A few weeks ago I've released an extremely simple note-taking app called Textpod. I just wanted a "one big-ass text file" kind of thing, but with file attachments and link archiving. The whole idea is that it's basically a text file with minor magic sprikled on top. The reception has been great! Seems like many...

I'm not sure how I feel about webfonts. For now, I'm using IBM Plex serif, which looks pretty, sure. It loads pretty fast thanks to Cloudflare Fonts, which rewrites Google Fonts to be delivered from my own origin. But is it really necessary? Also, reading longer texts with a serif font is not everyone's cup of tea....

I don't envy beginners trying to get into web development today. I haven't been doing any frontend web development for more than a decade. Today I was trying to do a simple thing: get a JS markdown editor to work in the browser. Found this beautiful looking library called Tiptap. This example seems great! Let's try...

I just wanted to write again. My old blog at rakhim.org is built with Hugo, and after installing a new version of Hugo things broke. After 25 minutes of attempts to fix it I though "yeah, that's it", and decided (as you do) to just build a simple blogging platform. Static site generators are great. Hugo though has...

I hate to use a smartphone. Being able to view maps, look up info on the go and listen to music is great, but I always felt that smartphones are like plastic utensils. Very useful on the go, but temporary in nature. A compromise. Using a smartphone for more than a few minutes in a row feels wrong. Wrong because...

At first I cycled up the hill with all my force trying to impress the world. My athletic sweat was the only thing that showed the effort. My face was trying to do the opposite, to convince the unseen viewer that the ascent is effortless, easy even. Then I started noticing it. Who is the viewer? Am I in a movie?...

Programming, coding, and software engineering are often used interchangeably. Here is how I usually think of them. Programming Programming is solving explicit problems in a verifiable manner. It is similar to mathematical proofs. "Find an element in a sorted sequence" is a problem. A binary search algorithm is a...

Remember how your parents would try to use Windows 95 or something like Norton Commander. They’d copy an app shortcut to a floppy disk and be amazed how much stuff they were able to put inside. All the games, and lots of space left! And you’d think they don’t understand anything at all, they are just clicking pretty...

A few years ago, I've made a bunch of videos on YouTube about foundational topics in programming. There are lots of hand-drawn cartoons and some rudimentary animation. People keep asking how I made those, so here we go. Inspiration Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP). If you’re only going to...

In the past I had spent hours asking people to recommend me some books, in both real life and on the internet. I was starting to learn programming, so obviously I wanted to find The Bible, the best book for each of the aspects of coding. What is the best book about algorithms? Can you please recommend a book about...

When I was a kid, everyone around me was obsessed with something. For some it was football, for others cars, video games or some martial art like karate. And I was jealous. I couldn’t get obsessed, I was trying to, but couldn’t. I didn’t have doubts that I’ll become obsessed with video games as soon as I get a...