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David Foster

@davidfstr@mastodon.world
mastodon 4.6.6
  • Open on mastodon.world

Software sculptor. Writer. Teacher. Inquiring mind. Bringing world-class computer science education to K-12 schools, teachers, and students at https://techsmart.codes

0 Followers
0 Following
22 Posts
Joined November 18, 2022
Website:
https://dafoster.net/
GitHub:
https://github.com/davidfstr/

Posts

Open post
davidfstr
David Foster @davidfstr@mastodon.world · Jul 28, 2026
David Foster
@davidfstr@mastodon.world

Software sculptor. Writer. Teacher. Inquiring mind. Bringing world-class computer science education to K-12 schools, teachers, and students at https://techsmart.codes

mastodon.world
Replying to @drwhax@infosec.exchange
@drwhax@infosec.exchange I've been very concerned about the emergence of Mythos-class AI that can weaponize vulns. I'm personally responding by adding formal memory safety proof coverage to critical libraries in C (notably: OpenSSL). Testing - which can identify many but not all bugs - I no longer consider sufficient. Instead we need formal verification to prove the *absence* of bugs/vulns. #aicoding #security
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davidfstr
David Foster @davidfstr@mastodon.world · May 06, 2026
David Foster
@davidfstr@mastodon.world

Software sculptor. Writer. Teacher. Inquiring mind. Bringing world-class computer science education to K-12 schools, teachers, and students at https://techsmart.codes

mastodon.world

If you're spending more than $100/month/engineer on AI tokens, you're doing it wrong. Use a subscription. I currently subscribe to Claude Pro ($20/mo) and GitHub Copilot Pro ($20/mo), totalling $40/month. https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/the-pulse-token-spend-breaks-budgets #aicoding

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David Foster @davidfstr@mastodon.world · May 01, 2026
David Foster
@davidfstr@mastodon.world

Software sculptor. Writer. Teacher. Inquiring mind. Bringing world-class computer science education to K-12 schools, teachers, and students at https://techsmart.codes

mastodon.world
Replying to @davidism@mas.to
@davidism@mas.to I chose "not nullable, default empty string" because I prefer data models where there is only 1 empty/error value. -- A comment situation where there are multiple empty/error values (to my dismay) is JavaScript, with its 2 sentinels: null and undefined.
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davidfstr
David Foster @davidfstr@mastodon.world · Apr 30, 2026
David Foster
@davidfstr@mastodon.world

Software sculptor. Writer. Teacher. Inquiring mind. Bringing world-class computer science education to K-12 schools, teachers, and students at https://techsmart.codes

mastodon.world

GitHub Copilot Agent (GCA) is moving from per-request/interaction billing to token-usage based. Shucks. I've been enjoying the ability to give 1 well-specified request to GCA and have it churn for 15 minutes, while only charging me 1 "premium request". https://github.blog/news-insights/company-news/github-copilot-is-moving-to-usage-based-billing/ #aicoding

GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing
The GitHub Blog

GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing

Starting June 1, your Copilot usage will consume GitHub AI Credits.

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davidfstr
David Foster @davidfstr@mastodon.world · Apr 30, 2026
David Foster
@davidfstr@mastodon.world

Software sculptor. Writer. Teacher. Inquiring mind. Bringing world-class computer science education to K-12 schools, teachers, and students at https://techsmart.codes

mastodon.world
Replying to @davidism@mas.to
@davidism Hey I think the security policy that Pallets has documented is pretty clear. 👍 I'll probably crib some of it when I get around to writing out my projects' security policies. https://palletsprojects.com/security
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Open post
davidfstr
David Foster @davidfstr@mastodon.world · Apr 28, 2026
David Foster
@davidfstr@mastodon.world

Software sculptor. Writer. Teacher. Inquiring mind. Bringing world-class computer science education to K-12 schools, teachers, and students at https://techsmart.codes

mastodon.world
Replying to @Osmose@digipres.club
@fd93@fosstodon.org @Osmose@digipres.club 'any security measures like this "limit your productivity"' Heh, sure. You'll be more productive for a while but then lose your database or expose your customer PII, taking you to *before* square one. It's the same mistaken logic that fast (yet brittle/broken/missing) unit tests are always necessarily better than slow(er) (but thorough/correct) end-to-end tests.
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davidfstr
David Foster @davidfstr@mastodon.world · Apr 28, 2026
David Foster
@davidfstr@mastodon.world

Software sculptor. Writer. Teacher. Inquiring mind. Bringing world-class computer science education to K-12 schools, teachers, and students at https://techsmart.codes

mastodon.world
Replying to @Osmose@digipres.club
@Osmose@digipres.club "My shell script with access to all my environment variables that calls random() and if the result is less than 0.01 it deletes my prod DB" Haha. Luckily the fix is simple: Don't give the script enough permissions to delete (or modify) anything. I have a read-only database user for AI exploration. Exfiltration risk still exists though, if you give read access to private data. So I don't give those read permissions either. #aicoding
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Open post
davidfstr
David Foster @davidfstr@mastodon.world · Apr 28, 2026
David Foster
@davidfstr@mastodon.world

Software sculptor. Writer. Teacher. Inquiring mind. Bringing world-class computer science education to K-12 schools, teachers, and students at https://techsmart.codes

mastodon.world

4 GB of space remaining. Restart computer. 22 GB of space remaining. -- Wild to see such a large fluctuation. I still remember when my total drive capacity was 0.5 GB (500 MB)...

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davidfstr
David Foster @davidfstr@mastodon.world · Apr 26, 2026
David Foster
@davidfstr@mastodon.world

Software sculptor. Writer. Teacher. Inquiring mind. Bringing world-class computer science education to K-12 schools, teachers, and students at https://techsmart.codes

mastodon.world

I actually like Claude Code’s 5-hour session limits on usage. It enforces that I take a break occasionally and trains me to prompt more cost-efficiently, which will be useful whenever token prices stop being subsidized. #aicoding

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Open post
davidfstr
David Foster @davidfstr@mastodon.world · Apr 25, 2026
David Foster
@davidfstr@mastodon.world

Software sculptor. Writer. Teacher. Inquiring mind. Bringing world-class computer science education to K-12 schools, teachers, and students at https://techsmart.codes

mastodon.world

Oops, I wrote a database. I discuss some of challenges I faced getting full ACID guarantees working in my latest post: https://dafoster.net/articles/2026/02/23/oops-i-wrote-a-database/ #databases #warstories #programming

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davidfstr
David Foster @davidfstr@mastodon.world · Apr 19, 2026
David Foster
@davidfstr@mastodon.world

Software sculptor. Writer. Teacher. Inquiring mind. Bringing world-class computer science education to K-12 schools, teachers, and students at https://techsmart.codes

mastodon.world

RE: @eniko@mastodon.gamedev.place

Even with today's most advanced AI coding tools/models I consistently find their output - although functional - to lack in readability/ maintainability/ elegance. I always have to revise AI code to meet my standards. The current trend of some prominent folks having no human review at all for AI code I think is a shame and sometimes even harmful. Consider: Security bugs in AI drafted/unreviewed code. #aicoding

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Open post
davidfstr
David Foster @davidfstr@mastodon.world · Apr 18, 2026
David Foster
@davidfstr@mastodon.world

Software sculptor. Writer. Teacher. Inquiring mind. Bringing world-class computer science education to K-12 schools, teachers, and students at https://techsmart.codes

mastodon.world
Replying to @troed@swecyb.com
@troed@swecyb.com You’ll notice that I still put myself as the primary Author - and therefore the one responsible - even when using AI assistance to draft code. I always review the code myself if I plan to share it. If I did no reviews - pure vibing - then responsibility *would* be harder to pin down.
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Open post
davidfstr
David Foster @davidfstr@mastodon.world · Apr 18, 2026
David Foster
@davidfstr@mastodon.world

Software sculptor. Writer. Teacher. Inquiring mind. Bringing world-class computer science education to K-12 schools, teachers, and students at https://techsmart.codes

mastodon.world

I wrote up how I've been attributing usage of AI models & coding agent harnesses when drafting code commits: https://dafoster.net/articles/2026/04/17/ai-attribution-in-git/ #aicoding #git

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Open post
davidfstr
David Foster @davidfstr@mastodon.world · Apr 17, 2026
David Foster
@davidfstr@mastodon.world

Software sculptor. Writer. Teacher. Inquiring mind. Bringing world-class computer science education to K-12 schools, teachers, and students at https://techsmart.codes

mastodon.world

gvc (git-visual-compare) is a new visual git diff tool that I'm releasing today! Try it out at: https://dafoster.net/projects/gvc/ #coding #programming #diff #git

I've been using the diff mode of the venerable yet unmaintained GitX tool for a decade. But now I need my diffs to support dark mode, to avoid waking the baby at night. Astonishingly, existing GUI diff tools only support diffing *individual* commits, not ranges . So I finally bit the bullet and wrote my own. Enjoy!

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davidfstr
David Foster @davidfstr@mastodon.world · Apr 15, 2026
David Foster
@davidfstr@mastodon.world

Software sculptor. Writer. Teacher. Inquiring mind. Bringing world-class computer science education to K-12 schools, teachers, and students at https://techsmart.codes

mastodon.world

I created a Revise Skill (for Claude Code, Codex, VS Code, etc) that helps AI coding agents write code the way I want, optimized for readability & maintainability: https://dafoster.net/projects/revise-skill/ #aicoding #refactoring

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davidfstr
David Foster @davidfstr@mastodon.world · Mar 28, 2026
David Foster
@davidfstr@mastodon.world

Software sculptor. Writer. Teacher. Inquiring mind. Bringing world-class computer science education to K-12 schools, teachers, and students at https://techsmart.codes

mastodon.world
Replying to @whitequark@social.treehouse.systems
@whitequark@social.treehouse.systems It’s funny: I work on mostly applications with GUI/web interfaces (with no expected dependent packages), where it’s frequently not clear what a “breaking change” would mean. So in practice I use romantic versioning a lot more than SemVer. https://dafoster.net/articles/2015/03/14/semantic-versioning-vs-romantic-versioning/
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davidfstr
David Foster @davidfstr@mastodon.world · Jun 12, 2024
David Foster
@davidfstr@mastodon.world

Software sculptor. Writer. Teacher. Inquiring mind. Bringing world-class computer science education to K-12 schools, teachers, and students at https://techsmart.codes

mastodon.world
Replying to @geoff@front-end.social
@geoff@front-end.social When I was a boy tinkering around with making my own website I used a resource called HTML Goodies (now dead) which assumed no prior knowledge. I applaud the creation of similar resources for the current generation, when #WebDevelopment has gotten so complex by default.
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davidfstr
David Foster @davidfstr@mastodon.world · May 13, 2024
David Foster
@davidfstr@mastodon.world

Software sculptor. Writer. Teacher. Inquiring mind. Bringing world-class computer science education to K-12 schools, teachers, and students at https://techsmart.codes

mastodon.world
Replying to @kcase@mastodon.social
@kcase I’m fine manually updating an image in the Google Docs wiki page when the diagram changes. No diagram provider (TLDraw, Figma FigJam, Lucidchart) currently has a Google Doc integration that works smoothly enough to actually use.
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davidfstr
David Foster @davidfstr@mastodon.world · May 13, 2024
David Foster
@davidfstr@mastodon.world

Software sculptor. Writer. Teacher. Inquiring mind. Bringing world-class computer science education to K-12 schools, teachers, and students at https://techsmart.codes

mastodon.world
Replying to @kcase@mastodon.social
@kcase Our product manager is not using a Mac, so an omnigraffle:// URL probably wouldn’t work. — On engineering laptops where OmniGraffle is setup in advance (not always the case), presumably such a link could work, especially if it could push/pull directly from Dropbox, Google Drive, and GitHub (which are all the hosting locations we use).
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davidfstr
David Foster @davidfstr@mastodon.world · May 13, 2024
David Foster
@davidfstr@mastodon.world

Software sculptor. Writer. Teacher. Inquiring mind. Bringing world-class computer science education to K-12 schools, teachers, and students at https://techsmart.codes

mastodon.world
Replying to @kcase@mastodon.social
@kcase Our engineering team all uses Macs, so no trouble editing. It’s just cumbersome to have to get a link to Dropbox (which we are deprecating internally) or to GitHub, download a file, edit, screenshot something to insert elsewhere, and reupload a file.
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davidfstr
David Foster @davidfstr@mastodon.world · May 13, 2024
David Foster
@davidfstr@mastodon.world

Software sculptor. Writer. Teacher. Inquiring mind. Bringing world-class computer science education to K-12 schools, teachers, and students at https://techsmart.codes

mastodon.world
Replying to @kcase@mastodon.social
@kcase Ideal collaboration flow allows a diagram to be reachable from a URL, embedded in our online wiki. URL allows immediate viewing (for everyone) & editing (for those with an edit license). Ability to leave comments at specific points in diagram, with email notifications, as the primary mode of collaboration. Rare to literally have multiple people editing same diagram simultaneously. No need to worry about edit conflicts, or working with a stale version of a file.
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Open post
davidfstr
David Foster @davidfstr@mastodon.world · May 13, 2024
David Foster
@davidfstr@mastodon.world

Software sculptor. Writer. Teacher. Inquiring mind. Bringing world-class computer science education to K-12 schools, teachers, and students at https://techsmart.codes

mastodon.world
Replying to @kcase@mastodon.social
@kcase Glad to hear OmniGraffle is still under active development. Still my favorite tool for *high-fidelity* diagrams. Alas I mostly cannot use at work because there’s no online *collaborative* interface that allows other team members to edit diagrams AFAIK.
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