Reading List

The most recent articles from a list of feeds I subscribe to.

Why does an extraneous build step make my Zig app 10x faster?

For the past few months, I’ve been curious about two technologies: the Zig programming language and Ethereum cryptocurrency. To learn more about both, I’ve been using Zig to write a bytecode interpreter for the Ethereum Virtual Machine.

Zig is a great language for performance optimization, as it gives you fine-grained control over memory and control flow. To motivate myself, I’ve been benchmarking my Ethereum implementation against the official Go implementation.

Giving your app a temporary public URL with VS Code port forwarding

VS Code now has port forwarding. If you want to share what you are working on with the world, open folder in terminal, run your server and forward the port. Set it to public and Bob’s your uncle! This is great for some testing and showing people what you do, but of course should not […]

Dev Digest 107 – and the OSScar goes to…

Last Friday, I released the 107th edition of WeAreDevelopers DevDigest. It celebrated the 35th birthday of the World Wide Web, we had a video of me interviewing the founders of Daytona about going open source, we covered the news around Devin, the first AI software engineer and went to space in a Yugo. All strapped […]

Nix is a better Docker image builder than Docker's image builder

You don't have to be a “content creator” to have a website.

This is clearly the result of living in a capitalist society. In recent years, people have felt the pressure to monetise their hobbies, so there’s a constant state of hustle. We all need money to exist in our society.

In the online communities and circles where I try to hang out, there is a slight pressure to “create content”. It is expected to bring you exposure and credibility within the community and job opportunities. Of course, this happens. It’s a big reason why I’ve even had the opportunities I’ve had so far. I created something, and people saw it and wanted to know more about it. It’s excellent, and it feels like a reward!

Now, it pains me when this reaches the concept of a personal website. People often say, “I have no content to put on a personal website”, and 1) that is not true, and 2) it should not be the goal.

The goal of a personal website is to be reachable. I have a simple landing page with information on how to contact me.

You don’t have to be a content creator to have a website.

Dang, I want us to start putting our personal website URLs in our lanyards when we go to conferences instead of social media handles! What is the difference between a personal website that doesn’t have “content” and a social media account where there aren’t many posts anyway? The only thing in common is being reachable.

Just put your name and email, and it’s good to go! That’s content! Maybe one day, expand with a link to LinkedIn or, even better, add a CV in HTML. It doesn’t matter!

Give yourself permission to exist and be seen regardless of whether you have a blog, side projects or “content” - whatever it means.