Mike Samuel 🟣
@mvsamuel.bsky.social
I solve large software systems problems with programming language techniques.
Previously, I was the first frontend engineer on Google Calendar, and was a security engineer who worked on the industrial-strength Mad Libs undergirding Gmail.
Previously, I was the first frontend engineer on Google Calendar, and was a security engineer who worked on the industrial-strength Mad Libs undergirding Gmail.
@steveklabnik.com Re your post on Gastown, is there some chance its issue-tracker centricity traces back to Yegge hearing Spolsky banging on about Fogbugz as the one tool to rule them all, the one tool to find them?
January 22, 2026 at 6:40 PM
@steveklabnik.com Re your post on Gastown, is there some chance its issue-tracker centricity traces back to Yegge hearing Spolsky banging on about Fogbugz as the one tool to rule them all, the one tool to find them?
Quoting instead of replying because not answering directly.
We have an opportunity to rethink a few things in PL design:
- {writ,read}ability tradeoffs.
- duty division
- semantic gaps: differences btwn semantics programmers want and what they write
- narrative structure of programs
- role of IDLs
We have an opportunity to rethink a few things in PL design:
- {writ,read}ability tradeoffs.
- duty division
- semantic gaps: differences btwn semantics programmers want and what they write
- narrative structure of programs
- role of IDLs
In a world where most code in modern programming languages will be machine-generated, what is the role of an upper-level programming languages course?
Interesting and non-obvious answers please.
Interesting and non-obvious answers please.
January 22, 2026 at 6:01 PM
Quoting instead of replying because not answering directly.
We have an opportunity to rethink a few things in PL design:
- {writ,read}ability tradeoffs.
- duty division
- semantic gaps: differences btwn semantics programmers want and what they write
- narrative structure of programs
- role of IDLs
We have an opportunity to rethink a few things in PL design:
- {writ,read}ability tradeoffs.
- duty division
- semantic gaps: differences btwn semantics programmers want and what they write
- narrative structure of programs
- role of IDLs
Reposted by Mike Samuel 🟣
Please help us publicize TEAL: Tools for Educational Activities in Logic, a workshop associated w/ FLoC26. We have a novel design, focused on demos, discussion, and generally high-quality interaction rather than weak papers. See full details on our site!
teal.cs.brown.edu/floc2026/
teal.cs.brown.edu/floc2026/
TEAL 2026: Tools for Educational Activities in Logic
teal.cs.brown.edu
January 20, 2026 at 2:56 PM
Please help us publicize TEAL: Tools for Educational Activities in Logic, a workshop associated w/ FLoC26. We have a novel design, focused on demos, discussion, and generally high-quality interaction rather than weak papers. See full details on our site!
teal.cs.brown.edu/floc2026/
teal.cs.brown.edu/floc2026/
Reposted by Mike Samuel 🟣
ICE must be abolished. It has become a lawless, rogue agency. Federal law enforcement agencies must follow the law, if they're going to have any credibility enforcing it.
We are demanding justice for Renee Good and the prosecution of ICE agent Jonathan Ross for her murder.
We are demanding justice for Renee Good and the prosecution of ICE agent Jonathan Ross for her murder.
January 15, 2026 at 4:47 PM
ICE must be abolished. It has become a lawless, rogue agency. Federal law enforcement agencies must follow the law, if they're going to have any credibility enforcing it.
We are demanding justice for Renee Good and the prosecution of ICE agent Jonathan Ross for her murder.
We are demanding justice for Renee Good and the prosecution of ICE agent Jonathan Ross for her murder.
All the data scientists: 1,000. Why would you stop at 1,000?
Brooke Rollins: "We've run over 1,000 simulations. It can cost around $3 a meal for a piece of chicken, a piece of broccoli, corn tortilla, and one other thing. So there is a way to do this that actually will save the average American consumer money."
January 15, 2026 at 2:06 AM
All the data scientists: 1,000. Why would you stop at 1,000?
Ok. Worth calling out that this is not a fake image.
prospect.org/2026/01/08/m... credits an AP photographer who took a similar photo.
prospect.org/2026/01/08/m... credits an AP photographer who took a similar photo.
January 14, 2026 at 8:37 PM
Ok. Worth calling out that this is not a fake image.
prospect.org/2026/01/08/m... credits an AP photographer who took a similar photo.
prospect.org/2026/01/08/m... credits an AP photographer who took a similar photo.
Workshopping a way to explain *compositionality* to non-FP people.
Revealed definition: compositionality is when a small set of operators compose together to express a much greater number of ideas.
Intuition building: visual description of deriving a complex 3-D shape by incremental steps
Revealed definition: compositionality is when a small set of operators compose together to express a much greater number of ideas.
Intuition building: visual description of deriving a complex 3-D shape by incremental steps
January 12, 2026 at 6:54 PM
Workshopping a way to explain *compositionality* to non-FP people.
Revealed definition: compositionality is when a small set of operators compose together to express a much greater number of ideas.
Intuition building: visual description of deriving a complex 3-D shape by incremental steps
Revealed definition: compositionality is when a small set of operators compose together to express a much greater number of ideas.
Intuition building: visual description of deriving a complex 3-D shape by incremental steps
Reposted by Mike Samuel 🟣
To every language designer whom it may concern:
`a | null` is not a suitable substitute for `Maybe a` because there's no way to distinguish between
Just Nothing :: Maybe (Maybe a)
…and:
Nothing :: Maybe (Maybe a)
This is not me being pedantic; this is a real issue in practice
`a | null` is not a suitable substitute for `Maybe a` because there's no way to distinguish between
Just Nothing :: Maybe (Maybe a)
…and:
Nothing :: Maybe (Maybe a)
This is not me being pedantic; this is a real issue in practice
January 8, 2026 at 5:44 PM
To every language designer whom it may concern:
`a | null` is not a suitable substitute for `Maybe a` because there's no way to distinguish between
Just Nothing :: Maybe (Maybe a)
…and:
Nothing :: Maybe (Maybe a)
This is not me being pedantic; this is a real issue in practice
`a | null` is not a suitable substitute for `Maybe a` because there's no way to distinguish between
Just Nothing :: Maybe (Maybe a)
…and:
Nothing :: Maybe (Maybe a)
This is not me being pedantic; this is a real issue in practice
Reposted by Mike Samuel 🟣
a few thoughts youtu.be/lERS4kJIQR8
Abolish ICE
YouTube video by Takes™ by Jamelle Bouie
youtu.be
January 8, 2026 at 1:42 AM
a few thoughts youtu.be/lERS4kJIQR8
In the AI-codegen positive view how do software libraries work?
If the prompt is what is stored instead of the generated code, how do you address Brian Kernighan's critique of monolithic compilation from "Why Pascal is Not My Favourite Programming Language"?
www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655...
If the prompt is what is stored instead of the generated code, how do you address Brian Kernighan's critique of monolithic compilation from "Why Pascal is Not My Favourite Programming Language"?
www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655...
January 7, 2026 at 9:09 PM
In the AI-codegen positive view how do software libraries work?
If the prompt is what is stored instead of the generated code, how do you address Brian Kernighan's critique of monolithic compilation from "Why Pascal is Not My Favourite Programming Language"?
www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655...
If the prompt is what is stored instead of the generated code, how do you address Brian Kernighan's critique of monolithic compilation from "Why Pascal is Not My Favourite Programming Language"?
www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655...
Reposted by Mike Samuel 🟣
Happy New Year! Happy New Programming Language!
Temper translates to all the other languages. Write a library, each other language community gets a library. We've recently open-sourced the compiler, CLI tools, and IDE plugins.
temperlang.dev && github.com/temperlang/temper
youtu.be/c8CVoKeUDdQ
Temper translates to all the other languages. Write a library, each other language community gets a library. We've recently open-sourced the compiler, CLI tools, and IDE plugins.
temperlang.dev && github.com/temperlang/temper
youtu.be/c8CVoKeUDdQ
Temper Programming Language - Libraries for Every Language Community
YouTube video by Temper
youtu.be
January 6, 2026 at 7:46 PM
Happy New Year! Happy New Programming Language!
Temper translates to all the other languages. Write a library, each other language community gets a library. We've recently open-sourced the compiler, CLI tools, and IDE plugins.
temperlang.dev && github.com/temperlang/temper
youtu.be/c8CVoKeUDdQ
Temper translates to all the other languages. Write a library, each other language community gets a library. We've recently open-sourced the compiler, CLI tools, and IDE plugins.
temperlang.dev && github.com/temperlang/temper
youtu.be/c8CVoKeUDdQ
@welltypedwit.ch Do I remember you mucking around with Linguist/Textmate grammars at some point?
If so, do you have a mental model of how it works?
Is it pushdown automata all the way down? (Modulo look{ahead,behind})
Have you found those easy enough to maintain?
If so, do you have a mental model of how it works?
Is it pushdown automata all the way down? (Modulo look{ahead,behind})
Have you found those easy enough to maintain?
January 6, 2026 at 6:01 PM
@welltypedwit.ch Do I remember you mucking around with Linguist/Textmate grammars at some point?
If so, do you have a mental model of how it works?
Is it pushdown automata all the way down? (Modulo look{ahead,behind})
Have you found those easy enough to maintain?
If so, do you have a mental model of how it works?
Is it pushdown automata all the way down? (Modulo look{ahead,behind})
Have you found those easy enough to maintain?
For the record:
Gen-AI: half-baked, has potential, but you can't steal people's work
Bitcoin: scammy, the least interesting smart contract ever
Humanoid robots are dross, but I'm a proud FRC alum
VR, digital watches: I defer to Douglas Adams
Won't shut up: accurate
bsky.app/profile/did:...
Gen-AI: half-baked, has potential, but you can't steal people's work
Bitcoin: scammy, the least interesting smart contract ever
Humanoid robots are dross, but I'm a proud FRC alum
VR, digital watches: I defer to Douglas Adams
Won't shut up: accurate
bsky.app/profile/did:...
January 5, 2026 at 10:18 PM
For the record:
Gen-AI: half-baked, has potential, but you can't steal people's work
Bitcoin: scammy, the least interesting smart contract ever
Humanoid robots are dross, but I'm a proud FRC alum
VR, digital watches: I defer to Douglas Adams
Won't shut up: accurate
bsky.app/profile/did:...
Gen-AI: half-baked, has potential, but you can't steal people's work
Bitcoin: scammy, the least interesting smart contract ever
Humanoid robots are dross, but I'm a proud FRC alum
VR, digital watches: I defer to Douglas Adams
Won't shut up: accurate
bsky.app/profile/did:...
Reposted by Mike Samuel 🟣
Capabilities (ocaps) Are the Only Way to Secure Agent Delegation niyikiza.com/posts/capabi...
Vectors | Capabilities Are the Only Way to Secure Agent Delegation
niyikiza.com
January 5, 2026 at 8:45 PM
Capabilities (ocaps) Are the Only Way to Secure Agent Delegation niyikiza.com/posts/capabi...
Great piece. The subject in this story should be "X Corp.," not "Grok."
Headline:
X Corp. developed and deployed software that enables sexual harassment at scale and has chosen not to follow common practice: turning it off until a fix is in place.
Headline:
X Corp. developed and deployed software that enables sexual harassment at scale and has chosen not to follow common practice: turning it off until a fix is in place.
I wrote about Grok's CSAM problem and how journalists keep fumbling the story
www.readtpa.com/p/grok-cant-...
www.readtpa.com/p/grok-cant-...
Grok Can't Apologize. Grok Isn't Sentient. So Why Do Headlines Keep Saying It Did?
Elon Musk’s chatbot has been “undressing” women and children in public. Journalists are letting xAI off the hook by pretending the bot is responsible.
www.readtpa.com
January 2, 2026 at 8:45 PM
Great piece. The subject in this story should be "X Corp.," not "Grok."
Headline:
X Corp. developed and deployed software that enables sexual harassment at scale and has chosen not to follow common practice: turning it off until a fix is in place.
Headline:
X Corp. developed and deployed software that enables sexual harassment at scale and has chosen not to follow common practice: turning it off until a fix is in place.
Tag specific parsing rules will make things easier for beginners they said.
January 2, 2026 at 7:57 PM
Tag specific parsing rules will make things easier for beginners they said.
I scraped baby name sites, used Metaphone to crossindex Hindu & Jewish/French/Celtic names before dropping negative emotion words and English naughty words (bye Anali).
But JavaScript didn't name my first.
My wife & I procrastinated so we hashed it out by phone as I rushed to the township office.
But JavaScript didn't name my first.
My wife & I procrastinated so we hashed it out by phone as I rushed to the township office.
When we named our kids I wrote a very dumb script to scrape a list of candidate names from Wikipedia, which we then selected from. I don't think it would be accurate to say we "relied on JavaScript and regular expressions to name our kids".
The parents of the first baby born in 2026 in this county outside Baltimore got their name ideas from ChatGPT. Hudson Oakley Winkler.
www.baltimoresun.com/2026/01/01/c...
www.baltimoresun.com/2026/01/01/c...
January 2, 2026 at 5:46 PM
I scraped baby name sites, used Metaphone to crossindex Hindu & Jewish/French/Celtic names before dropping negative emotion words and English naughty words (bye Anali).
But JavaScript didn't name my first.
My wife & I procrastinated so we hashed it out by phone as I rushed to the township office.
But JavaScript didn't name my first.
My wife & I procrastinated so we hashed it out by phone as I rushed to the township office.
Hi, I'm a pair of apologetic but obviously buzzed West Virginian hunters.
Introduce yourself with what almost killed you:
Hi, I'm me.
Hi, I'm me.
Introduce yourself with what almost killed you:
Hi, I'm a bad driver, a rattlesnake, carbon monoxide, and cancer.
Hi, I'm a bad driver, a rattlesnake, carbon monoxide, and cancer.
January 2, 2026 at 6:54 AM
Hi, I'm a pair of apologetic but obviously buzzed West Virginian hunters.
And that the theft is also a theft from every US citizen and resident, and the damage is done to their rights of privacy and agency over their data.
Why do none of these articles even touch on how much data DOGE stole from the US government, how much damage they caused to the security of government IT systems, and how much DOGE exposed all of our data to foreign adversaries?
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...
‘They sowed chaos to no avail’: the lasting legacy of Elon Musk’s Doge
The billionaire – who had no government experience – left various federal agencies in disarray while overseeing an ‘efficiency’ drive across Washington
www.theguardian.com
January 1, 2026 at 9:04 PM
And that the theft is also a theft from every US citizen and resident, and the damage is done to their rights of privacy and agency over their data.
Happy pre-increment ++day (Mountain time edition) to all who celebrate.
January 1, 2026 at 6:08 AM
Happy pre-increment ++day (Mountain time edition) to all who celebrate.
Reposted by Mike Samuel 🟣
Time to wrap up the year, let’s look at some numbers 🤓
But before we do: thank you everyone for supporting Gleam's journey in 2025!
Huge thank you to every contributor, sponsor, supporter, to all the Gleamlins and Gleam-curious people. You rock! ⭐
But before we do: thank you everyone for supporting Gleam's journey in 2025!
Huge thank you to every contributor, sponsor, supporter, to all the Gleamlins and Gleam-curious people. You rock! ⭐
December 31, 2025 at 4:55 PM
Time to wrap up the year, let’s look at some numbers 🤓
But before we do: thank you everyone for supporting Gleam's journey in 2025!
Huge thank you to every contributor, sponsor, supporter, to all the Gleamlins and Gleam-curious people. You rock! ⭐
But before we do: thank you everyone for supporting Gleam's journey in 2025!
Huge thank you to every contributor, sponsor, supporter, to all the Gleamlins and Gleam-curious people. You rock! ⭐
Holiday status update: I'm drunk
Apparently a sister-in-law of mine briefly dated Ro Khanna and decided he had no charisma so was going nowhere in politics
Apparently a sister-in-law of mine briefly dated Ro Khanna and decided he had no charisma so was going nowhere in politics
December 26, 2025 at 3:46 AM
Holiday status update: I'm drunk
Apparently a sister-in-law of mine briefly dated Ro Khanna and decided he had no charisma so was going nowhere in politics
Apparently a sister-in-law of mine briefly dated Ro Khanna and decided he had no charisma so was going nowhere in politics
Holiday status: I'm drunk
My nephew, Bodhi, is rocking some game with a Tron-ass soundtrack and I'm his designated backup dancer.
My nephew, Bodhi, is rocking some game with a Tron-ass soundtrack and I'm his designated backup dancer.
December 26, 2025 at 3:32 AM
Holiday status: I'm drunk
My nephew, Bodhi, is rocking some game with a Tron-ass soundtrack and I'm his designated backup dancer.
My nephew, Bodhi, is rocking some game with a Tron-ass soundtrack and I'm his designated backup dancer.
Holiday status update: I'm drunk
I mouthed "go Chiefs" and my daughter is giving me dagger looks.
Smart money is on her never forgiving me.
I mouthed "go Chiefs" and my daughter is giving me dagger looks.
Smart money is on her never forgiving me.
December 26, 2025 at 3:19 AM
Holiday status update: I'm drunk
I mouthed "go Chiefs" and my daughter is giving me dagger looks.
Smart money is on her never forgiving me.
I mouthed "go Chiefs" and my daughter is giving me dagger looks.
Smart money is on her never forgiving me.