Newsletter - September 5th 2024
My newsletters are a handful of articles I’ve read that I think are interesting enough to share. Enjoy!
The Hunt for the Missing Data Type - Hillel Wayne
https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/graph-types/
Hillel Wayne takes a look at graphs and asks why they’re so poorly supported by general programming languages and tooling considering how ubiqitous they are to our jobs. A lot of this struck a chord with me. Working with graphs always involves a lot of setup before you can even begin to start work on the problem at hand.
Ansi Art - Rauri Rochford
https://raurir.com/posts/ansi-art/
Rauri Rochford reminisces about the ANSCI art scene of the 90s.
The Reckoning - Alex Russell
https://infrequently.org/2024/08/the-landscape/
In this 4-part post, Alex Russell looks into JavaScript-first frontend culture and how it broke US public services. It’s a fantastic read.
Departure Mono - Helena Zhang and Tobias Fried
The website for the monospaced pixel font of the same name. It’s very rare I see a website in 2024 and fall in love immediately but this is a work of art. At the point of writing, it’s been open in a browser tab for over a week and I go back to it when I need a bit of zen.
Why, after 6 years, I’m over GraphQL - Matt Bessey
https://bessey.dev/blog/2024/05/24/why-im-over-graphql/
My favourite kind of article is one that reinforces my biases. I never quite got GraphQL. The ease of use in query-land always felt like it hid too much complexity under the hood that would be very hard to debug or secure when you started getting serious with it. I’m glad that Bessey, not a sceptic like myself, but someone who was very much onboard the GraphQL train, has taken the time to write this up.
How artists are fighting generative AI - Paris Marx
https://disconnect.blog/how-artists-are-fighting-generative-ai/
An interview with Karla Ortiz about how AI image generators are upending the careers of artists. Certain industries are getting a raw deal from the rise of AI and concept art is certainly at the forefront. An interesting read.