blog.val.town/blog/oss/

in hindsight, @thegrid was 7 years too early, if they launched right now it'd pop off, ai-driven web design etc

typescript is both supremely complex, and it's also (afaik) not based on a formal specification but rather the behavior of the typescript compiler / checker is the definition of what typescript is. the lack of a second implementation matters a lot or not at all depending.

the context is that most parts of the 'web development stack' have gotten a lot of competing implementations, a lot of them fast and in rust with lots of competition. the typescript type checker has not, there was one attempt to write another version and it fizzled.

will there ever be another implementation of typescript

Heartbreaking: The Leftist Writer You Respect Decided to Write A Dumb Vibes-Based Rant against YIMBYs

why are we doing any of this https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/22/24225972/ai-photo-era-what-is-reality-google-pixel-9

people who are deadset against taxes on unrealized gains: are you also entirely anti-property tax?

guy who is 'not against building houses' but nevertheless has made a big effort to find a way to explain the lack of houses in a new and surprising way that is coincidentally supportive of those who are against building houses

sam altman read my tweet obviously and turned the "hallucinate" toggle switch off