Confusing Programming Is Super Fun
Saturday • June 14th 2025 • 10:09:24 pm
The best way to learn how anything works, is by writing a program about it.
It is frightening how well we learn, when tasked with looking at something inside out.
That little nudge we get, from accepting the responsibility for making something work.
And then having the computer complain, when things go wrong, is a path to purrfection.
Earlier this week, I asked AI to create a star-chart for me, and it created beautiful and detailed things.
Even though I had no time for it, it was a call to programming SVGs with Signals.
SVGs are things that let you do vector graphics, unlike pixel graphics, vectors always keep sharp and detailed edges.
Signals, are the wildest thing in computer programming right now, everyone thinks it is all behind us, but we haven’t scratched the surface.
I am currently testing reactive programmer interfaces, cascading signals, and program abstractions.
This is where I ended up today, I pulled up an old link to an interesting program…
And I rewrote it, to make it support signals, it worked rather perfectly.
I am well versed in the limits of htl, it is a tiny program, but with big boy code.
I wrote my version without the complex parts, they turned out not to be necessary.
But, I see that the original code does not appear to nest things well, it will process everything, and lists of everything.
It was an interesting adventure, the program has three distinct phases, sticking markers into HTML in such a way as not to offend it.
Then making it part of a web page, and not using the tools the browser provides, to fish out the markers, and not that they are live.
Apply dynamic programming things to them, first to attributes like how web page things should display.
And then to hidden tags, that actually do the displaying of new information, a process I compare with importing other parts of HTML.
And I can see that they added an upgrade that sticks out, but allows other web page programs to send in their data.
I don’t really use such techniques in serious programming, I just use the bare bone browser tools, that I like a lot.
But for SVG animations, and quick web pages, having a templating library you know really well, is extremely useful.
Few days ago, I wanted to publish an article about SPAs vs HTTP Applications, it also dealt with two ways of doing it, HTTP Apps being less demanding.
HTTP is the way internet used to be, the reason why you have a refresh button, it is a tool for refreshing server state.
Now in the days of in-browser applications that talk to servers without a refresh, the state, as in the internal state of your application requires synchronization.
The state of HTTP Applications, is always on the server, in SPA’s or Single Page Applications your application needs a synchronization program.
Those things are hard to write, CouchDB has a wonderful way of solving conflicts, but everyone is trying OT and CRDT, OT requires a server connection.
And CRDT I think requires a central reference because, as distributed as it is, two packets need to know which comes before the other.
It is that Live Communication that causes all the trouble, in git or WikiWiki, you are alerted of a conflict when saving, and you have to solve it.
It is like sending an email, will it go through, return with a vacation message, or will the person quickly reply.
HTTP Applications are wonderful to write, and wonderful to learn about computer security from.
AI is more than capable to make correct recommendations, my express-js projects also in JavaScript is eve more fun.
I asked AI to secure it for me, or harden it’s security, it’s response was precious educations for the novice and expert alike.
I have never had a bad time programming, it has always been fascinating.
Every day, even away from computers has resulted in learning, or connecting something together.
It is the ultimate brain teaser, the smartest interactive darn thing there is.
Programming, has actually helped me with bodybuilding.
As I independently invented an interval timer, for extending endurance.
And it taught me to appreciate sunny days, fresh and crisp mornings, and great adventure.