SmilingKenshi

Val Town 2023-2025 Retrospective The whole story

i wrote everything that i've been kind of nervous to write about @val.town: here's how things have been going the last three years, and read to the end for how we're hiring for two people macwright.com/2025/11/11/v...

💻 Apple just released the Xcode 26.1.1 update. And after using it for a few hours, I’m happy to report that the bug in Simulator that caused Macs to overheat and drain the battery is gone 🥳

🙏 Thank you, good developers at Apple! Updates like this are a huge quality-of-life improvement.

#iOSdev

Yeah but did you see the trailer for Super Mario Galaxy movie?!

I am *so* excited about this!
Features my game - and I can't wait to re-type it 😄

"They got money for wars, but can't feed the poor" - 2Pac, Keep Ya Head Up

📣Announcing the first preview releases of Swift for Android, enabling you to build Android business logic with the same Swift that you use for Apple platforms. www.swift.org/blog/nightly... #Android

Photo of a book with three large pebbles on a vivid blue table. The book cover is black with title in the same shade of blue. It was published to accompany the exhibition "The Word for World: The Maps of Ursula K. Le Guin" at AA Gallery in London, UK, 2025. The pebbles are etched with map drawings by Ursula. The book was edited by So Mayer and Sarah Shin, and co-published by Spiral House (imprint of Silver Press) and AA Publications, with texts by Ursula K. Le Guin, Theo Downes-Le Guin, David Naimon, and others. When Ursula K Le Guin was writing a new story, she would begin by drawing a map. The Word for World presents a selection of these images by the celebrated author, many of which have never been exhibited before, to consider how her imaginary worlds enable us to re-envision our own. Photo courtesy of Silver Press.

When @ursulakleguin.com started writing a new novel, she would begin by drawing a map. The Word for World is the first publication focusing on her maps.

THE WORD FOR WORLD: The Maps of Ursula K. Le Guin is available in the US from @pointreyesbooks.bsky.social

Here: ptreyesbooks.com/book/9781068...

I want to see the claw I respect quality software and the people who write it. And, I’ve invested years of my life in working on becoming one of these people (even if the journey...

Absolutely wonderful from @vickiboykis.com - newsletter.vickiboykis.com/archive/i-wa...

At long last, @chris.blue and I have submitted the final manuscript of Designing Data-Intensive Applications, second edition, to the publisher. There is always more that could be improved but at some point we just have to call it done. Now it goes into production; probably shipping in ~4 months.

Screenshot of the Glass Toy app

Sharing a fun little toy mac app I made: Glass Toy.

It came out of some Liquid Glass experimental dev work.

Drag in some background image and add glass shapes and text.

It's an early version and it's free. You can get it from: suntreeapps.com/toys

Would love to see what you make with it.

For anything important: maximise on understanding.

So I did a load of reading about Executors yesterday and I *think* you are correct, so I updated the blog post (+ credited you for the feedback - thanks!).
I guess it might be theoretically possible another executor resumes a task, but I dont think that would ever happen.

Thanks! I really appreciate your feedback... I'll look into this further and try and clarify my understanding.

Kinda want to write an IRC server using Swift...

"Spherical"
vec2 u=FC.xy/r.y*PI;
vec3 c=vec3(sin(u.x+vec2(0,11))*sin(u.y),cos(u.y)),a,
v=mix(dot(a+=.57,c)*a,c,sin(t))+cos(t)*cross(a,c);
o.rgb=tanh(.1/abs(tan(v/.1)));

Swift Concurrency and Cryosleep: Lessons from Aliens and Alien 3 Thoughts about Software and Building Software

I wrote a thing about an aspect of Swift Concurrency. Check it out (feedback welcome):

krishna.github.io/posts/swift-...

#swift #concurrency

Deno 2.5.3 has been released

github.com/denoland/den...

Wrote up some thoughts and notes on using Swift outside of the typical Xcode developer set up.

krishna.github.io/posts/swift-...

RIP Renato Casaro, an Italian artist known for his film posters.
He passed away yesterday at the age of 89.

To justify recurring revenue, you must deliver recurring value.

Many SaaS founders forget this, and then wonder why cancellations are so high.

A text size control from control center. An icon for Please Don't Rain is circled in red. There is also a choice for "all apps".

I can't believe that I didn't know this.

You can use Control Center to change the text size of only an individual app.

I've been going into the Per-App section of Settings, Accessibility each time to do this (which is often).

An image of a circular fabric patch showing some sort of superhero in a nautical hat? Cap'n Web: Protect & Connect, it says. Looks like AI slop.

I don't have a problem with making new RPC systems! I can stop any time I want! But I don't want to. So I made a new one for you. It's called Cap'n Web. It's like Cap'n Proto RPC, except focused on working great in browsers and JavaScript/TypeScript servers. blog.cloudflare.com/capnweb-java...

Wrote a thing. Can you believe it's been nearly a decade!

⭐️ I have finally published the source repository for Coppice, @pilky's mind-mapping app, as per his final wishes.

It is provided as-is, without a license, to help prospective #AppKit developers learn from a longtime Mac developer who really sweated the details, and always went out of his way […]

Treating Warnings As Errors In Swift Packages In Swift 6.2, Swift Packages give us control over which compiler warnings to treat as errors.

Treating Warnings as Errors in Swift Packages #swiftlang useyourloaf.com/blog/treatin...

Dynamic member lookup is an excellent way to enhance APIs when you create a wrapper or proxy type. It’s particularly useful when you have a type that holds a generic property.
swiftwithmajid.com/2023/05/23/d...

However bullish you are (or are not), this is a good question.

Measuring productivity - let alone effectiveness - in software engineering has always been problematic.

So how are we measuring AI’s impact on it?

Having fun playing around with Icon Composer to update icons for various apps.

#buildinpublic

Love HTML? I think you might enjoy Kelp, my new UI library powered by modern CSS and Web Components.

kelpui.com