Blog · page 2
Notes on engineering, design, and everything in between.
Water from two shaders: a pool, a stream and a waterfall
There is no water simulation on the island and no reflections. Two ShaderMaterials cover all of it, one lying flat and one falling, sharing a single time and night uniform.
The loading budget for 3D: split the chunk, load on visibility, know when to stop
A 3D page pays three costs — download, first-frame compilation, per-frame drawing. Each needs its own budget, and any one of them can turn good-looking into janky.
Atomic file writes: write a temp file, then rename
Overwriting in place leaves half a file behind on power loss, a crash, or a concurrent read. A temp file plus rename uses filesystem atomicity to make half a file impossible.
Base64: it is neither encryption nor compression
Base64 turns 3 bytes into 4 printable characters, growing the payload by a third. It solves carrying binary through a text channel, not keeping anything secret.
Misusing big O: constants and preconditions decide more than the order
An O(n log n) sort can lose to O(n²) insertion sort, and an O(1) hash lookup can lose to an array scan. Check input size, constants and memory locality before judging speed.
Using @layer to make CSS precedence a declared order, not a specificity fight
Runaway styles come from everyone solving problems by adding specificity. Cascade layers make the order explicit: between layers only order matters, and specificity applies within a layer.