Bob Nystrom
@stuffwithstuff.com
Dad, husband, brother, son. Working on Dart at Google, ex-game dev at EA, wrote "Game Programming Patterns" and "Crafting Interpreters". http://stuffwithstuff.com/
I Reject The Timeline Where It Is Not Butter.
October 22, 2025 at 10:49 PM
I Reject The Timeline Where It Is Not Butter.
Ah, you're right. I assumed that the JSON spec went down to the encoding level, but it doesn't. (Though it does do a funny little dance to acknowledge that JSON string literals may contain UTF-16 surrogate pairs but then punts on whether an implementation treats them as a single code point or not.)
October 22, 2025 at 10:36 PM
Ah, you're right. I assumed that the JSON spec went down to the encoding level, but it doesn't. (Though it does do a funny little dance to acknowledge that JSON string literals may contain UTF-16 surrogate pairs but then punts on whether an implementation treats them as a single code point or not.)
The unicorn emoji 🦄 is 1 code point (0x0001f984), 2 code units in UTF-16 (0xd83e, 0xdd84), and 4 bytes in UTF-16 (0xd8, 0x3e, 0xdd, 0x84). The answer is different for encodings like UTF-8 or UTF-32 (JSON is UTF-16). And there is a whole separate ball of complexity around grapheme clusters.
October 6, 2025 at 5:40 PM
The unicorn emoji 🦄 is 1 code point (0x0001f984), 2 code units in UTF-16 (0xd83e, 0xdd84), and 4 bytes in UTF-16 (0xd8, 0x3e, 0xdd, 0x84). The answer is different for encodings like UTF-8 or UTF-32 (JSON is UTF-16). And there is a whole separate ball of complexity around grapheme clusters.
Is "length" here bytes, code points, or code units? :) I hate that I can't read anything about string length without that question immediately entering my mind.
September 22, 2025 at 8:11 PM
Is "length" here bytes, code points, or code units? :) I hate that I can't read anything about string length without that question immediately entering my mind.
Hashtag life goals.
September 18, 2025 at 2:51 PM
Hashtag life goals.
Have you considered using AI to detect AI posts? Then you could write a post about using AI to detect AI posts and post it.
July 18, 2025 at 12:05 AM
Have you considered using AI to detect AI posts? Then you could write a post about using AI to detect AI posts and post it.
Oh, yes! I just, uh, keep forgetting about it. :)
July 18, 2025 at 12:05 AM
Oh, yes! I just, uh, keep forgetting about it. :)
Trivia: This use of the word "orthogonal" is older than us too. As far as I know, it's earliest use is in the ALGOL 68 report.
July 16, 2025 at 9:12 PM
Trivia: This use of the word "orthogonal" is older than us too. As far as I know, it's earliest use is in the ALGOL 68 report.
I must admit to being a political novice, but wasn't the RNC slightly more instrumental in Trump being elected?
July 16, 2025 at 1:17 AM
I must admit to being a political novice, but wasn't the RNC slightly more instrumental in Trump being elected?
There are a bunch of reports in the issue trackers for both books already, but I'm trying to not touch them at all. (It's easy to fix the online versions, but then I worry about the online versions getting out of sync with the print versions and not realizing that if I update the print editions.)
July 16, 2025 at 12:58 AM
There are a bunch of reports in the issue trackers for both books already, but I'm trying to not touch them at all. (It's easy to fix the online versions, but then I worry about the online versions getting out of sync with the print versions and not realizing that if I update the print editions.)
Yeah, having written a parser for it... Markdown is just not a great language. CommonMark helps regularize it some, but in the early days, it was wild.
I don't have advice that would fit in a bsky post beyond the general "avoid inventing a language unless you have to (or want to)". :)
I don't have advice that would fit in a bsky post beyond the general "avoid inventing a language unless you have to (or want to)". :)
July 2, 2025 at 12:55 AM
Yeah, having written a parser for it... Markdown is just not a great language. CommonMark helps regularize it some, but in the early days, it was wild.
I don't have advice that would fit in a bsky post beyond the general "avoid inventing a language unless you have to (or want to)". :)
I don't have advice that would fit in a bsky post beyond the general "avoid inventing a language unless you have to (or want to)". :)
I need to know more about the Tears for Fears Trout sticker.
July 2, 2025 at 12:53 AM
I need to know more about the Tears for Fears Trout sticker.
I still don't really understand this one. 🙃
June 12, 2025 at 1:59 AM
I still don't really understand this one. 🙃
It's good to be writing again!
June 3, 2025 at 5:09 PM
It's good to be writing again!
I use a stitch counter app on my phone, or a polyhedral die to keep track of counts.
May 31, 2025 at 6:28 PM
I use a stitch counter app on my phone, or a polyhedral die to keep track of counts.
@mrale.ph would definitely know better than me. Compiler folks who work on optimizations are by nature cagey about definitive answers to questions like this because they want their future selves to have the freedom to change optimizations without breaking users who rely on them.
May 31, 2025 at 1:23 AM
@mrale.ph would definitely know better than me. Compiler folks who work on optimizations are by nature cagey about definitive answers to questions like this because they want their future selves to have the freedom to change optimizations without breaking users who rely on them.