How is your 2024? It has been pain, anger, tears, sweat, suffocation, growth, career change, love, passion and everything else. I fought in 2 BJJ competitions. Got choked to unconsciousness in the 1st and won a silver medal in the second. I wrote lots of JavaScript and worked as a full-time frontend engineer for the first time, coming from a backend engineering backend. I stepped away from programming and started my own podcast which I’ve been wanting to do for years. I started to read books again thanks to friends met in Portugal. I went to Thailand. I confronted with my limitations as a software engineer and closed the chapter of blowater.app I am not leaving Nostr. I believe in a better system for individuals to share and connect with people more than ever. But I will take time to learn before I make my next software. Last but not least, the true coin rocked!

@reya Do you have experience in Svelte? Just curious.

Dependency injection and currying are the sort of design patterns that when people first get a taste of it, they go too far.

I believe this is true in general in the software industry but more obvious among web developers. Every 1 - 2 years, there is a new web frameworks that solves the same problem in slightly different ways. People spend lots of energy learning these new web frameworks but don’t spend the same amount of time to just learn JavaScript and the browser itself. If you think about it, the Web API is already a framework. React/Vue/Svelte are just super frameworks on top of a poorly designed legacy framework called HTML/CSS. The choice of React/Vue/Svelte does not matter. Some use virtual Dom and some don’t. It does not matter. If the developer does not know how to write JavaScript, it will end up be the same shit.

Thank you Geoffrey but no, I won’t use GitHub again.

So my GitHub has been suspended with no explanation, no warning, no emails. I guess the development of blowater.app will stop for several days before I have an alternative code hosting solution. @jack was right for wanting a decentralized code hosting software. Are there anybody still working on it?

@reya ’s https://lume.nu/ is the most beautiful desktop client that I know of. Check it out. I still miss some of the UI design from 3.X. Especially because 3.X shows lots of content by default.

Set is my favorite data structure

12 years, I like this song more

Just had this empowering thought: despite self identifying as a lowly effective person, I’ve achieved a lot so far. It’s ok to be suboptimal.

This will the most important tech announcement for the Web in 2024.

Can programming be learned like BJJ? Everyday, we just go to the classroom and the instructor(black belt in programming) simply gives a small demo about some practical problems and offer solutions. Then students start to hack.

WebSocket is the worst thing that has happened to Nostr

Unpopular take: Revolutionary applications can and will only be built upon revolutionary infrastructures. I seriously doubt the possibilities of building a flourishing Nostr client ecosystem with Web as it is currently defined by the browser.

I always had this ego that because I had a CS degree, I needed to prove myself in the software industry, without even defining what was a proof. The life in the past few weeks, stronger and stronger, let me realize this mindset, this ego, prevents me from growing out of the burden of the past and drags me down from fulfilling a more meaningful life. Programming is just a skill I have, it does not define me. It is not my identity.

A new tutorial for running Relayed, for those who are curious

We are a week away from a robust authentication implementation for Blowater

The problem of cash is that it can be easily stolen

One thing that shocked me deeply in Europe was I saw no young people in high end restaurants and hotels. Not even like 5 stars, but just moderately good ones. I only saw old people there. Younger people were either from America or Asia. Every time I stepped into a good restaurant in Europe, everybody was like dressed up. I was like: WTF, I am just wearing a T shirt and look totally cheap. But this place is not even expensive, am I living in alternative reality? Young people in Europe must dislike good places. Or, the economy has failed them so that they couldn’t afford shit.

Who's the author of nosta.me?