TIL

For a recent talk I examined some JavaScript implementations in Node, and ended up reading the source code for Math.max, which does this: Math.max(100, 1); // 100 Here’s the code: extern macro Float64Max(float64, float64): float64; transitioning javascript builtin MathMax( js-implicit context: NativeContext)(...arguments): Number { let result: float64 = MINUS_V8_INFINITY; const argCount = arguments.length; for (let i: intptr = 0; i < argCount; i++) { const doubleValue = TruncateTaggedToFloat64(arguments[i]); result = Float64Max(result, doubleValue); } return Convert<Number>(result); } To better understand this function, I decided to write my own implementation in JavaScript: ...

I had ChatGPT write a JavaScript for me, and was surprised to see this arrangement: function main() { // Do work... } try { main(); } catch (error) { console.error(error); process.exitCode = 1; } I would not have written this file this way; instead, I’d have put a try/catch in the file directly and probably forgotten the exit code. This lets my script return nonzero on any error and be chained with other scripts. And it encapsulates the work in main(), a C-like flourish I admire.

I use Vim for presenting technical talks in markdown. But code blocks in markdown don’t get syntax highlighting in Vim. Let’s change that! ...

This week a colleague taught me about Simplified Technical English in the context of agentic software development. I’m fascinated by technical writing techniques, so I intend to explore this. To start, I took ten instruction-like sentences from this blog, and asked ChatGPT to convert them to STE. ...

A while ago, I wrote that you can use .toString() to reflect about user-defined functions in the JavaScript runtime. There’s a catch— this value can be set, making it not a reliable way to reflect the function. ...

Node has a key process.versions that can tell us a lot about itself. Here’s one its many keys, telling me the V8 version of my Node with the -p / --print flag: node --print process.versions.v8 14.6.202.34-node.28 See node --print process for more.

In JavaScript reflection with .toString(), comments are preserved. const hello = () => { // returns "Hello" return 'Hello'; }; hello.toString(); // '() => {\r // returns "Hello"\r return "Hello";\r}' Note the comment in the returned string.

Git hooks are scripts that run at key moments in the version-control lifecycle. And, they’re just scripts! So we can call them when we want. <shell> <hook> For me in this project (Zsh + Husky), this could look like: zsh .husky/pre-commit This runs my pre-commit script anytime.

When developing a local Node module, we might want to point another project’s package.json at the local module. Here’s how you do that. ...

Today I learned what tsc --watch is really for. You put it into your package.json as a script. // package.json { "scripts": { "watch": "tsc --watch" } } ...