Sam Estep

how well do you understand how your computer's cache hierarchy affects your programs' performance? samestep.com/blog/random-ac…

My collaborator Troels (creator of the Futhark programming language) published a really nice blog post today about a benchmark suite we've been developing for automatic differentiation; the project makes some cool design decisions, check it out! sigkill.dk/blog/2025-04-0…

@joshmpollock i am not a post

i am not a rat

your computer uses binary to represent numbers, including random ones! but have you ever wondered how it can simulate a fair die whose number of faces is not a power of two? samestep.com/blog/random-in…

took the idea of “run the layout optimizer again when interacting with the diagram” pretty far this summer. Bloom is a React library for interactive diagrams. It lets you reuse the diagram styling just like Penrose, but in a general-purpose programming language.

Great work by the @UsePenrose team building Bloom: a lightweight way to make interactive diagrams: penrose.cs.cmu.edu/blog/bloom All coordinates are automatically figured out by the Penrose layout engine, and diagram specifications can be re-used for different content (like HTML/CSS).

generally?

Very proud of my group @GeomCollective, for their consistent focus on quality in research. We have 5 papers at #SIGGRAPH2024, including two Best Paper Awards and one Honorable Mention. Only 5 and 12 such awards (respectively) are given out total, from a pool of ~840 submissions

want consistent math formatting across github and vscode? give this issue an upvote! github.com/microsoft/vsco…

You'll soon find out that some Linux distros are better than others Potter

We interviewed 19 Rust developers who regularly write or edit unsafe code. Now, we need your help to evaluate what we learned! If you have ever engaged with unsafe Rust, please consider completing our survey! cmu.ca1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0k…

genuinely curious: why do some conferences use a one-column layout? isn't two-column just better?

@TitzerBL yeah i think so

@sgestep Interesting. Looks like it does that through compile-time reflection, if I understand it right?

When I added enums to Virgil several years back, I also added enum sets, a feature which does not exist in any language I am aware of. Turns out that I never documented them! A rare gem to be elegant and also efficient. github.com/titzer/virgil/…

@kentcdodds unless it's an eslint plugin

If you're publishing a new package to npm today, it should be ESM only. Full stop.

Penrose is an open-source tool for making beautiful diagrams from any domain of knowledge. Want help using it? Want to help us build it? Or just want to talk about diagramming in general? Come chat with us on @Discord at discord.gg/a7VXJU4dfR. Anyone & everyone is welcome!

We've been on a somewhat private slack forever. About time to work in the open for real, so join us there!

been working on @UsePenrose v3 lately and it's live now! check out our blog post to see what's new: penrose.cs.cmu.edu/blog/v3. special thanks to new coworker

Tired of making the same kind of diagrams over and over by hand (e.g., in PowerPoint)? The @UsePenrose team has been working away on Penrose 3.0, an automated notation-to-diagram tool, finally released today! Check it out here: penrose.cs.cmu.edu/blog/v3

to be clear i'm jk i just ate a corndog did not actually get a dog

i just got a new dog! dachshund/corgi cross breed corn dog