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gavinhoward

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Piecemeal Formal Verification: Cloudflare, Java Exceptions, and Rust Mutexes

gavinhoward.com
2 points·by gavinhoward·7개월 전·0 comments

Use the Mikado Method to do safe changes in a complex codebase

understandlegacycode.com
4 points·by gavinhoward·7개월 전·0 comments

Redundancy vs. dependencies: which is worse?

yosefk.com
3 points·by gavinhoward·8개월 전·0 comments

Windows Will Die: 90 Minutes to Do 5 Minutes of Work

gavinhoward.com
25 points·by gavinhoward·4년 전·115 comments

comments

gavinhoward
·23일 전·discuss
> Looks like operational transforms to me.

Sort of. I add provenance, which helps properly identify collisions, and require a well-defined order by stacking [1] changelists.

> The doc claims it's the first with this technique.

More like the first with the particular angle on the technique. I specifically mention patch theory as another side of the same coin.

> A 30 second search reminded me of Darcs, and taught me about Pijul, and Weave.

Darcs is Pijul's ancestor, and I mentioned Pijul. I also mentioned the weave and how reference sets scale better.

> The example in the doc uses text, and unfortunately I think it's for a reason.

Readability. Nothing more. The real stuff will be a compact binary format.

> I think with large, binary game assets, the most common operation is going to be strings of "replace A with B", and depending on your chunk size relative to the distribution of changes you make on your assets, I see it as pretty close to a wash, for efficiency.

Yore will dedup change data instead because as the Lore document itself identifies, dedupping content is hard using chunks; you either get dedupping or canonical addresses. Change data doesn't have one canonical address; the address is in the commit data instead.

Dedupping changes has another benefit. If most instances are "replace A with B," and A replaces B in multiple places, Yore will be able to store just one instance of A, no matter its size. This matters because the larger the chunk, the less likely it will match any other chunk.

> Especially considering that content-addressable blocks also solves de-duplication, which for a multi-game studio is probably going to be significant. Especially if they're managing multiple releases, patches, development branches, etc.

True, but that should be table stakes. The fact that Git does not is a poor reflection on Git, not an innovation in Lore.

[1]: https://www.stacking.dev/
gavinhoward
·23일 전·discuss
The best answer I have is for you to read the "History Model" section of that design doc through the "Implementing CRDTs" subsection.
gavinhoward
·24일 전·discuss
When it comes to large assets, wasting large chunks of space is a problem. If your chunks are 64 kib average (from the Lore document), but changes only average 1 kib (which could be a high estimate), then you will still run out of space 64 times faster and need to read 64 times more data off of the disk for certain operations.

It also makes diffing hard, as well as diff viewing.
gavinhoward
·24일 전·discuss
As someone who has thought a lot about VCS design [1] [2], the chunking approach is the wrong one and will still waste space.

[1]: https://gavinhoward.com/uploads/designs/yore.md

[2]: My WIP VCS has been named Yore for at least two years; I did not copy Lore's name.
gavinhoward
·3개월 전·discuss
Because Git was faster.

This mattered because speed is the killer feature [1], and speed is often seen by users as a proxy for reliability [2].

[1]: https://bdickason.com/posts/speed-is-the-killer-feature/

[2]: https://craigmod.com/essays/fast_software/
gavinhoward
·4개월 전·discuss
> At this point if your VCS isn't a layer above git plumbing, nobody gonna waste time using it.

Probably true, but it's a shame because there are better ways of storing and processing the data, ways that natively handle binary files, semantics, and large files without falling over.
gavinhoward
·4개월 전·discuss
Okay, but if you combine the curried and tuple styles, and add a dash of runtime function pointers, you can solve the expression problem. [1]

[1]: https://gavinhoward.com/2025/04/how-i-solved-the-expression-...
gavinhoward
·4개월 전·discuss
Bram Cohen is awesome, but this feels a little bare. I've put much more thought into version control ([1]), including the use of CRDTs (search for "# History Model" and read through the "Implementing CRDTs" section).

[1]: https://gavinhoward.com/uploads/designs/yore.md
gavinhoward
·6개월 전·discuss
> For instance, you might think that big tech engineers are being deliberately demoralized as part of an anti-labor strategy to prevent them from unionizing, which is nuts. Tech companies are simply not set up to engage in these kind of conspiracies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
gavinhoward
·7개월 전·discuss
I have had to put programming aside in 2025, probably for the rest of my life, so 2026 will be the year I reskill and reinvent myself.

But most importantly, I want to finally become as kind, patient, and charitable as I have always wanted to be.
gavinhoward
·7개월 전·discuss
Hey, where can I apply to a job like yours? I may not be smart enough, but I may be. And I am very interested in formal verification.
gavinhoward
·7개월 전·discuss
SAMS does do that. Read my article carefully; it also requires modification and distribution rights for users. See principles 0 and 1.
gavinhoward
·7개월 전·discuss
The title of the blog post downplays the absolute masterclass that this post is. It should be called "A Tale of Four Fuzzers: Best Practices for Advanced Fuzzing."

And if you don't have time, just go to the bullet point list at the end; that's all of the best practices, and they are fantastic.
gavinhoward
·8개월 전·discuss
https://gavinhoward.com/2023/12/is-source-available-really-t...
gavinhoward
·2년 전·discuss
I unfortunately agree with you. Hence why it's on the backburner.
gavinhoward
·2년 전·discuss
Sponsors are fickle, unfortunately, and they tend to remove "donations" when money gets tight.

If I am considered a full vendor, though, and a vendor for a critical piece of software, they might keep me around.
gavinhoward
·2년 전·discuss
There are two points to the implementation:

* Choice. If I have a separate implementation, my users do not have to be subject to systemd's choices. And I do not either.

* The same implementation will have the same bugs, so in the same way that redundant software has multiple independent implementations, having an independent implementation will avoid the same bugs. It may have different bugs, sure, but my goal would be to test like SQLite and achieve DO-178C certification. Or as close as I could, anyway.
gavinhoward
·2년 전·discuss
I have a design in the works to do just this.

The problem? It's on the backburner because I don't think I could find a business model to make money from it.

I don't think offering support for a price would work, for example.
gavinhoward
·3년 전·discuss
Thank you so much!
gavinhoward
·3년 전·discuss
https://git.gavinhoward.com/gavin/bc

It got me a C programming job that had nothing to do with the side project.

I would say that it only helped me in the interview process, but it did so in two ways:

* I could actually answer C-related questions on top of the more generic questions.

* It showed that I had skill in C.