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• Post #4423231

  been making a single-page app with https://pocketbase.io/ this week and it's been a nice experience. I like making single-page JS apps with a Go backend API and this means that I don't have to write the Go backend. Really impressive project given that it's built by one person in their spare time.

• Post #4408264

  it's happening! "The Secret Rules of the Terminal" is coming out tomorrow! (update: it's out now!! you can get it here: https://wizardzines.com/zines/terminal/) here's the table of contents:

• Post #4141113

  if you could wave a magic wand and improve one page in the Git documentation, which one would it be?

• Post #4107164

  what makes CORS hard to use?

• Post #4051661

  cool to see that the ICFP programming contest this year is focused on systems programming https://icfpcontest2026.com/ (via @lindsey@recurse.social)

• Post #4018576

  some more things about Django I've been enjoying https://jvns.ca/blog/2026/07/21/more-nice-django-things/

• Post #3937453

  Every so often I consider self-hosting my own website, but I'm feeling more and more like I do not want to do that, I want an organization that I can trust to take care of things so that I do not have to. And enough control and open standards so that if something goes wrong, I can migrate. the idea of doing everything myself so that I don't have to trust anyone to manage it for me just does not feel viable (I am not looking for web hosting suggestions)

• Post #3912920

  learning a few things about running SQLite https://jvns.ca/blog/2026/07/17/learning-about-running-sqlite/

• Post #3719107

  is there a good website with stats on who owns ipv4 addresses globally? (like which countries have the most IPs?). i know it's sort of a poorly defined question

• Post #3496978

  TIL that a) if you're running a process in a VM (like on shared hosting) then the process's CPU can be "stolen" by other processes on the host b) htop can show how much of the CPU is "stolen" with the "Detailed CPU time" setting c) htop has a settings menu if you press "S" https://serverfault.com/questions/180711/what-exactly-do-the-colors-in-htop-status-bars-mean

• Post #3320459

  I've been trying to improve my French recently and I'm really appreciating this Quebec french dictionary https://usito.usherbrooke.ca/ it's amazing to be able to search for a slang term I hear and find it in the dictionary under (QC, fam), unlike with most French dictionaries which don't have any info about Quebec-specific terms

• Post #3075917

  something I'm finding frustrating recently is a) I feel like LLMs have helped me learn some programming things that were hard for me to learn previously b) I'm tired of LLMs being relentlessly pushed on us and do not want to participate in that by talking about my positive experiences c) there are also lots of hazards associated with using LLMs to generate code that are not that easy to avoid

• Post #3051259

  just noticed "how integers and floats work" came out 3 years ago today originally this this was a zine about "how computers represent data in binary" (what's little endian? big endian? what's struct alignment? why do 32 bit integers cause so many problems? how do we represent strings?) but we ended up running out of space after we explained integers and floats so never got to struct alignment and null-terminated strings :) get it here: https://wizardzines.com/zines...

• Post #2503729

  i'm learning more about css grid this week (like `repeat(auto-fit,`, `minmax(___, 1fr)`) and it's so cool, grid is not easy but it's amazing

• Post #2503728

  right now I'm doing what I thought would be a very tedious task (moving a bunch of CSS from Tailwind to using vanilla CSS) and actually it's helping me learn me some things about structuring CSS that I've wanted to learn for a long time. it's a lot of fun even though it does take time

• Post #2425260

  git worktree (this is #bonuscomic #3 for "How Git Works" https://wizardzines.com/zines/git, covering some topics that I didn't talk about in the zine) Also I don't use worktrees much, so please reply with gotchas/tips about worktrees if you use them more! https://wizardzines.com/comics/git-worktree/

• Post #2420638

  also the #1 thing I miss from Linux while using a Mac is strace and recently I found out about `fs_usage` that does part of what strace does and I was so happy (I’ve also tried dtruss/dtrace etc and a couple of other things which I have failed to get to work, I'm not willing to turn off SIP) for example here's me looking at what config files `fish` opens

• Post #2358301

  i started trying out https://helix-editor.com/ and I've been liking it more than I expected to, it's fun to have an editor that Just Works without any config going to stick with it for a bit even though there are some things I don't like compared to neovim (different syntax, it crashes sometimes, it doesn't auto-reload changed files, no GUI, I don't like the way :reflow works compared to `gq, I think `Ctrl+C` for commenting code is weird)

• Post #2342993

  testing Vue components in the browser (another entry in my "how to write frontend JS without using a server JS framework, but still have nice things" series) https://jvns.ca/blog/2026/05/02/testing-vue-components-in-the-browser/

• Post #2339653

  just preordered @grimalkina 's The Psychology of Software Teams from my local bookstore! i've been really enjoying her podcast about the psychology of learning, like this one on what it means to be good at math https://www.changetechnically.fyi/2396236/episodes/18400124-math-is-for-girls & I'm really looking forward to the book

• Post #2272261

  excited to announce that Wizard Zines is now shipping Canadian orders from Canada! now shipping is cheaper & there's no risk of being hit with duties get your zines at https://wizardzines.com

• Post #2230400

  delighted to announce that my new zine "How Integers and Floats Work!" is out today! You can get it here for $12: https://wizardzines.com/zines/integers-floats/?utm_source=mastodon It explains all of the surprising facts about how your computer does math, and it was SO fun to write.

• Post #2203537

  just saw this review of "The Secret Rules of the Terminal" and it's the best feeling when someone got exactly what I'd hoped they'd get out of the zine https://wizardzines.com/zines/terminal/

• Post #2175377

  in a git repository, where do your files live? https://jvns.ca/blog/2023/09/14/in-a-git-repository--where-do-your-files-live-/

• Post #2175370

  meet the branch permalink: https://wizardzines.com/comics/meet-the-branch/

• Post #2001238

  i told a friend about this thread about css colour palettes and they wanted the list so I put it in a blog post https://jvns.ca/blog/2026/05/04/css-colour-palettes/ https://social.jvns.ca/@b0rk/116516346980161400

• Post #1976504

  i've been working on moving away from Tailwind, and one thing I'm realizing I appreciated about Tailwind is having a basic color palette (blues, grays, greens, indigos, pinks, purples, reds, yellows) I could use while prototyping i extracted it into css variables so I can still use it if I want: https://gist.github.com/jvns/9e59b2cd1fe12601084ba78dded072fe but now I'm curious: are there similar CSS color palettes like this out there?

• Post #1951903

  a git cheat sheet

• Post #1943381

  inside .git https://wizardzines.com/comics/inside-git/

• Post #1888715

  this fall I worked with the core Git folks on writing an official data model for Git and it just got merged! I learned a few new things from writing it. https://github.com/git/git/blob/master/Documentation/gitdatamodel.adoc