Databases have failed the web

Part 1 - a history lesson The year is 1980. Last year RSI released Oracle V2, the world's first commercial SQL database for the PDP-11: At an unnamed bank you have rooms full of computers like the PDP-11, with specialized computer operators to keep them running. 'Dumb terminals' at people's…

Composing databases

Why don't we compose databases the same way we compose our functions? We use mathematical operators to compose functions all the time. Most of the time we do it without even really thinking about it: y = op2(op1(x)) Or with chaining and more functions and stuff: complexOp = x =>…

_

Since then I’ve had the chance in the world of mathematics that bid me welcome, to meet quite a number of people, both among my “elders” and among young people in my general age group who were more brilliant, much more ‘gifted’ than I was. I admired the facility…

Unsplashy background images

I'm so sick of MacOS's default background images. They're pretty, I've just seen them all so many times now. Uuuuuggghhh So in the spirit of Sam's daily prototypes I decided to do something about it. Enter Unsplash - a service / platform / thing with a huge database of completely free, beautiful…

We are not creatures of the light

We are not creatures of the light To run, play, dance in the sun Gleaming pillars of ego And daycare And flesh. For our world doesn't exist yet, Except in hidden places. The engine of a train The 50hz hum of mains The kernel of a computer, the Internet, my…

Packrat Parsers

Its a long weekend, so I wrote a packrat parser! (AKA Parsing Expression Grammar, or PEG.) I implemented the example grammar from the original paper. Here its parsing the string 2*(3+4): Holy cow thats a lot of steps for a 7 character string. No wonder modern compilers take…