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My name is David Foster. Check out the cool software I’ve written.

My articles may also be of interest.

Featured Projects

HandBrake Subtitles ☆

Extends the popular HandBrake ripping and transcoding tool to enable processing subtitles from files, including the SSA subtitles found commonly in anime.

RDiscount ☆

Converts Markdown text to HTML, in Ruby. Includes many useful Markdown extensions.

Uhuru ☆

A translation assistant for reading Japanese text quickly.

Featured Articles

• Mar 25, 2017 » How to Design Large Programs with Abstraction and Encapsulation ☆
• Apr 02, 2016 » Roles on Software Teams ☆
• Sep 13, 2015 » State of the Union in Programming Languages (2015) ☆
• Dec 20, 2014 » Spectrum of Languages by Hardware Distance ☆
• May 11, 2013 » Programming for Perfectionists (P4P): A Book Outline ☆
• Feb 20, 2013 » Visual Guide to Programming Language Properties ☆
• Jan 15, 2013 » Things I Wish I Knew Before Working in Industry ☆
• Jan 08, 2013 » Programming is Fun. But What Matters is Solving a Real Problem. ☆

Recent Articles

• Nov 24, 2018 » Why isn't the external link symbol in Unicode?
• Sep 23, 2018 » The Flat Module Pattern in JavaScript
• Jun 24, 2018 » Responding to angry confrontations
• Jun 02, 2018 » Performance Testing
• Apr 07, 2018 » Unsound type systems are still useful
• Jan 20, 2018 » How to implement a large software feature
• Dec 21, 2017 » Power in Relationships
• Dec 18, 2017 » How to annotate a new recipe
• Dec 09, 2017 » Learning to cook better: My journey
• Apr 09, 2017 » The Trouble with Global Variables
• Mar 25, 2017 » How to Design Large Programs with Abstraction and Encapsulation ☆
• Aug 21, 2016 » How to upload from OS X Photos to Facebook (2016)
• May 21, 2016 » Glue in Functional Programming Languages
• May 17, 2016 » Abandonment vs. Unchecked Exceptions for Error Handling
• May 02, 2016 » A Programmer's Guide to Practical Hats
• Apr 22, 2016 » Notes on “The Clean Coder”
• Apr 02, 2016 » Roles on Software Teams ☆
• Sep 13, 2015 » State of the Union in Programming Languages (2015) ☆
• Aug 08, 2015 » Algorithms 101 for Software Applications
• Jun 27, 2015 » Unicode 101
• Apr 26, 2015 » Optional Structural Static Typing in Python
• Mar 23, 2015 » Block Distracting Websites
• Mar 14, 2015 » Semantic Versioning vs. Romantic Versioning
• Feb 27, 2015 » Proof terms in Idris
• Dec 20, 2014 » Spectrum of Languages by Hardware Distance ☆
• Nov 22, 2014 » Error handling styles in programming
• Nov 08, 2014 » Learning Japanese - the first 6 months
• Jun 24, 2014 » Submitting a Python App to the Mac App Store
• May 10, 2014 » Reading Japanese text from images
• Feb 17, 2014 » Agda: Second Impressions

See all articles…

Miscellaneous

Much information related to my activities prior to 2010 can also be found on my old site.