Sway

After my last NixOS update IntelliJ started behaving weirdly. Not always, just sometimes. The autocomplete popup opens, maybe remains open for a keystroke or two. Then suddenly disappears. Same with the “Copy Path/Reference…” popup from the context menu, the one where you pick absolute path, relative path, package name and so on. Pretty annoying, especially when you’re in the middle of typing. And every time the popup vanished, the whole window seemed to flicker once, as if IntelliJ was reacting to a resize event....

A few days ago, I switched to the Sway window manager after returning to GNU/Linux a few months ago. Before spending a few years in the macOS ecosystem, I was a long-time user of i3. For those unfamiliar, i3 and Sway perform the same function, but i3 is built for X.org while Sway is designed for Wayland. In this post, I’ll share my impressions, lessons learned, and the challenges I faced during this transition....

About 15 years ago, I stumbled upon the Dvorak keyboard layout, an alternative to the ubiquitous QWERTY layout designed for ergonomic and efficient typing. During my exploration, I discovered Roland Kaufmann’s blog post on the Programmer Dvorak Keyboard Layout, which resonated deeply with me. Kaufmann thoughtfully considered the symbols developers frequently use and how they align with the Dvorak philosophy of optimizing for typing efficiency. Back then, I was using the standard US layout, employing creative methods to access German umlauts—either through AltGr combinations (e....