ABEND dump #24
Welcome to ABEND dump #24!
If you wanna know what is the “ABEND dump”, I’ve got you covered.
Yeah, I know, I missed the opportunity to release this on Christmas eve. I’ve been unplugged from the usual tech content treadmill -- less blog reading, less social media doom-scrolling. Turns out playing “Clair Obscur: Expedition 33” and hanging out with family is way more interesting than doomscrolling through yet another AI hot take. Who knew?
You can check the previous ABEND dump here:
This one’s lighter than usual, but sometimes that’s exactly what we need.
AWS re:Invent 2025 - Keynote with Dr. Werner Vogels
The first 5 minutes of this keynote captures something I’ve been thinking about the AI trend: we’re treating it like it’s unprecedented, but software development has always evolved. Remember when everyone said the web would replace desktop apps? Or mobile would kill the web? Or cloud would eliminate sysadmins?
AI-assisted development might seem revolutionary because of the pace, but ultimately it’s another tool in the toolbox. People will adapt, integrate it into their workflows, and move on to worrying about the next thing. The hype cycle is exhausting, but the underlying truth remains: good engineering principles outlast trendy tools.
What’s new in Ruby 4.0
Ruby turned 30 this Christmas, and as tradition demands, dropped a new version. Ruby 4.0 brings some interesting changes, though honestly, I haven’t dug deep enough to have strong opinions yet.
Ruby::Box stands out as potentially game-changing -- it’s essentially a way to box values for safe mutation tracking, which could help with some gnarly concurrency patterns. I’m curious to see how the community adopts it. Will it become ubiquitous like blocks and procs, or will it be one of those features that everyone acknowledges is cool but rarely uses?
The official announcement is here if you want the full details.
Advent of Compiler Optimisations
Matt Goldbolt’s Advent of Compiler Optimisations is a phenomenal series breaking down compiler quirks and optimizations. Fair warning: I’m still working through it -- my assembly knowledge isn’t where I’d like it to be, so some episodes require multiple rewatches.
But that’s exactly why it’s valuable. Seeing how seemingly innocent code changes can trigger wildly different compiler behaviors is eye-opening. It’s the kind of series that makes you question every performance assumption you’ve ever made.
If you’re into compilers, low-level programming, or just enjoy having your mind bent by optimization strategies, this is worth your time.
And, speaking of compilers...
Tsonnet series - Table of contents
I put together an index of all my Tsonnet posts so far. If you’ve been following along, now you have one place to reference everything. If you haven’t, you can skim through and see if anything catches your interest.
Building a compiler from scratch has been educational (and occasionally maddening) side projects I’ve taken on. The table of contents makes it easier to follow the journey from “what is Tsonnet?” to “oh god, self-referential objects are a nightmare.”
