Kicking the Tires on Harper

I’m trying out the Harper tool in VS Code.

I’ve been aware of its existence for about 6 months and didn’t think much of it, just another rehash of existing tools.

But I’ve come around to the idea that rewriting old tools isn’t a horrible notion: the people who crafted them were no smarter or dumber than ourselves, they were just before us. Rewriting the same thing is a lot like repaving an old road: core infrastructure, but with new materials maybe we can do it better. If anything, we should share in some of the fun the people who came before us got to have.

Anyway, so far so good. It’s a little less annoying than piping my posts through aspell, which is about as sophisticated as I’ve managed to get myself in this writing workflow.

It’s nice. I thought it was too invasive and preachy on first use long ago, but this time around, at least on first shake, it’s just enough for grammar/spell smell testing. It can run ubiquitously as it builds to WASM and an LSP, so I can learn to lean on it in a wide variety of environments.