Andrew Sampson

About:

Andrew Sampson, a renowned tech founder and photographer, explores tech and social issues through innovation and candid photography.

Website:

andrews.substack.com

Specializations:

Software Developer Photographer Tech founder

Interests:

Technology Cloud gaming Video games Race Mental health Socioeconomic inequality

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2025-11-06 • typescript javascript webassembly hako

The post discusses the challenges and advantages of using JavaScript (and TypeScript) as an extension language for applications, particularly focusing on the Hako JavaScript engine built on QuickJS. It highlights the issues with e...

2025-10-15 • swift parsing software engineering protocol buffers iwork

The author discusses the challenges of parsing iWork files (.key, .numbers, .pages) without losing information, highlighting the need for a native parser that avoids exporting to PDF. They detail their approach to building a parse...

2025-11-15 • development javascript webassembly perl zeroperl

The blog post discusses updates to the zeroperl project, including a fix for a unicode bug and a transformation of zeroperl into an embeddable library with a C API. The author details the changes made to the configuration and init...

2026-01-02 • creativity nostalgia consumer behavior fast food

Effective marketing and creative presentation can compel consumers to irrationally pursue products, even at a personal cost, as illustrated by a childhood memory of a fast food promotion.

2025-04-18 • technology success epidemics and pandemics building childhood memories

The author reflects on his life, from a difficult childhood living in motels to his current success and happiness in the Japanese countryside. He discusses the highs and lows he has experienced, including leading a team through a ...

2025-04-14 • performance javascript webassembly nestjs hako

Andrew Sampson is releasing Hako, a fork of PrimJS, as an early 30th birthday gift. Hako is a portable, secure, and performant JavaScript engine that compiles down to WebAssembly, providing an extra layer of protection from memory...

2025-03-01 • security transparency malware vs code

The article discusses the controversy surrounding the 'Material Theme' extension for VSCode, which was remotely uninstalled from millions of users due to alleged malicious intent. The author criticizes the lack of transparency and...

2025-03-01 • webassembly wasi fastify web services exiftool

The text discusses the challenges of running WASI programs in the browser, particularly the limitations of file size and the need for a memory file system. It explores the use of Asyncify to bridge the gap between asynchronous web...

2025-02-11 • webassembly perl wasmer wasi fastify binaryen

The author expresses frustration at the lack of exnref support in most WebAssembly runtimes, making zeroperl effectively unusable. They decided to implement it themselves using libsetjmp from the WASI SDK for setjmp/longjmp, and B...

2025-02-10 • ecmascript webassembly perl wasi exiftool

The text discusses the challenges of sandboxing Perl with WebAssembly to extract metadata client-side and staple it to the upload. The author details the difficulties faced in compiling Perl to WebAssembly and the workarounds used...

2023-11-21 • software development .net webassembly cloudflare workers wasi

The text discusses the challenges faced in running native binaries on Stackblitz and the potential solution of using WebAssembly System Interface (WASI) to enable .NET applications to run in the browser. It details the recent adva...