Been a Minute

How you doin'?

Long time, no see! Deeply Nested has been on hiatus for the past [checks watch] sixteen months. Oof. Before we return to our regularly scheduled musings, we have some spring cleaning to do.

How should we present inline code?

Substack’s Gist integration broke, and they don’t seem inclined to fix it. I’ll be updating old posts to replace the Gists with… something. But going forward, Gists are no longer really an option. I see two viable alternatives:

1. Code blocks. Substack now has inline code blocks that are, dare I say, almost usable. They still have some serious drawbacks: They don’t support syntax highlighting. They’re limited to 73 columns on desktop, and some laughable width on mobile. If we want line numbers, those come out of our line width budget. They don’t support captions or alt text.

2. Screenshots. The most flexible option is to screenshot code, and hyperlink plain text versions in the image captions. The primary limitation of screenshots is that they force readers who can’t visually see the code to click through links.

   By the way, Substack’s alt text support is now completely broken. Seriously, they lose the image entirely if I add alt text. On the bright side, it’s so broken that maybe they’ll actually fix it.

For comparison, here’s a code block, followed by the same code as a linked screenshot:

/// Upper cases text from r, and writes it to w.
fn to_upper<R: BufRead, W: Write>(
    mut r: R,
    w: &mut W,
) -> io::Result<()> {
    let line = &mut String::new();
    while r.read_line(line)? != 0 {
        w.write(line.to_uppercase().as_bytes())?;
    }
    Ok(())
}

to_upper.rs (raw) This is the same snippet shown in the code block above. Do you find linked screenshots a reasonable way to present code?

Should we stay on Substack?

Other options include Notion, Squarespace, or a bespoke website. It would be a shame to make current subscribers—there are several of you!—switch platforms, or else for Deeply Nested to lose those subscribers. But Substack’s support, especially for technical blogs, is *ahem* lackluster.

Do we want to build a community?

Deeply Nested has always been a mix of posts about careers in software, technical details of software development itself, and short essays about random stuff I personally find interesting.

In the current job market, networking seems especially valuable, as well as building portfolios of work that can be shared online with prospective employers. (Even if you have tons of professional experience, you can’t always publicly share the work you’ve done.) Can Deeply Nested be a resource for helping people connect, personally and professionally? Or is it better off remaining a periodic deep dive/diatribe/pontification?

Regardless of where we publish, we might also expand to a new medium, such as a podcast, that would be more amenable to conversation than a comments section.

Please do share your thoughts on all of the above, or whatever else comes to mind. It’s great to see you again.