Tomas Petricek
@tomasp.net
500 followers 120 following 88 posts
Assistant prof at Charles University. Interested in new ways of thinking about programming and history & philosophy of computing. Previously at University of Kent and @cst.cam.ac.uk.
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tomasp.net
Can software express critical reflections on its own nature in the same way post-modern architecture does?

I don't have the answers, but I wrote a long text with some early thoughts: tomasp.net/architecture/
tomasp.net
To elaborate, I think @charlesuni.cuni.cz has many hard to quantify qualities that would put it above many of the other universities it is compared against.

But also, there are many objective metrics where we should be doing much better. Being the best in a tiny country is not a good excuse.
tomasp.net
To be honest, I feel this is bragging about doing poorly in a meaningless league table.
charlesuni.cuni.cz
📊 According to the recently published Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2025, Charles University is once again among the 500 best universities in the world. At the same time, it remains the highest-ranked university in the Czech Republic.
tomasp.net
I'm trying to replace my beloved but long-defunct Atom with VS Code for editing LaTeX.

How do I stop copilot from telling me that I can press "Ctrl+I"? I already disabled it using "github.copilot.enable", which hides the actual suggestions, but not this useless message...
tomasp.net
I just uploaded videos for the first lab of my tiny systems. TinyML - Write your own tiny functional language interpreter!

🎞️Watch the videos on YouTube: www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...
⌨️Get the source code here: github.com/tpetricek/ti...
tomasp.net
I'm teaching 𝗪𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗼𝘄𝗻 𝘁𝗶𝗻𝘆 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗴𝗿𝗮𝗺𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘀𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺(𝘀)! again. I'll be posting the videos & tasks on YouTube too.

In the first lecture, I explain what's a tiny system, why write one and show plenty of demos!

🎞️ Playlist: www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...
👉 More info: d3s.mff.cuni.cz/teaching/npr...
Write your own tiny programming system(s)! - YouTube
The goal of this course is to teach how fundamental programming language techniques, algorithms and systems work by writing their miniature versions. The cou...
www.youtube.com
Reposted by Tomas Petricek
undonecs.org
Deadline extension: 1 week.
Please submit your talk proposals by October 16 (anywhere on Earth).

bsky.app/profile/undo...
undonecs.org
Announcing Undone CS 2026:
2nd conference on Undone science in Computer science

A conference in computer science to pause and reflect on the epistemological and ethical dimensions of the field, through the concept of undone science

Full call for presentations at www.undonecs.org/2026/cfp.html
“Undone Computer Science
Conference on undone science in computer science
23-25 March 2025 — Luxembourg”
White text set on a background picture: a photograph entitled “Dusk in Luxembourg Grund” by Tristan Schmurr, CC BY 2.0
tomasp.net
You can read the paper online in ACM DL: dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...
Or get the old-fashioned PDF from: tomasp.net/academic/pap...
tomasp.net
I'm at #uist2025 presenting our new work with @jonathoda.bsky.social!

𝗗𝗲𝗻𝗶𝗰𝗲𝗸 is a computational substrate for end-user programming that makes it easy to implement programming experiences like programming by demonstration, collaborative editing and more!

tomasp.net/academic/pap...
Reposted by Tomas Petricek
dynamicaspects.org
Companion (Workshop) Proceedings for ‹Programming› 2025 are now available! Co-edited with @jonathoda.bsky.social and @tomasp.net. Thanks to the awesome OASIcs publishing team for getting this over the line.
drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/vol...
Companion Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on the Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming (Programming 2025)
drops.dagstuhl.de
tomasp.net
(Because @programming-conf.bsky.social workshops tend to have an occasional non-academic author & authors from countries not on the list etc. and we couldn't guarantee that we'd be able to cover APC fees for authors from the conference budget.)
tomasp.net
With this number of large partners, wouldn't it make sense (financially and politically) for ACM to just waive APC fees for everyone or reduce it to some minimal fee?

The change in policy was a reason why we moved workshop proceedings for @programming-conf.bsky.social from ACM DL to OASIcs...
tomasp.net
One small example from the talk was thinking about how to rethink the "product listing" pattern. This needs to be done properly, but - what if the listing was more like a second hand bookshop where you can get lost and discover unexpected things?

tpetricek.github.io/Talks/2025/c...
my books
tpetricek.github.io
tomasp.net
The talk has been recorded and I'll certainly share a link here once it's available!

The article is a bit older, the talk has old and some new ideas. And is a bit more condensed than the very long text...
tomasp.net
Slides from my talk "Critical Architecture/Software Theory" at PPIG 2025 in Belgrade: tpetricek.github.io/Talks/2025/c...

The talk has been a great excuse to organize some more ideas, on top of my earlier article on the topic: tomasp.net/architecture/
tomasp.net
This sounds super interesting - I would love to read a version of this in any form at any point!
Reposted by Tomas Petricek
undonecs.org
Announcing Undone CS 2026:
2nd conference on Undone science in Computer science

A conference in computer science to pause and reflect on the epistemological and ethical dimensions of the field, through the concept of undone science

Full call for presentations at www.undonecs.org/2026/cfp.html
“Undone Computer Science
Conference on undone science in computer science
23-25 March 2025 — Luxembourg”
White text set on a background picture: a photograph entitled “Dusk in Luxembourg Grund” by Tristan Schmurr, CC BY 2.0
tomasp.net
Hello, good to see you here! All is well - we are back in Prague now - but like @dzoukr.cz we are leaving for vacation next week....! I see you got some recommendations already. If you're looking for beer with the best view, I'd add: maps.app.goo.gl/igaARewEHqxJ...
maps.app.goo.gl
tomasp.net
In case someone liked Prague during @programming-conf.bsky.social so much they wanted to come for longer...

📢 Charles University has a funding scheme for established researchers - to join us for (initially) 6 months to 2 years.

More info: cuni.cz/UKEN-2238.html
Donatio Universitatis Carolinæ Chair
cuni.cz
tomasp.net
Anybody remembers Microsoft script encoder? A true gem from the MSDN archives of August 1999: web.archive.org/web/20021214...

(The thing was clearly not very sophisticated: web.archive.org/web/20070103...)
tomasp.net
C̶h̶u̶c̶k̶ ̶N̶o̶r̶r̶i̶s̶ LLM can unwrap value from a monad (but it's so pointless nobody can figure out how).
Reposted by Tomas Petricek
joshuahhh.com
For software to be malleable, we need ways of building and modifying programs that are accessible to many more people.

Are you working on new interfaces for programming?

Share your progress at the LIVE workshop!

Submissions are due July 21st.

liveprog.org

(Happy to chat if you have questions!)