To achieve a better sample size, I'd highly appreciate if you could circulate the link to this survey in your own networks.
It's already been almost 9 years since the last user survey for these projects. Please help me/us to get more insights into your own experiences, your interests, hopes and pain points — allowing the projects and everyone involved to move forward more intentionally.
There're 15 questions here, with ~10 of them marked as mandatory. The main focal points are the matrices in the middle of the survey. Please also do use the final freeform comments box to share any further feedback you might have. Thank you very much for your interest, trust & taking the time to provide some much needed answers! 🙏
The survey is anonymous and will remain open until 23:59 (CET) on February 29, 2024. I will then share a public summary of the results on my Mastodon in the days following (do keep an eye on the #ThingUmbrella hashtag)...
A week ago was the 1st anniversary of this solo instance & more generally of my fulltime move to Mastodon. A good time for a more detailed intro, partially intended as CV thread (pinned to my profile) which I will add to over time (also to compensate the ongoing lack of a proper website)... Always open to consulting offers, commissions and/or suitable remote positions...
Hi, I'm Karsten 👋 — indy software engineer, researcher, #OpenSource author of hundreds of projects (since ~1999), computational/generative artist/designer, landscape photographer, lecturer, outdoor enthusiast, on the ND spectrum. Main interest in transdisplinary research, tool making, exploring techniques, projects & roles amplifying the creative, educational, expressive and inspirational potential of (personal) computation, code as material, combining this with generative techniques of all forms (quite different to what is now called and implied by "generative AI").
Much of my own practice & philosophy is about #BottomUpDesign, interconnectedness, simplicity and composability as key enablers of emergent effects (also in terms of workflow & tool/system design). Been adopting a round-robin approach to cross-pollinate my work & learning, spending periods going deep into various fields to build up and combine experience in (A-Z order): API design, audio/DSP, baremetal (mainly STM32), computer vision/image processing, compiler/DSL/VM impl, databases/linked data/query engines, data structures impl, dataviz, fabrication (3DP, CNC, knit, lasercut), file formats & protocols (as connective tissue), "fullstack" webdev (front/back/AWS), generative & evolutionary algorithms/art/design/aesthetics/music, geometry/graphics, parsers, renderers, simulation (agents/CFD/particles/physics), shaders, typography, UI/UX/IxD...
Since 2018 my main endeavor has been https://thi.ng/umbrella, a "jurassic" (as it's been called) monorepo of ~185 code libraries, addressing many of the above topics (plus ~150 examples to illustrate usage). More generally, for the past decade my OSS work has been focused on #TypeScript, #C, #Zig, #WebAssembly, #Clojure, #ClojureScript, #GLSL, #OpenCL, #Forth, #Houdini/#VEX. Earlier on, mainly Java (~15 years, since 1996).
Formative years in the deep end of the #Atari 8bit demoscene (Chip Special Software) & game dev (eg. The Brundles, 1993), B&W dark room lab (since age 10), music production/studio (from 1993-2003), studied media informatics, moved to London initially as web dev, game dev (Shockwave 3D, ActionScript), interaction designer, information architect. Branched out, more varied clients/roles/community for my growing collection of computational design tools, which I've been continously expanding/updating for the past 20+ years, and which have been the backbone of 99% of my work since ~2006 (and which helped countless artists/designers/students/studios/startups). Creator of thi.ng (since 2011), toxiclibs (2006-2013), both large-scale, multi-faceted library collections. Early contributor to Processing (2003-2005, pieces of core graphics API).
Worked on dozens of interactive installations/exhibitions, public spaces & mediafacades (own projects and many collabs, several award winning), large-scale print on-demand projects (>250k unique outputs), was instrumental in creating some of the first generative brand identity systems (incl. cloud infrastructure & asset management pipelines), collaborated with architects, artists, agencies, hardware engineers, had my work shown at major galleries/museums worldwide, taught 60+ workshops at universities, institutions and companies (mainly in EMEA). Was algorithm design lead at Nike's research group for 5 years, working on novel internal design tools, workflows, methods of make, product design (footwear & apparel) and team training. After 23 years in London, my family decided on a lifestyle change and so currently based in the beautiful Allgäu region in Southern Germany.
Another bit of gold from #ICFP2023 by Pjotr Prins of the University of Tennessee. The actual title of the talk is "Why code in Python+C if you can code in Lisp+Zig?" but the "Lisp" in this case is actually Guile Scheme. I didn't know this, but Zig uses the C ABI so it binds to any language that can do FFI bindings to C, including most Scheme and Common Lisp implementations. But why don't I just post the abstract here:
> "Most bioinformatics software today is written in Python and for performance C is used. Lisp has been around for over half a century and here I don’t have to tell how or why programming Lisp is great. I will talk about Zig as a minimalistic new language that is unapologetically focused on performance, tellingly with a blazingly fast compiler. It is advertised as a replacement for Thompson, Ritchie, and Kernighan’s C, but it may even replace C++ in places. Zig uses the C-ABI and does not do garbage collection, so it is ideal for binding against other languages. In this talk I will present combining GNU Guile Lisp with Zig. I’ll argue that everyone needs two languages: one for quick coding and one for performance. With Guile and Zig you get both at the same time and you won’t have to fight the Rust borrow checker either."
#HowToThing#010 — Creating a basic web app with declarative UI/DOM creation via Zig/WebAssembly and the super extensible https://thi.ng/wasm-api and its https://thi.ng/wasm-api-dom add-on module, both hybrid TypeScript/Zig libraries. See alt text of images for details.
I think it's about time for another #introduction, because it's been a while and a bit has changed.
Hi, I'm Chris. I'm a software engineer of about 13 years, with most of that being in both front end and back end web development. In a lot of circles I'm known as the #crystal guy, because for a long time that was my favorite programming language. I wouldn't say I have a favorite anymore, but I use #crystallang, #zig, #ruby, #python, #typescript, and a ton of other languages.
I am also a father of 2 beautiful children. Both of them were born prematurely, so that number will not be increasing.
Okay so some improvements are coming to the zig-build-system #zig in #guix
I prepared support for tunable packages so we can choose what cpu we want to build for, and I also sent a patch for cross-compilation support (I tested it in aarch64 and it works).
Next is to add zig-0.11.0 to guix but that's going to take a little bit longer because I have some tests failing for Mach-O and I don't know why they fail.
Tried to use it on my second 💻 today, to no avail and much grinding of teeth.
I'm not setting up any more #venv . I'm fed up. I'm bloody rewriting everything, even libraries in #perl so it works proper on #unix damn it. And maybe throw a look at some #zig porting while at it.
Just updated all https://thi.ng/wasm-api packages, bindgen, build scripts, readmes and examples to be compatible with the brand new Zig v0.12.0 released a couple of days ago... This includes adapting to breaking changes (esp. Zig's build system) and updating the hybrid Zig/WASM/TypeScript project template:
I’ve been using new shiny languages for a while now. #Rust, #Zig and #Swift in particular.
I love Rust’s tooling, Swift’s syntax, and Zig’s philosophy, but I feel like good old #Cpp is still the goat.
Yeah, the syntax can get out of hand really quickly.
Yeah, the STL is bloated.
Yeah, the tooling ecosystem is a mess.
But at the end of the day, with a good style guide and some discipline, it can check most of my boxes.
But learning new languages is always fun so I’m still doing it 😬
I tried to start writing #zig straight away and it didn't work out because it requires some studying... ugh i hate when this happens but I also appreciate why it happens
This week we’re joined by @drewdevault, talking about the Hare programming language 🐇
We discuss Hare (of course), why he’s so passionate about all things open source, the state of the language, fostering a culture that values stability, and oddly enough — what it takes to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich 🥪
I'm inviting a little randomness into my work schedule by seeking serendipity on the fediverse:
I'm looking for a small project starting late Feb/Mar - a couple of days a week at most. If you could use a bit of help for a competitive day rate, say hello 👋