[2026-02-11 Wed 11:40] Back to Webpack 4

Working with a legacy project in webpack 4 and babel gives me more appreciation for the new bundlers such as Vite (even though Webpack was a great project).

[2026-02-11 Wed 16:40] Investing into emacs lisp

I have avoided Elisp so far, unless necessary. But as any tool, it’s worth going past the friction to really reap the benefits. Today I implement a simple npm version in elisp that allows me to check the latest X versions of a packages. In the past I would have used fzf, but since I am now living in emacs, it makes sense to use elisp instead.

[2026-03-25 Wed 07:10] Using the ultra learning philosophy to structure my learning: writing, surfing and system programming in the next 6 months

I love learning new things and have a good track record of it. But I am not the most efficient at it. I discovered the “ultra learning” philosophy from S. Young. It contains a compelling cluster of ideas to improve learning efficiency. I will run an experiment over the 6 months over three areas: surfing, blogging and system programming.

[2026-03-25 Wed 12:56] Ultra learning system programming - Why, how and what?

The first goal for my ultra learning journey is system programming, with a nudge towards networking

Why?

• expand and deepen my software engineering skills.
• future proof my career by going into an industry that value performance, security and reliability as much as time to market.
• first step towards potential move into embedded systems.
• challenge my current status quo as a web developper

What? This is a known unknown, but essentially understanding what I know today about networking on a deeper, atomic level. UDP, TCP, syscall, TLS, internet stack, C interop, memory management.

[2026-03-25 Wed 13:19] Ultra learning surfing - Why, how and what?

The second goal is surfing.

Why? Purely intrisic goal: my main motivation is to have fun. I started surfing 10 years ago, but my level is barely past the beginner level. I want to use ultra learning principle as a way to get to the next level in my practice. The end goal is to increase my surfing skill, which will then help with my kiting skills.

What? Within six month, I want to be confortable in all conditions on my longboard. I want to be able to walk it up and down, and score a few hang five, maybe hang ten. I want to paddle with ease and confidence.

[2026-03-25 Wed 13:26] Ultra learning writing - Why, how and what?

The last 6 months goal is writing.

Why? Instrumental goal. I want to put myself out there to be exposed to more opportunity. I also desire to give back; I learnt coding essentially via other people’s blog. I want to improve my ability to express ideas and communicate, starting with writing. Finally, I want to close an open loop: I tried and failed to write a blog many times over - I want to break that cycle. Move from a pure consumer, to a part time contributor.

[2026-03-25 Wed 19:54] prediction: the dead internet will revive the old internet

As slop increase, I predict that internet users will start turning towards smaller, reliable source of information. The forums, IRC and chatrooms will go through a renaissance. This will precipitate the main social platform into a secondary roles. They won’t disappear, but they won’t be the central hanging out place. Twitter is already a good example of how quickly this is going, Reddit following behind and ever HackerNews. RSS will go through a renaissance period as well, as the information slop tsunami takes place.

[2026-03-26 Thu 11:09] Surfing log #1

Putting ultra learning into practice while surfing this morning, with a couple of goals. I will record my surfing session as below, so I can decide on what to work next.

Location: Noosa Condition: small 1 to 2 feet. Goal: Working on my paddling posture (no twisting, relax body, sweet spot) and gaze while surfing. Score: 3/10 Comments: Paddling: not bad as I lasted almost two hours. I focus on my posture and not burning too much energy. I noticed a lot of parasite movements; twisting my body, moving my legs. Halfway through the session I found a good drill: having my feet touching each other at all times. I forced me to remain on the center line, relax my legs and avoid parasite movements. I will be my area of focus next time. Surfing: not great, I did not position myself well (too close to the peak) which ended up in many wipe outs. I will need to work on my reading. Halfway through I decide to go for quantity over quality and move inside the break. This is what I should focus on. My gaze was terrible, even forcing it up, it still tends to dive. I found a good drill which was to look at the horizon, to landmark such as the surf club and actually notice it. My next drill, once my gaze gets better, will be to look over my shoulder: once I’m in, I never look back. Forcing myself to look back will help me dissociate the gaze from the body, and learn to twist my upper body instead of being rigid.

[2026-03-26 Thu 15:52] Getting into async in Rust and it is… complicated. At least, to start with

[2026-03-27 Fri 08:45] If AI take the joy out of programming for a large part of software engineer, will that create a ripple effect on innovation and software quality?

This is purely a thought experiment.

A few of the developers I follow are dealing with AI burnout. They often say that AI took the joy out of programming for them. The joy of learning, understanding and problem solving.

Let’s assume that those software engineers react by either: A. Quitting the field, or B. Lose interest and just collect a pay check, to pursue other areas.

In this new world, does it means that the software quality will suffer? We can compare this to today’s tradesmen, vs. old-time craftmen. The average work done by craftmen in the past was of higher quality that their modern counterpart - you don’t often see a carpenter carving intricate pattern in a door for example.

[2026-03-27 Fri 16:30] Today, I dealt with so many runtime and typing errors from our codebase that I am craving working with Rust. Long live compiled languages.

[2026-03-29 Sun 11:06] Finished the Rust book, 1st pass.

I attained ehe first milestone of my rust learning project: I finished reading the rust book from cover to cover. My next step is to go through the brown-edu version and complete the quizzes. When I fail a test, I will look up the related chapter to see what I misunderstood. Along side, I will be doing the rustlings. I expect this to take me a couple of weeks, then we will dive into the first project: the CLI.