programming-languages 9

This week, I learned: tree-sitter is a fast incremental parser generator. That means you can use it to create a parser for any language that works even if there are errors, e.g. malformed JSON, Python, etc. It’s used by most editors. For example, tree-sitter-python is a fast forgiving Python parser. There are official parsers and community parsers Programming Languages: All popular ones, less popular ones like Ada, Fortran, Lua, Zig, … and even niche / domain-specific languages (Gleam, TLA⁺). Markup & Data Formats: HTML, XML, Markdown, JSON, YAML, TOML, CSV, … Query, Scripting & Config: SQL, GraphQL, Bash, Dockerfile, Regex, Terraform (HCL), … Ligature fonts are nice, but it might not be worth forming a habit out of. Claude Cloudflare introduced Markdown for Agents. This converts websites from HTML to Markdown via Accept: text/markdown for any Cloudflare endpoint which has enabled this feature. This requires a Pro account. Microgrants is a list of microgrants programs - where you can give small amounts of money, e.g. $50 - $1K as well as large fellowships over $100K. This includes student grants, creative & community grants, tech grants, social & policy grants, etc. “Animated web formats are simply video codecs … stripped of their most powerful feature.” A .webm file is likely to compress much better than an animated .webp, etc. Gemini esbuild can compile CSS files to support old browsers, e.g. nested rules, custom properties, etc. Usage: esbuild input.css --target=chrome90 --outfile=output.css. Julia Evans New jargon I learnt: Human-On-The-Loop. Treasure In Treasure Out VS Code’s GitHub Copilot extension supports a github.copilot.chat.commitMessageGeneration.instructions setting that lets you add a [{"text": ...}] or [{"file": "path/to/file.ext"}] prompt to the commit message generation. I’ve pointed this to my git-commit.md custom prompt. Questions I was asked Week ending 22 Feb 2026 ...

Steve Yegge at Google talks about the features of the Next Big Language. He apparantly has inside information about the language corporates are likely to make a big push for. The comments seem to suggest Javascript 2.

Paul Graham on picking a computer language. Excellent read.

Jeff Duntemann argues that the reason for security problems is C/C++, not Microsoft.

Excellent article by Paul Graham on great hackers.

Proce55ing: “context for exploring emerging conceptual space…” Looks like a modern graphic programming language to me. Neat, but not a quantum leap. “The Unbearable Lightness of being a Pixel” is an interesting exhibit, though (for its name, not for content).

US high school seniors can’t read Perl. Not even a simple DeCSS program (obufuscated, of course).

Hello, world.

Microsoft dumps Java. Doesn’t worry me to much. I’ve never had much use for Java as a user. They’ve ‘adopted’ Perl, though. And I was always a Perl fan.