08-26-2024

The Lost Art of Structure Packing

I’m not entirely sure why but lately I’ve become really into systems level programming and kinda the nature of programming languages. Which is weird because my introduction into programming (aside from shell scripts) started with C Programming 101 back in college.

After watching Practical Data Oriented Design by Andrew Kelly (the creator of Zig) I was fully reminded of the lapses in my education during my time learning C and C++. The quality of my undergraduate education aside, I think it behooves everyone in the programming community to try to learn more about what happens when you peel back the layers of abstraction.

This article by Eric Raymond from 2014 discusses what Structure Packing is and some memory alignment strategies. A definite read if you want to improve your knowledge and write memory efficient structures in your language of choice.

http://www.catb.org/esr/structure-packing/

How to Write Good Spoilers

This week I was introduced to Scott O’Hara and man am I impressed. I’m saving a few articles for the upcoming Reading List entries but go read the rest of his writings because they all hit.

Skeleton loaders, if you don’t know, are those things that you see when you load instagram on slow wifi where there’s a shiny outline indicating your content is still loading. Will the comments be funny? I guess we’ll find out when the skelly goes away.

I came across this article while building a skeleton loader for an interactive grid that has 8-10 second loading times (yes it’s tech debt and I made a story for it) and realizing I don’t really know how how to properly markup a loading region accessibly. Well, you learn something new every day! Thanks for the help Scott.

https://www.scottohara.me/blog/2024/08/22/spoiler.html