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LATEST NEWS

October 2024: The growing importance of being self-sufficient
Ben Visness — October 24, 2024

The past few months have been a whirlwind. We hosted two jams: the Visibility
Jam and the Wheel Reinvention Jam, almost back to back, each with an associated
recap show. (We’ll schedule them better next year!)



In between was Handmade Boston, which was a delight—I met so many wonderful
people, some of whom even submitted projects for the jam. And throughout it all,
we made a slew of website updates, including an overhaul to our Discord
integration.

Finally, we have been working with Abner and his team recently to improve the
Handmade Cities website. The Handmade Network community scoured the internet to
put together this master spreadsheet of all Handmade Cities media since the
first conference in 2019. Asaf has mapped out the full sitemap of Abner’s
current site and has been working with Devon to prioritize and port the contents
of the site to the new one. I’m very excited for the end result, but my
excitement has been tempered by recent events—events which provide a stark
reminder of why the Handmade ethos is so important.


HOW STABLE IS YOUR PLATFORM?

Here’s the thing: Abner’s site currently runs on WordPress.

Those following the tech sphere will know that the WordPress ecosystem is on
fire. Matt Mullenweg, director of the WordPress Foundation and CEO of
Automattic, has decided to wage war against a WordPress hosting company called
WP Engine. He has publicly called the company "a cancer to WordPress", blocked
them from accessing core WordPress infrastructure, and even seized one of their
popular plugins. All of this stems from an ostensible infringement on
WordPress’s trademark, but the details make it look more like extortion than a
trademark dispute.

This is not just drama. Nearly a tenth of Automattic’s employees have already
resigned, and I expect more will follow. Mullenweg’s dick-measuring contest with
DHH surely won’t help his case. (The post used to say "We’re now half a billion
in revenue. Why are you still so small?") WordPress's executive director has
resigned, as has most of the company's ecosystem division. What does this mean
for the future development of WordPress, or the health of the developer
ecosystem surrounding it? Time will tell, but it's a very bad sign for those who
have built their businesses on the platform.

The situation is still developing, and information online is constantly being
edited or deleted. By the time you read this article, you might need to look up
some of the links on the Internet Archive.

Oh wait. That's under attack too.

Until recently, if you wanted to throw together a website, WordPress seemed like
a sensible, stable choice. I've personally made multiple WordPress sites that
have held up for years, if not decades. But thanks to one man, its future is now
in jeopardy, and even the services that would act as a backup are disintegrating
too.


A SAFE HAVEN

This website, on the other hand, is proudly Handmade. The whole codebase is a
single application written in Go. It statically links its dependencies. Our data
is stored in a Postgres database on the same server. We use a few libraries here
and there for syntax highlighting and Markdown rendering, but for the most part
we just depend on the standard library HTTP server.

This very post can be authored in Markdown, previewed in real time, and
published instantly. It has a full revision history, permalinks, the works. We
have a project system, a shadowban system to combat spam, and a robust Discord
integration that powers the amazing showcase feeds across the site. The previous
admin team did a great job building the foundation, and Asaf and I have rebuilt,
extended, and refined it over the past several years. Every link to
handmade.network still works, and will always work, for as long as we are around
to maintain this site, and when someday we hand this off to another team,
they'll have one simple database full of well-organized content.

Was this site hard to build? Kind of. Certainly it took us months to rebuild it
from scratch back in 2021, and we've poured many more months into its
development since. But this entire site was built by a mere handful of devs in
their spare time. It's just a database with posts, threads, and projects, and a
bunch of CRUD pages for managing them. Nothing about it is very complicated.

But thanks to our efforts, we are safe. Nobody can take away our platform,
because we built our platform. As long as we can connect a computer to the
internet, we'll be able to keep this site online.


SELF-SUFFICIENCY IS NOT SELFISH

So with Handmade Seattle approaching, we have redoubled our efforts. Being
self-sufficient isn't just about protecting ourselves from the Matt Mullenwegs
of the world. It's about empowering others to sustain themselves too.

What we have learned from building the Handmade Network website enables us to
build websites for others. Abner's will be the first, but as we spin up the
Handmade Software Foundation, we expect to make many more, each specifically
tailored to each author's needs. There's no reason for a website to be
complicated—each one can be straightforward and simple. And if a project author
decides they don't want our help any more? They can just take our code and run
it themselves.

We hope this is a model for the whole Handmade community: a group of
self-sufficient programmers working together to empower each other. By taking
the responsibility on ourselves, we can build better software and share what we
learn with the world.

The first step to building a new future for the software industry is to build
tools for ourselves. This is why we do jams, this is why we do Unwind, this is
why we do conferences. Handmade programmers need to lead the way by proving how
much a few programmers can do, and how much better your software can be when you
build it by hand.

See you all at Handmade Seattle in November.

-Ben


Read more »
Featured
Recent
News
Freya Holmér November 12, 2024
Half-Edge


implemented half-edge box selection in &half-edge !

View original message on Discord
Brian Maher November 4, 2024


Been a bit since I've posted, but still making steady progress on my laser
puzzle game. Added bidirectional mirrors this morning

View original message on Discord
Skytrias | Michael Kutowski November 1, 2024


fretboard preview on the tab editor/player (starts at 0) 🎶 showing off my own
version of "css" but in ini, including colors, cut presets, editor options and
element styles

View original message on Discord
Andreas October 29, 2024
BRDF


&learningjam2024
Back on the PBR demo. Went off a tangent and implemented my own local
"Shadertoy", so that I can use my preferred text editor without having to do
additional copy-pasting. I've written a blog post about it.
https://unlitart.com/Blog/#PBR%20Demo%20WIP%20and%20Writing%20Offline%20Shadertoy

View original message on Discord
Freya Holmér October 28, 2024
Half-Edge


I've done so many boring backend plumbing things with &half-edge of late so the
only visually interesting thing I have done is having implemented camera zoom
:pensivebread:

View original message on Discord
Ted Bendixson October 26, 2024


Juicelutions continues. We've got camera shake on moose impact, better player
character animations, grass rustling as the moose charges, and trees that shake
when hit by the moose.

View original message on Discord
Skytrias | Michael Kutowski October 25, 2024


Little Guitar Tab player/editor im doing for transcribing my own stuff, the ones
played are not mine tho 😛

View original message on Discord
Jens October 25, 2024


The (almost) three month crunch is over, it's released!

The old (not so good) prototype has come from left image to right image.

Improvements include:

 * Level count from a measly 20 to 60 (63 if you count costume levels).
 * Major new gameplay features; including boxes.
 * A saga map.
 * Improved music and sfx.
 * A demo version.
 * Halloween costumes.
 * Candies.
 * A secret level (sorry, does not feature cows).
 * Steam achievements.
 * A native Linux build.
 * A bunch of bug fixes regarding the asset compiler (especially with the custom
   Spine2D runtime and serializer).
   ... and probably a bunch more that I've forgotten about.

Get it here if you're into action puzzle games:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3137550/Halloween_Picket_Maze/

View original message on Discord
Freya Holmér October 22, 2024
Half-Edge


been experimenting with making a tabbed interface for &half-edge ! It's just the
UI right now, but this is one of those things that would make it feel a lot more
modern compared to the big established modeling tools, where every time you want
to open a new model, you have to decide whether to save or discard whatever you
already have open. tabs like this would let you work much more fluently in terms
of UX, something I'm prioritizing a lot with this tool!

View original message on Discord
Martin Fouilleul October 22, 2024
Orca


Taking a little break from the wasm debugger to integrate harfbuzz into &orca

View original message on Discord
Andreas October 22, 2024


Finally I've released my new website!
It was made using my own handmade static site generator, a project that has
grown to the extent that I'm almost considering registering it.
More information can be found in the showcase, linked below. There's also a blog
post.
https://unlitart.com/Tech/#Static%20Site%20Generator
https://unlitart.com

View original message on Discord
Meese October 21, 2024
Meese Engine


&meeseengine for the Gamecube, Wii, Dreamcast, and PC.

I've been mostly working on the engine's internals lately. The PC port gave me
the debugging tools I needed to improve complex systems like the memory manager.

 * Audio is now working on the Dreamcast version
 * Renderer runs 20% faster on the Dreamcast
 * Heap allocation is 300% faster on average and 200% faster on worst case.
   While this had minimal impact on performance for the Gamecube and PC
   versions, it was a significant bottleneck on the Dreamcast.
 * Increased real-time heap defragmentation throughput by using a new
   multi-regional heap structure, which also sets the foundation for DRAM
   bank-aware memory allocation.
   This video showcases the Dreamcast version of my voxel engine.

View original message on Discord
Mārtiņš Možeiko October 19, 2024
wcap


Added AV1 video encoding in &wcap
Supports 8-bit and 10-bit format main profiles.
AV1 is newer codec that in theory should allow smaller output file size for
similar quality (or better quality for similar output file size). In practice
the quality and availability depends on driver and h/w support. Probably fine on
Nvidia, but not really recommended on AMD (worse quality than alternatives).
Does not work on Qualcomm (GPU driver crashes). Windows provides no software
fallback for encoding on CPU, must have h/w support to enable AV1.

View original message on Discord
Jens October 18, 2024

Not showing off coding super powers today, but level design and marketing - and
today got confirmation something is working.

Our game level 8 was too hard, but instead of changing it I replaced level 7
with a tutorial.

The problem players had was "can I do this movement?", where the answer is NO.
With a bit of tutorializing, and a bit clearer UI (red areas linger on longer)
it still wasn't obvious, but it is clearer than before.

I've been contacting YouTubers to cover the game for several weeks now and I'm
looking at about 11 % "success rate". I must say that YouTube mostly showing me
content creators with over 100 K subscribers is really hurting me as there's no
way I can reach those with this game (and lack of previous success stories).

But with the latest YT contact I got confirmation that the level is passable,
and also that demo playtime is around 30 minutes (which is about what I was
aiming for) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsHc7umek9w

Of course, game is 100 % coded by me, assets by better half. Only external stuff
is the music, sound effects (excluding ghost sounds, that's me speaking to the
mic) and font.

View original message on Discord
Jakub Tomšů October 18, 2024


My blog post about alternatives to interpolation in fixed timestep simulations
is finally out! Also It's on the HN front page rn :O And thanks to @poyepolomix
for his help:)
https://jakubtomsu.github.io/posts/fixed_timestep_without_interpolation/

Here is the demo source code:
https://github.com/jakubtomsu/fixed-timestep-demo

View original message on Discord
Mārtiņš Možeiko October 18, 2024
wcap


&wcap now with native arm64 support!

All the same features as x64 build supported - screen/window/region capture,
audio capture, process-local audio, h264/hevc/aac/flac, improved color
conversion, etc... Everything running with the same small CPU and memory usage
when encoding using GPU accelerated codec.
https://github.com/mmozeiko/wcap

View original message on Discord
Freya Holmér October 18, 2024
Half-Edge


iterated a little more on the &half-edge logo! I kinda like this one!

View original message on Discord
Wassimulator October 17, 2024


I'm working on a little jam project this week, using raylib and box2d v3

View original message on Discord
Vjekoslav October 15, 2024
Disk Voyager


Folders preview in &disk-voyager

View original message on Discord
Wassimulator October 13, 2024


**procedural road textures! **
using noise functions along the UV plus an added touch of generated streaks at
high curvatures using the spline second derivative and smoothening discontinuity
(since it's not C2 continuous) with a rolling average before render, then using
that to create tire streaks at corners
so the below uses no textures, it's all generated in the fragment shader

View original message on Discord
Freya Holmér November 12, 2024
Half-Edge


implemented half-edge box selection in &half-edge !

View original message on Discord
Handmade Network » Blog
Blog comment: October 2024: The growing importance of being self-sufficient
Ben Visness — November 11, 2024
Handmade Network » Blog
Blog comment: October 2024: The growing importance of being self-sufficient
Oliver Marsh — November 11, 2024
kanzwataru November 11, 2024


Added histogram and tonemap visualizer to my camera RAW editor &filmraw.
(Odin/OpenGL/Dear-Imgui)

Visualizing the data makes manipulating it a lot easier, so I will add more of
these before implementing any more colour editing features.

View original message on Discord
RemedyBG » Forums
Forum reply: RemedyBG 0.4.0.8
Scr3amer — November 10, 2024
Handmade Network » Blog
Blog comment: October 2024: The growing importance of being self-sufficient
Macoy Madson — November 10, 2024
Handmade Network » Blog
Blog comment: October 2024: The growing importance of being self-sufficient
Abner Coimbre — November 10, 2024
C3 » Blog
New blog post: New contract syntax with 0.6.4
Christoffer Lernö — November 9, 2024
skejeton November 9, 2024


made a little program where i start my work timer, and it would ask me if i'm
actually working every so often, and so far it's been working fighting my
procrastinating habits. made in C and WinAPI my beloved

View original message on Discord
Handmade Network » Blog
Blog comment: October 2024: The growing importance of being self-sufficient
Mārtiņš Možeiko — November 7, 2024
Handmade Hero » Forums » Code
Forum reply: StretchDIBits performing weirdly (?)
munohikari — November 7, 2024
Jim Calabro November 7, 2024


Hey all! I'd mentioned this to some folks in person at Handmade Boston, but this
might be my first time sharing this project in this Discord, but I've been
working for a while on a from-scratch graphical Linux debugger for ELF/DWARF
binaries

It doesn't depend on GDB/LLDB/DAP/libunwind/any libraries at all related to
debuggers; its only dependencies at the moment are glfw and dear imgui

Currently, it only supports C and Zig, but over time I do intend to support
pretty much any popular and/or handmade language that compiles naively

Here's a quick demo to show you what it looks like. It's got a bunch of features
you'd expect from a debugger like:

 * Loading debug symbols and running a child process
 * Setting/enabling/disabling/unsetting breakpoints
 * Stepping in/out/over/singe-step, continue execution, kill the subprocess, all
   other normal program control mechanisms
 * Displaying stdout/stderr from the child
 * Unwinding the call stack
 * Displaying local/watch variables
 * Displaying registers
 * Hex viewer for memory addresses

There's still a ton to do! I love talking about debuggers and other stuff, so if
you have questions reach out

(re-posted with an mp4 rather than mkv)

View original message on Discord
Handmade Network » Blog
Blog comment: October 2024: The growing importance of being self-sufficient
Macoy Madson — November 6, 2024
Handmade Network » Blog
Blog comment: October 2024: The growing importance of being self-sufficient
Ben Visness — November 4, 2024
Brian Maher November 4, 2024


Been a bit since I've posted, but still making steady progress on my laser
puzzle game. Added bidirectional mirrors this morning

View original message on Discord
Handmade Network » Blog
Blog comment: October 2024: The growing importance of being self-sufficient
Ben Visness — November 4, 2024
RemedyBG » Forums
Forum reply: RemedyBG 0.4.0.8
Simon Anciaux — November 4, 2024
RemedyBG » Forums
New forum thread: RemedyBG 0.4.0.8
x13pixels — November 4, 2024
Oliver Marsh November 3, 2024


Updated the renderer to be a culling mesher instead of drawing each block every
frame. Also I changed the hash function for the chunks to use murmur32 instead
of crc32. You can see the stats for the chunk hash map on the screen, doing this
I found out that the crc32 hash wasn't distributing the hash uniformly. I also
implemented frustum culling of the world so only chunks that are in the camera
frustum are actually generated.

I'm only at a render distance of 10 chunks so I think I still need to improve
the performance if I want to reach something like 32 chunk render distance. I
think that'll be changing the mesher to a greedy mesher, and speeding up the
meshing code.

At the end of the video you can see where the world hasn't generated yet

View original message on Discord
RemedyBG » Forums
Forum reply: Locals
Simon Anciaux — November 2, 2024
October 2024: The growing importance of being self-sufficient
Ben Visness — October 24, 2024

The past few months have been a whirlwind. We hosted two jams: the Visibility
Jam and the Wheel Reinvention Jam, almost back to back, each with an associated
recap show. (We’ll schedule them better next year!)



In between was Handmade Boston, which was a delight—I met so many wonderful
people, some of whom even submitted projects for the jam. And throughout it all,
we made a slew of website updates, including an overhaul to our Discord
integration.

Finally, we have been working with Abner and his team recently to improve the
Handmade Cities website. The Handmade Network community scoured the internet to
put together this master spreadsheet of all Handmade Cities media since the
first conference in 2019. Asaf has mapped out the full sitemap of Abner’s
current site and has been working with Devon to prioritize and port the contents
of the site to the new one. I’m very excited for the end result, but my
excitement has been tempered by recent events—events which provide a stark
reminder of why the Handmade ethos is so important.


HOW STABLE IS YOUR PLATFORM?

Here’s the thing: Abner’s site currently runs on WordPress.

Those following the tech sphere will know that the WordPress ecosystem is on
fire. Matt Mullenweg, director of the WordPress Foundation and CEO of
Automattic, has decided to wage war against a WordPress hosting company called
WP Engine. He has publicly called the company "a cancer to WordPress", blocked
them from accessing core WordPress infrastructure, and even seized one of their
popular plugins. All of this stems from an ostensible infringement on
WordPress’s trademark, but the details make it look more like extortion than a
trademark dispute.

This is not just drama. Nearly a tenth of Automattic’s employees have already
resigned, and I expect more will follow. Mullenweg’s dick-measuring contest with
DHH surely won’t help his case. (The post used to say "We’re now half a billion
in revenue. Why are you still so small?") WordPress's executive director has
resigned, as has most of the company's ecosystem division. What does this mean
for the future development of WordPress, or the health of the developer
ecosystem surrounding it? Time will tell, but it's a very bad sign for those who
have built their businesses on the platform.

The situation is still developing, and information online is constantly being
edited or deleted. By the time you read this article, you might need to look up
some of the links on the Internet Archive.

Oh wait. That's under attack too.

Until recently, if you wanted to throw together a website, WordPress seemed like
a sensible, stable choice. I've personally made multiple WordPress sites that
have held up for years, if not decades. But thanks to one man, its future is now
in jeopardy, and even the services that would act as a backup are disintegrating
too.


A SAFE HAVEN

This website, on the other hand, is proudly Handmade. The whole codebase is a
single application written in Go. It statically links its dependencies. Our data
is stored in a Postgres database on the same server. We use a few libraries here
and there for syntax highlighting and Markdown rendering, but for the most part
we just depend on the standard library HTTP server.

This very post can be authored in Markdown, previewed in real time, and
published instantly. It has a full revision history, permalinks, the works. We
have a project system, a shadowban system to combat spam, and a robust Discord
integration that powers the amazing showcase feeds across the site. The previous
admin team did a great job building the foundation, and Asaf and I have rebuilt,
extended, and refined it over the past several years. Every link to
handmade.network still works, and will always work, for as long as we are around
to maintain this site, and when someday we hand this off to another team,
they'll have one simple database full of well-organized content.

Was this site hard to build? Kind of. Certainly it took us months to rebuild it
from scratch back in 2021, and we've poured many more months into its
development since. But this entire site was built by a mere handful of devs in
their spare time. It's just a database with posts, threads, and projects, and a
bunch of CRUD pages for managing them. Nothing about it is very complicated.

But thanks to our efforts, we are safe. Nobody can take away our platform,
because we built our platform. As long as we can connect a computer to the
internet, we'll be able to keep this site online.


SELF-SUFFICIENCY IS NOT SELFISH

So with Handmade Seattle approaching, we have redoubled our efforts. Being
self-sufficient isn't just about protecting ourselves from the Matt Mullenwegs
of the world. It's about empowering others to sustain themselves too.

What we have learned from building the Handmade Network website enables us to
build websites for others. Abner's will be the first, but as we spin up the
Handmade Software Foundation, we expect to make many more, each specifically
tailored to each author's needs. There's no reason for a website to be
complicated—each one can be straightforward and simple. And if a project author
decides they don't want our help any more? They can just take our code and run
it themselves.

We hope this is a model for the whole Handmade community: a group of
self-sufficient programmers working together to empower each other. By taking
the responsibility on ourselves, we can build better software and share what we
learn with the world.

The first step to building a new future for the software industry is to build
tools for ourselves. This is why we do jams, this is why we do Unwind, this is
why we do conferences. Handmade programmers need to lead the way by proving how
much a few programmers can do, and how much better your software can be when you
build it by hand.

See you all at Handmade Seattle in November.

-Ben


Read more »
July 2024: A new website, just in time for the Visibility Jam!
Ben Visness — July 6, 2024

Hey there, Handmade Network. Since you’re reading this on the website, you may
have noticed that things look a little different around here. As I talked about
in our last news post, we’ve been working for the last couple months to redesign
the Handmade Network website. Today I’m pleased to finally roll it out!

The new site design comes courtesy of Jes Chuhta, a wonderful UX designer who we
came to know through Handmade Boston and Handmade Seattle last year. The new
website is designed to reflect the new shape of the Handmade Network as it has
evolved over time. A quick summary of the changes:

 * Showing off activity from Discord. The website forums aren’t used much these
   days. The Discord, on the other hand, is thriving. With well over 7,000
   users, thousands of messages sent per week, and a steady stream of
   #project-showcase posts, the Discord is the most active part of the community
   right now. The new website design puts that content front and center. The new
   feed-focused design prominently features the work being shared on Discord,
   right alongside the other content typical of the website.
 * Your own customized feed. If you’re logged in, you can now follow users and
   projects here on the website. The home page will show you a new Following
   feed of just the content that matters most to you. In the near future, we’ll
   add RSS support for this feed as well, enabling you to keep up with community
   activity in whatever way you prefer.
 * Tons of improvements to projects. Handmade Network projects have been
   overhauled, making important information much more prominent and totally
   redesigning the project-editing experience. The new link editor replaces the
   confusing old textual format, and the distinction between primary and
   secondary links enables project authors to highlight the actions that are
   most important. Plus, projects now support header images, allowing you once
   again to show off what your project is capable of outside the long
   description.

In addition, the new design is actually much simpler to work with! Programmers,
trust me, you have no idea how valuable it is to work with a good designer. Our
HTML is so simple now, our CSS is so simple now, we have a third of the
variables we used to have. It is so easy to slap designs together and they look
good because they are consistent and aesthetically pleasing and please
programmers listen to me please

Because we needed to get this announcement out, the website is still a work in
progress. Several pages are still somewhat broken or need a little more
attention. But we hope that you all enjoy the new foundations, and we look
forward to expanding the site to highlight even more of the great work the
Handmade Network community is doing.


THE VISIBILITY JAM IS JUST TWO WEEKS AWAY!



That’s right, just two weeks! Our second annual Visibility Jam is coming up on
July 19, two weekends from the time of this posting.

The topic of “visibility” is critical to Handmade goals. To understand our
systems we have to see our systems. The underlying realities of computers cannot
be known unless programmers like us go to the effort of building tools,
visualizations, and editors. Making systems visible is the first step toward
improving those systems.

I covered this in my talk from Handmade Seattle last year. We don’t need to be
stuck forever with the towering pile of complexity that is modern systems. We
can learn how systems work, tear down the layers, and build new systems that are
just as nice to use but have a fraction of the complexity. If we are going to
build a new kind of “high-level” software, we first have to understand the low
levels, and the Visibility Jam is your opportunity to take that first step.

Plus, we’ve now made tons of improvements to projects on the website, so
submission should be much more pleasant this year. There’s no better time to
join the community and try jamming with us! Check out the jam page for more
details.


Read more »
May 2024: Focusing on projects
Ben Visness — May 20, 2024

Hello Handmade Network! 2024 has been great so far. Most notably, we held our
first-ever Learning Jam in March, in which participants learn about a topic and
share that knowledge with the rest of the community. We had great turnout for an
experimental jam in its first year, and I’m excited to revisit it in the future.

But looking back, not everything we’ve done over the last couple years has been
quite so successful. We’ve excitedly kicked off projects like our education
initiative, Time Machine, even a 501c3 behind the scenes. Sadly, none of these
have panned out. Making good educational resources with a Handmade flair is hard
(really hard) and requires a huge time commitment from a rare type of person.
Time Machine was a fun idea, but was never destined to succeed as a large
community project. And the 501c3…we’ll save that for another time.

Community members did great work on these projects, and we learned a lot, but as
time passed it became clear that we were neglecting the heart of the Handmade
community: projects, and the people who author them.

Handmade software is literally the point of the Handmade Network. Communities
that talk about programming are a dime a dozen. But Handmade software are
different. It is so fast, so capable, so lightweight, so simple, that it shocks
people with what modern computers are capable of.

At the end of the day, Handmade projects are what brings people to the
community. This is not just me being nice; our Google Search analytics show that
RemedyBG is by far the #1 source of traffic to handmade.network.
#project-showcase is also the most popular channel on the Discord, and we
frequently hear that it inspires people to dig deeper into their own projects.
And ultimately, if we’re not making quality software, what’s the point?

So this year, we are 100% focused on projects. Our sole goal is to promote and
boost the amazing work being done by the Handmade community. To that end:

 * We’re doing more jams. In addition to the Learning Jam, we’ll bringing back
   both the Visibility Jam and Wheel Reinvention Jam for another year—and plan
   to keep doing so indefinitely. The Visibility Jam will be in July, while the
   Wheel Reinvention Jam will be September. See this page for all the details.
 * We’re doubling down on Unwind. Our monthly Twitch show Unwind is an
   opportunity to dig deeper into technical details with the authors of various
   projects. The first few episodes have been a great time, but there’s so much
   more we can do with the show, and we hope to increase the show’s reach so
   that even more people can be aware of the great work being done by members of
   the community.
 * We’re redesigning the website. The current website design is very old, and
   doesn’t do a good job highlighting the actual work people are doing.
   Additionally, although the project system has been working pretty well for
   jams, there are many quality-of-life issues. The wonderful Jes Chuhta has
   been crafting a new design for us, and Asaf and I have been implementing it
   this month. In fact, I’m streaming the work every Monday and Friday this
   month over on Twitch.

As for our previous initiatives, we’ll be sunsetting them and archiving their
content as necessary. Nothing will be lost except our time and our pride, but
we’ll recover. 🙂

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Before I close, a few key project updates:

 * Disk Voyager is coming along beautifully and already has dozens of very happy
   alpha users. He recently added a bookmarks / quick access panel, which I am
   very excited about. It will soon enter open alpha, so go to
   https://diskvoyager.com/ and sign up to make sure you get access.
   
   

 * Cactus Image Viewer has been receiving lots of quality updates recently, with
   more on the way, including a gallery of other images in the folder. You can
   download the latest version from GitHub.
   
   

 * Orca is on the cusp of another major release. Shaw and I rewrote the Python
   tooling in C to reduce dependencies, Reuben added a complete libc
   implementation (no more shim!), and Martin rewrote the vector graphics
   backend in WebGPU. Make sure to subscribe to the Orca newsletter to be
   notified when it releases.

And finally, Abner has started a Discord server for Handmade Cities. You can
read more about his rationale in this blog post, but if you are interested in
meetups or coworking with Handmade folks, I recommend you go join.

Looking forward to many more great things this year! We’re just getting started.

-Ben


Read more »
December 2023: Handmade meetups all year round
Ben Visness — December 20, 2023

I'm pleased to write this final news post of the year together with Abner
Coimbre!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Handmade Community,

Warm holiday greetings! Abner Coimbre and Ben Visness here, teaming up to
announce that the Handmade Cities Matrix server will remain online permanently.
In past years, it has been shut down at the end of conferences, but now it will
remain active year-round!

This might surprise you, since most of you are probably already members of the
(now rather large) Handmade Network Discord server. So why keep the Matrix
server as well?

The Handmade movement has grown an incredible amount in the past several years.
Importantly, it has grown both online and in the real world. Both domains are
vital to the health of the larger Handmade community - but there are some
critical differences between the two. Let's dive into it.


TWO COMMUNITIES? NOT QUITE.

The Handmade Network (HMN) is the online hub for the Handmade movement. Led by
Ben and his team, they run programming jams, Twitch shows, and online social
gatherings. They provide a place for community members to discuss programming,
learn from each other, and share what they're working on. The Handmade Network
is also the home of Handmade projects, including the Orca initiative and Abner's
own Terminal Click.

In essence, HMN is the online community - and it's accessible to everyone,
including those who prefer to remain anonymous.

Handmade Cities (HMC) brings the Handmade movement into the physical realm.
Headed by Abner and his own staff, HMC orchestrates tech conferences like
Handmade Boston and Handmade Seattle, which are venues to present to the rest of
the world our software and ideals. HMC also organizes monthly in-person meetups
worldwide.

In essence, Handmade Cities is all about in-person events. HMC emphasizes
real-world interactions; by its very nature, those who participate in these
events can't be anonymous!

For several years now, Handmade Cities has used a Matrix server for discussions
related to conferences and conference meetups. This server has always
complemented the Handmade Network Discord server, rather than competing with it.
And that is not going to change!

The HMN Discord remains open to all, while users on the HMC Matrix are tied to
real individuals participating in Handmade events: ticket holders, local meetup
members, and so on. The Discord is the hub for jams and other online events; the
Matrix is the hub for meetups and other in-person events.


WHAT ABOUT HANDMADE HERO? HOW'S THAT GOING?

At the start of the Handmade movement was Handmade Hero, a Twitch series showing
how to craft a video game from scratch. Casey Muratori, president of Molly
Rocket, started it in November 2014 and quickly found great success, forming a
huge community around its values that has lasted almost a decade.

So, what's become of our bouncy little friend? Casey's passions have expanded
beyond this project, reflecting Molly Rocket's commitment to multiple
initiatives. We're not privy to the specifics of Casey's plans with Handmade
Hero, but this year, we collaborated directly with him to shape the opening
blurbs for both Handmade Network and Handmade Cities:

> handmade.network:
> 
> Originally inspired by Casey Muratori's Handmade Hero, we dig deep into our
> systems and learn how to do things from scratch. We're not satisfied by the
> latest popular language or the framework of the month. Instead we care about
> how computers actually work.

> handmadecities.com:
> 
> Inspired by Handmade Hero
> 
> Like Handmade Hero by Molly Rocket we believe in breaking software down to the
> bare bones and building back an understanding of how it all really works.

While Molly Rocket, Handmade Network, and Handmade Cities share a spirit of
mutual support, it's crucial to emphasize that we exist as separate entities,
and are not formally affiliated. You might instead see us as independent
stewards of the Handmade movement.

And at the end of the day, that's the way we like it. We each have our own
expertise, our own experiences, our own goals, and ultimately our own
businesses. We feel that we're at our best, and the Handmade movement is at its
best, when we are run independently but collaborate at every opportunity.

We look forward to bringing you improved conferences, jams, meetups, shows, and
projects in 2024. With our 10-year anniversary fast approaching (!) the future
of Handmade shines brighter than ever. 😊

All the best,

Abner and Ben


Read more »
September 2023: Orca MVP is out, Wheel Reinvention Jam on Sept. 25!
Ben Visness — September 16, 2023

With the Wheel Reinvention Jam just over a week away, we’re very pleased to
finally release the Orca MVP to the community!



For those unfamiliar, Orca is our new cross-platform runtime for WebAssembly
apps. It gives you a cross-platform app development system without all the
baggage of browsers. It’s a long-term project with ambitious goals, but we are
very excited to finally release an early MVP for the community to play with.

All the details can be found in the announcement post over on the Orca website.
There you’ll find how to access the source code, the list of features and
current limitations, and how to get help and provide feedback. If you’re
interested and think it would be a good fit for your project, we’d love to have
you try it out during the jam.


JAM! JAM! JAM!



Our third annual Wheel Reinvention Jam is less than two weeks away! The Wheel
Reinvention Jam is a week-long jam where we build software from scratch. Whether
you want to clone an existing app for fun or build something wild and ambitious,
this is your chance to try.

If you’ve never participated in a week-long jam before, don’t sweat the time
commitment - you can participate with however much time you have. Whether you
take days off of work or just participate on the weekend, we’re excited to see
what you create!

The jam takes place from Monday September 25 to Sunday October 1. For all the
details, visit https://handmade.network/jam.


WHY REINVENT THE WHEEL?

We owe the name “Wheel Reinvention Jam”, and its logo, to Casey. At the start of
Handmade Hero, literally in episode 1, a viewer asked the question: “Why not use
an engine? Why reinvent the wheel?”

Casey’s answer deserves to be watched in its entirety, but part of it is
shockingly relevant right now:

> If you start with an engine, then it changes what you’re learning from the
> fundamental truth of how to implement a game to someone else’s version of
> that. […] What you’re really learning is that engine. You haven’t learned how
> to make games, you’ve learned how to make games in Unity. Right? And if Unity
> were to disappear, for example, you would no longer know how to make a game at
> all. I’m not exaggerating this, that’s just the truth.

We could not have planned our jam at a more opportune time. Unity recently
announced a dramatic change to their pricing structure that leaves the future of
many game studios in doubt.

What Casey said back in 2014, at the very inception of the Handmade community,
has now come to pass. For many game developers, Unity is no longer an option.
And just like Casey said, their very existence in the industry has now come into
question. Will they be able to make games at all?

Casey’s reasoning holds as true today as it did then. The world needs engine
programmers! Programmers who understand how engines work aren’t constrained by
the limitations of the engine - they know what’s fundamentally possible and can
work around constraints to achieve anything they want. But more than that, our
current engines are not good enough! We need people making new engines, better
tools, better wheels.

This is not just true for game engines. It’s true of the entire software
industry. We need new video editors, new platform layers, new code editors, new
databases, new networking protocols, new compilers, new typesetting systems, new
presentation programs, new graphics APIs, new operating systems.

We will never make progress unless we reinvent the wheel.

See you on September 25.

-Ben


Read more »
August 2023: Handmade Boston recap + Orca updates!
Ben Visness — August 19, 2023

August has already been a big month for the Handmade community! The biggest
news, of course, was:


HANDMADE BOSTON!



Handmade Boston was the first of two Handmade Cities conferences this year and
the first ever held outside of Seattle. I have to say, despite it being the
first conference in a new city, in a new venue, the event was a huge success.
There were dozens of in-person attendees and hundreds more online, and six
fantastic long-form talks. I’ve been working through the homework and thoroughly
enjoying my time.

I also had the pleasure of meeting many people in person whom I had only ever
met online. For many of them, Boston was the first Handmade conference they had
ever attended. It warms my heart that so many people were willing to take a
chance on this scrappy first-year conference.

Abner tells me he will be publishing a recap of the conference soon, so if you’d
like to hear more from him (and buy your tickets to Handmade Seattle!) then head
over to https://handmadecities.com/.


ORCA IS NEARLY READY…



We’ve been hard at work on Orca, our new stack for cross-platform WebAssembly
apps. Think of it like Handmade Electron - a runtime that lets you ship the same
app on multiple platforms. Unlike Electron, however, we’re throwing away the
worst parts of the web stack and keeping the best ones. We’re building all the
systems from the ground up to make app development delightful while still giving
you the same cross-platform benefits of the web. And we’re doing everything we
can to give you freedom and flexibility, so you don’t have to use the parts you
don’t need.

We intend for Orca to be completely free and open source. For now, the codebase
is still private - but this will be changing soon! We’ve kept the codebase
closed since the project is at such an early stage - everything is getting
renamed, build tooling is changing, git submodules are being imported and
everything is breaking as a result. But we’re stabilizing it as fast as we can,
because of this goal:

Orca will be available for use during the Wheel Reinvention Jam in September. It
will be very MVP, a “vertical slice” of all the functionality we eventually
intend for Orca to have. It will also certainly have bugs. But it will have
enough to give you a real taste of our vision for the project. If you’re
interested, we’d love to have you give Orca a try.

For more information and updates, and to be notified when the codebase is open,
make sure to visit https://orca-app.dev and sign up for the newsletter. It won’t
be long until the next one, and in the meantime, you can listen to the latest
episode of Allen Webster’s podcast, which is an interview with Martin about
Orca:
https://conversations.mr4th.com/2204443/13420302-orca-with-martin-fouilleul


THE WHEEL REINVENTION JAM IS A MONTH AWAY!



As mentioned in previous newsletters, our third Wheel Reinvention Jam will be
held from September 25 to October 1. Now is the time to start brainstorming
project ideas! No idea is too big or too small. Whether you build a clone of
another app for educational purposes, or you try to reinvent programming itself,
you have a week to play with new ideas and stretch yourself as a programmer.

More details will be published next month. Stay tuned, start thinking of
projects, and consider joining the Discord so you can find others to collaborate
with.


AROUND THE COMMUNITY

Finally, I just wanted to highlight a few fun and noteworthy things that have
happened in the community over the past month:

 * We had a whopping 100 updates shared in our #project-showcase channel on
   Discord in the last month alone. And these are some high-quality updates!
   NeGate got an NES emulator to build using his new C compiler Cuik and backend
   Tilde, which is now being integrated into the Odin compiler. Saalty also got
   an NES emulator up and running, but on bare metal using his own custom
   bootloader and kernel. And after years of work, torogadude released a demo of
   his game Puppetmaster on Steam, and you can go try the demo and wishlist it
   now!
 * Programming YouTuber Tsoding published a video delving into the GDB frontend
   gf, made by our very own nakst, the creator of the Essence operating system.
   It’s a very entertaining watch - Tsoding crashes the debugger while debugging
   his own program, and in just an hour is able to debug the debugger using the
   debugger, isolate the issue, and submit a pull request to fix it. It’s a
   testament to the quality of nakst’s code that someone entirely new to the
   project is able to dive in and immediately fix their issue!
 * WhiteBox continues to receive amazing updates, now with concurrency support,
   and a disassembly view that gives you rich information about control flow at
   a glance. I love to see new ways of visualizing low-level programming
   concepts - programmers have deserved better UI for a long, long time.


UNTIL NEXT TIME…

…we’ll be working hard on Orca, jams, education, and other projects I can’t wait
to tell you about. This community is going stronger than ever, and I’m so glad
to be a part of it!

-Ben

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This newsletter brought to you by Ratatat.


Read more »
July 2023: Orca, Time Machine, and more
Ben Visness — July 15, 2023

Hello Handmade community! It’s been an exciting year for Handmade so far. Here’s
what we’ve been up to:

 * We announced Orca, a new toolkit for cross-platform WebAssembly apps.
 * We launched Time Machine, a community project where we collect video of old
   devices to see how the experience of computing has changed over time.
 * We hosted the Visibility Jam, a jam where we make invisible things in
   computing visible.
 * We held another fishbowl about software testing, and we’ll likely revisit
   this topic in the future.

And of course, Abner has expanded his conference efforts and is now hosting two
Handmade conferences, one in Boston and one in Seattle. Handmade Boston is less
than a month away, so check it out (and don’t forget there’s an online track!)

TL;DR: Orca and Time Machine have both kicked off, and our next Wheel
Reinvention Jam is coming in September!


ORCA



Orca has been in the works for a long time. Many of us were drawn to the
Handmade community because we were dissatisfied with the bloated, complicated
technologies available to us. The community has spent the last several years
learning to make UIs, compilers, debuggers, platform layers - everything you’d
need to make a compelling development platform. Now we’re finally putting it all
together into something real.

Orca is a whole new stack for making cross-platform applications. It’s designed
specifically for WebAssembly, so you can use whatever language you like instead
of being stuck with JavaScript. It has a new state-of-the-art vector graphics
renderer and we’re developing amazing UI tools that will blow the DOM out of the
water. And above all we’re designing the platform to be well-layered - you don’t
have to use the parts of Orca you don’t need, and most importantly, you don’t
have to ship them to your users either.

The Orca initiative is led by Martin Fouilleul, known in the community by his
handle forkingpaths. He originally prototyped Orca as his submission for last
year’s Wheel Reinvention Jam, and we’re thrilled to give him the chance to
develop his vision further. For more info about Orca, check out the announcement
blog post, and subscribe to Orca’s own newsletter while you’re there!


TIME MACHINE



When I attended Handmade Seattle 2019, I visited the (now-closed 😔) Living
Computers Museum. I had the opportunity to play with a huge range of computers,
from an ancient teletype to a Macintosh Classic to a NeXT cube. While I was
playing with Kid Pix on that Macintosh Classic, I was struck by just how fun and
responsive the program was, on hardware that pales in comparison to our
computers today. How was it possible that a program like that could run so
well…or that programs today could run so poorly?

Then in 2021, I found some old computers in our robotics team’s shop that had
been in hibernation since 2015. I booted them up and found that they were a
perfect time capsule of what we were working on at the time, with our old code
still open and everything. And they ran great, with the start menu opening
instantaneously (as it should) and programs launching quickly.

And then updates started running.

I watched this computer age five years in thirty minutes. Every Windows update
and Chrome update bogged things down more and more. The 4GB of memory that was
previously wide open was suddenly almost completely full. And it was slow. So
slow.

This is why we’re doing Time Machine. We need more people to remember what it
used to be like. And we in the Handmade community need to know exactly what has
improved about computers over the past few decades, and what has not.

If you have an old computer or phone lying around, please consider taking a
video of it and submitting it to the project! More details can be found on Time
Machine’s website.


WHEEL REINVENTION JAM: SEPTEMBER 25 - OCTOBER 1!



We’ll be hosting our third annual Wheel Reinvention Jam this September! This jam
is an opportunity for you to try out a new project, start something ambitious,
explore new ideas, or just learn to build something yourself. Unlike your
typical weekend game jam, this jam takes place over a full week so you have
ample time to explore a new problem space. (Last year I spent most of my week
implementing a toy TCP stack. I do not recommend this.)

This year’s jam will take place from Monday, September 25 through Sunday,
October 1. As always, you can participate for as much time as you have available
- some people can only participate on the weekend, while others will take entire
days off to focus on their jam project. We look forward to seeing what you all
submit!

For a recap of last year’s jam, click here.


FINAL REMARKS

There are even more things we’re working on behind the scenes that I can’t wait
to tell you about someday. Until then, we’ll see you around on Discord, and in
Boston in August!

-Ben Visness


Read more »
Three big initiatives for 2023
Ben Visness — April 13, 2023

Hello, Handmade Network! We’ve got big plans for 2023 and it’s about time we
shared them with you all. So let’s get into it!


EDUCATION: DIVING DEEP ON NETWORKING

Last year we launched a new education initiative. Our goal is to cover topics
that no one else is covering. And we’re not just making material for beginners -
we want to dive deep into each topic and provide a rich understanding that can
only come from real experts in the domain.

You see, we’re taking a different approach from most programmer education. We
recognize that there are tons of great resources on the internet for a variety
of topics. But if you’re new to a particular domain, there’s still an important
question: where do I start?

We want to be your guide. We’ll point you to the best books, the best articles,
the best resources that will help you gain real understanding. We’ll teach you
the jargon and give you the context you need to understand each piece. We’re not
just teaching you, we’re equipping you with the knowledge to learn for yourself.

We launched the education initiative with a focus on three topics: networking,
compilers, and time. The compiler series will come eventually, but this year we
want to laser-focus on one topic: networking.

There is almost no good networking education out there in the world. If you want
to learn about TCP, your best bet is an O’Reilly book, Wikipedia, or the RFCs.
The space is dominated by Cisco and other companies with expensive
certifications. The end result is that almost all programmers are dependent on
the network stack, and use it every day, but no one actually knows how it works.
This is insane.

We’ve already started the series with an article taking you all the way from
HTTP down to the Ethernet protocol, visiting TCP and IP along the way. This year
we’ll be expanding the series with two more articles covering NATs, firewalls,
internet infrastructure, and many other networking topics that affect
programmers every day. We’re very excited to dig into these topics with you!


TIME MACHINE: REMINDING OURSELVES HOW THINGS USED TO BE

The core of the Handmade philosophy is the idea that software has been getting
worse faster than hardware is getting better. Despite the incredible advances in
computer hardware, the user experience of computing today is worse than it was a
decade or two ago.

We believe this. But many people don’t. So let’s prove it.

This summer we’ll be launching a project called Time Machine. We’ll be asking
you, the community, to dig out your old devices and share video of yourself
using them. We want to go back in time and remind ourselves what it was actually
like to use these old devices. We’ll be tracking the specs of these devices too,
so we have an idea of how computing resources were used.

We hope this will be a fun project for the community and will inspire you all to
take advantage of the amazing hardware we have today. We’ll share more details
later, but in the meantime, get your hands on some old devices!

Also, if you have installers for old versions of popular software, please ping
us on Discord or contact us at team@handmade.network. When the project rolls
around, we’d love to test out old versions of operating systems, browsers,
office software, and anything else that represents the day-to-day experience of
computing.


****: THE HANDMADE ANSWER TO ********

We have an ambitious technical project in the works. It brings together all
aspects of the Handmade community, from low-level systems programming to
forward-thinking developer experiences, all designed to give real users a
computing experience hundreds of times better than what’s on the market today.

This project reaches far beyond what a single developer can do. It will only be
possible through the concentrated effort of a talented community of low-level
programmers, with a common goal, and an inherent desire to make things better. I
believe we are that community!

I’m excited to share more this summer. Until then, be intrigued >:)


COMMUNITY EVENTS

These are our new flagship initiatives for 2023, but of course we’re still going
strong with events for the community. The Visibility Jam starts tomorrow, and
we’re going to do our third Wheel Reinvention Jam this fall. Abner has expanded
Handmade Seattle into a new initiative called Handmade Cities, with conferences
in both Boston and Seattle this year. And we’re still doing weekly Discord
coffee chats, real-life meetups, fishbowls on various topics, and more.

I’m so excited for what this year will bring! Now let’s go jam 😁


Read more »
Torch Passing, Part 2
Ryan Fleury — June 9, 2022

Handmade Network is different from other software development communities. We
promote philosophies and projects that care deeply about software craftsmanship.
We criticize common dogma within the software industry that has produced a
computing world that is far too sluggish, too bloated, too poorly-designed, and
too unwilling to change. We stand for a better computing world.

In the past 4 years, we've done some big things with Handmade Network. The
community has grown dramatically, with thousands of (active!) users on the
Discord server (where a bulk of Handmade communication happens). We started a
podcast. We've had multiple Handmade-themed jams. We transformed the Handmade
Network website into a larger repository of Handmade projects and showcase
content, to serve as a bastion of Handmade ideas, and concretely demonstrate how
Handmade can improve us as builders of software.

Back in 2018, Handmade Network began a new chapter. I took over for Abner
Coimbre as the lead of Handmade Network. I was joined by Ben Visness and Asaf
Gartner, and together we replaced the original Handmade Network admin team. At
that time, Handmade Network had established itself as a large and self
sustaining community. It was the new team's job to continue to foster the
community, and to take it to new places. The original team was ready to move on
to bigger and better things, and they entrusted the keys to the community with
myself, Ben, and Asaf.

Today, Handmade Network begins another new chapter. I have decided to step down
from my role as Handmade Network lead, with Ben Visness taking my place. Ben has
been a great staff member since the beginning. He led an initiative to rewrite
and dramatically change the Handmade Network website into what it is today
(writing blogs is a lot easier now). He and Asaf are responsible for all of the
technology that allows the Handmade Network website to collect amazing showcase
material from the Discord server, allowing the website to serve as both personal
and project content repositories (in addition to the functionality that the
website offered before). Handmade Network would simply not be what it is without
Ben, and I know that moving forward, he'll do an outstanding job of leading the
community.

I love being a part of Handmade Network, and I will remain a member. It has been
an incredible resource to have as I've grown up. I joined Handmade Network in
high school as a young and naive programmer, and the community was instrumental
in transforming me into a much more capable and responsible engineer. I've
decided to step down because I believe that it will be best for both myself and
the community. I have found myself preoccupied with work, life, and some of my
other personal projects and initiatives. For this reason, I think it will be
most productive - not only for me personally, but for the computing world - for
me to give undivided attention to those things, and hand the reins over to Ben
to ensure that Handmade Network can be given the time and attention it deserves.
Ben will be a strong force in continuing to grow, foster, and shape the
community, and increasing its impact as a force for change in software.

It has been a thrill being a staff member, and I can't wait to see what the
community will do next. Let's all keep going. Let's continue to build new
projects, publish new educational material, do new research, and rethink old
assumptions. Through all of those efforts, we can change the computing world
into something a little better than what it was before.

-Ryan


Read more »
Three Announcements
Ben Visness — May 21, 2022

Hello everyone! Just dropping by to make three announcements of upcoming events
and projects here on the network over the summer:


1. FISHBOWL ON SATURDAY, MAY 28

Our next fishbowl conversation will be happening on the Discord on May 28! If
you've never joined us, a fishbowl is essentially a panel conversation held over
text chat, where a select few participants can hold a focused long-form
discussion on a specific topic. We're a big fan of this format because of the
way it allows participants to write thoughtful, long-form answers that would be
impossible in any other medium.

We've had fishbowls on the future of operating systems in the age of the
Internet, the relationship between simplicity and performance, "configuration"
and how to avoid it, and many other topics. This time we are excited to tackle a
subject near and dear to all our hearts: object-oriented programming.

We hope for this to be the definitive community conversation about OOP, since
it's such a frequent topic of conversation and such a confusing issue to
discuss. If you'd like a preview of the topic or would like to contribute
thoughts or resources, please check out the planning discussion over on GitHub.

The fishbowl will be held in the #fishbowl channel on Discord at noon CDT. To
see the time in your local timezone, and be notified when the fishbowl starts,
bookmark this whenisit page!


2. JAM IN AUGUST

We've held two jams as a community in the past, and they have both been smashing
successes. In particular, last year's Wheel Reinvention Jam produced tons of
great projects and introduced us to lots of amazing community members.
Naturally, we're going to do another jam this year!

We are still working out all the details, so a proper announcement and final
dates are yet to come. But we will confirm that this year's jam is happening in
August! Expect it to follow a similar format to prior years—so, one week, and
working in teams is allowed and encouraged.

More soon. 🙂


3. A NEW EDUCATION INITIATIVE

This project is still in its early stages, but too exciting not to tease.
Spearheaded by long-standing community member cloin, we are hard at work behind
the scenes on a new kind of education initiative for programmers. This new
initiative will subsume and replace the old library, which we know many people
sorely miss, and will also hopefully live up to the dream of the old wiki and
old education initiative.

We are very excited to share more about this project with you in the coming
months. For now, if you're interested, nag us on Discord and maybe we'll drop a
few more hints. 😉


A CALL FOR VOLUNTEERS!

These are just a few of the projects we have in the works for the coming year,
and there is even more we'd like to be doing. We'd love to get more people
involved in the following:

 * Helping maintain the website and build new features for the community
 * Developing and organizing starter projects for people to use (particularly
   for the jam)
 * Beta testing new initiatives

If you're interested in any of these, please reply to this post or hit us up on
Discord!


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