Build a Wasm Compiler in Roc - Part 2

August 15, 2024 in Programming, Roc

My latest hair-brained project is a WAT-to-Wasm compiler written in the Roc programming language. I explained my (ir)rationale for the project in Part 1 of this series, which also included an introduction to the technologies we’ll be using.

Note: Other articles in this series are collected here.

In this article, we’ll get started writing some Roc code. We won’t get to the point where we are doing anything with WAT or Wasm, yet, but we will be able to load an input file and parse some command line arguments.

Build a Wasm Compiler in Roc - Part 1: Introduction

August 11, 2024 in Programming, Roc

I’ve been curious about the Roc programming language for a while now, but I haven’t had/taken the time to really dig into it. I’ve read through the tutorial several times, but only yesterday did I actually sit down and install Roc and implement the tutorial. Today, I woke up with the ridiculous idea to build a compiler in the language.

A simple compiler, to be clear.

Extolling the Virtues of Dexie Cloud for Backendless Development

March 27, 2024 in Programming

Dexie Cloud was released publicly today, and I love this product so much that I want to lend my voice to the marketing effort.

Dexie.js is an incredible library for interacting with IndexedDB in the browser. It wraps the sometimes-obtuse (and oft-buggy) IndexedDB APIs with much more developer-friendly interfaces. And it is fully reactive; if you change something in the database, your React, Svelte, Vue, Angular, or Solid.js (Solid support is weak) app will live update all by itself! It’s a truly heavenly coding experience.

However, web users do not live in a vacuum, and storing things in IndexedDB is fraught. The browser may delete that data on a whim, and who among us only has one device these days? You might be able to use IndexedDB as a cache, but it can’t be your source of truth.

Until today.

We Rewrote our React App in Svelte in Three Weeks

March 20, 2024 in Programming

My wife and I have been working on Fablehenge—a writing app for novelists—for several years. It had been a free time project where we’d push hard over a few weekends, then let it sit idle for a couple months perhaps tinkering in the evenings when we had a bit of time.

At the beginning of this year, I decided to take a sabbatical, which was supposed to involve cutting new hiking trails and woodworking. While it has done that, I found I’ve also been working on Fablehenge (more or less) full time.

Why I'm Excited About Inko

May 30, 2023 in Programming, Inko

I’ve spent much of my free time (if there is such a thing) over the past few years researching various esoteric programming languages for no reason whatsoever. Some of my favourites include Rescript and Gleam, which target the Javascript and Erlang ecosystems, respectively. But I’ve really been looking for something a little more native. It seems to me that there is a big gap on the language spectrum, somewhere between Rust and Go:

Installing Inko 0.11 On Macos

May 21, 2023 in Programming, Inko

UPDATE: I’ve updated the Inko Formula on Homebrew to 0.11.0, so you may just want to use brew install inko instead. That said, There are a few bugfixes on Inko that didn’t make it to the 0.11.0 release, so you may want to build off the main branch instead. I have a blog article in progress about why I’m super excited about the Inko Programming Language. It’s nowhere near completion, however, and I wanted to share how I got the latest version Inko running on MacOS (Ventura).

How I Reconfigured Neovim From Scratch

May 14, 2023 in Programming

Throughout my career, I’ve at least tried most of the available programming editors. More than two decades ago, I heard about the vi-vs-emacs debate, and made a pact with myself to use both for at least a year before deciding which I preferred. I started with vim, switched to emacs after a year, and decided I preferred vim. I joined the sublime-text bandwagon for a year or two in the early 2010s, switched back to vim in the middle of the decade, and eventually did the big switch to vscode.

Build a Wasm Compiler in Roc - Part 2

Build a Wasm Compiler in Roc - Part 1: Introduction

Extolling the Virtues of Dexie Cloud for Backendless Development

We Rewrote our React App in Svelte in Three Weeks

Why I'm Excited About Inko

Installing Inko 0.11 On Macos

How I Reconfigured Neovim From Scratch

Dusty Phillips