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Alan Donovan

@adonovan.bsky.social
850 followers 110 following 370 posts

Software engineer at Google in New York, developing analysis and refactoring tools for Go (#golang). Co-author of "The Go Programming Language" (gopl.io).

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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
@vermontgmg.bsky.social I agree with your AI piece. IMHO the main reason AI is useful in software is that the entire loop—define success, experiment, evaluate, iterate—takes place in a computer, so it is fast and lowish-risk, but in medical/legal work a mistake may cost you your client and license.
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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
Oh, Spelling Bee: no TROUBADOR nor RUBATO, but BURRO? This is supposed to be the New York Times, not the Sonoran Agricultural Digest. Come on.
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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 11/07/2026
TIL that two Norwegian Americans in 1896 were in fact the first to row the Atlantic, in a tiny (18’) open boat. Without supplies they had to beg passing ships. Insane! bsky.app/profile/dexe...
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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
M. Gessen’s piece in the Times today recalled the 1991 stunt in which ACT-UP draped an enormous mock condom over Sen. Jesse Helms house. A brave act no doubt, but it‘s almost inconceivable today due to the grave risk of being shot. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
nytimes.com
Opinion | It’s America’s Birthday. What Are We Celebrating?
Two hundred and fifty years in, Opinion writers offer 16 reasons the national experiment endures.
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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
“Hockey” does not start with a bird homophone. That’s it, NYT Connections, I quit, even if it means I will miss next week’s soon-to-be-infamous Words I Made Up, Minus The Third Letter.
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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
What's new in gopls 22: go.dev/gopls/release/v0.22.0 Please try it out: $ go install golang.org/x/tools/gopls@latest
go.dev
Gopls release v0.22.0 (May 2026) - The Go Programming Language
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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 19/04/2026
Some people post interesting stuff but... so much. Is there an alternative to “unfollow” such as rate limiting them to n posts per day?
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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 05/04/2026
Hearing the logistical coordination involved in operating an Artemis space toilet, I’m reminded that the space opera (Star Wars etc) is really a romance of the Age of Sail. Whaling crews felt safer on board than in port and could happily stay at sea, autonomously, for years at a time.
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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
Find out how the source-level inliner in Go 1.26 can help you with API migrations. go.dev/blog/inliner
go.dev
//go:fix inline and the source-level inliner - The Go Programming Language
How Go 1.26's source-level inliner works, and how it can help you with self-service API migrations.
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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 22/02/2026
Great essay from Hopkins on managerialism, conflicts of interest, the AI bubble, the decline of faculty governance, and how major donations paradoxically put universities in the red.
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Reposted by Alan Donovan
Go @golang.org · 17/02/2026
“Using go fix to modernize Go code” by Alan Donovan — go.dev/blog/gofix #golang
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Reposted by Alan Donovan
Go @golang.org · 10/02/2026
“Go 1.26 is released” by Carlos Amedee, on behalf of the Go team — go.dev/blog/go1.26 #golang
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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 14/01/2026
Idea for innovative new California law: A tech company must work as hard to remove you as a lapsed customer as they did to woo you as a non-customer. I can't want to see invasive pop-up ads on every web page saying "Alan, you haven't watched Hulu for nearly a month... click here to unsubscribe."
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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 13/01/2026
I feel obliged to disclose my first-ever success with vibe coding. Yesterday I got Gemini to build this tool to aid comprehension of musical rhythm: morpho.blog/subdiv/subdi... (If on iPhone, be sure your phone is not in silent mode.) Took about 2 hours. Would have taken me a (fun) day.
morpho.blog
Subdiv Rhythm Player
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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 31/12/2025
The folks behind GopherCon 2025 have kindly shared video recordings of our talks; here's mine on modernizer tools for Go. Special thanks to the amazing Stacy Potenza for turning my rapid limey nerd mumbling into comprehensible closed captions. www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VeP...
youtube.com
GopherCon 2025: Analysis and Transformation Tools for Go Codebase Modernization - Alan Donovan
YouTube video by Gopher Academy
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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 30/12/2025
@davidcrespo.bsky.social I have really been enjoying your posts, BTW, which have forced me to confront many of my AI-hating priors. (Still hate AI but at least now I recognize some of my irrationality and goalpost-mobility!) So thanks.
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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 12/12/2025
What's new in gopls 21: go.dev/gopls/releas... Please try it out: $ go install golang.org/x/tools/gopls@latest
go.dev
Gopls release v0.21.0 (expected Dec 2025) - The Go Programming Language
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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 21/11/2025
Act I: Waiter: Is everything ok with your order? Diner: Just one thing. This steak... it's actually a huge shit. Waiter: Oh, I'm so sorry, let me fix that. Diner: Thanks. [...] Wait, this new one is also a huge shit. Waiter: No it's not, it's a steak, just like you asked for.
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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 13/11/2025
Hi @erikdmartin.bsky.social 👋. Do you know when videos of this year's GopherCon talks are expected? Thanks.
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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 13/11/2025
@mattyglesias.bsky.social you say "movie tickets are in fact cheaper in real terms" after adjusting for inflation. But doesn't that just mean ticket prices grew less than the "basket" average? And if your wages grew even less than the average, then "cheaper, inflation adjusted" is no comfort at all.
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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 28/07/2025
Gopls v0.20.0 is released: go.dev/gopls/releas... $ go install golang.org/x/tools/gopls@v0.20.0 Docs at go.dev/gopls. Thanks to all who contributed!
go.dev
Gopls release v0.20.0 - The Go Programming Language
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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 21/07/2025
@jmmv.dev I liked your Bazel reproducibility post. I wonder: does Bazel have an option to try each build action twice and check consistency? This would make it easy to diagnose nondeterminism when you suspect it. CI systems could do it with some nonzero probability too.
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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 03/07/2025
@seanmcarroll.bsky.social Enjoyed your 2 books on GR, QFT. Steep climb! In final third of both, had to get comfortable with only the loosest grasp. (I have only 1990s A-level + lay reading of Feynmann lectures.) But left with impression of how physics is done. Many thanks!
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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 04/06/2025
Please try out the gopls pre-release and report any problems! $ go install golang.org/x/tools/gopls@v0.19.0-pre.2 Many bugs fixed and lots of new features. (Pre-)release notes can be found here: cs.opensource.google/go/x/tools/+... (click "preview")
golang.org
The Go Programming Language
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