Sophie Bosio

Interactive Development: Pair Programming and the REPL

Tue, 23 Sep 2025 23:57:00 +0200

There is no best way to learn programming, but if I were going to pick a favourite, I’d probably choose pair programming.

In my team at work, we do a fair bit of it. Pairing is different with every partner, so it’s difficult to define it or really talk about specifics, and I’ve had a hard time formulating what I like about it so much.

After thinking about it for a while, I realised that it might be the interactivity of it.

Setting Up Emacs LSP-Mode For Clojure

Tue, 17 Sep 2024 22:42:00 +0200

I use Clojure on the backend where I work. I think it’s really fun, especially in combination with Emacs, since Emacs is built with Emacs Lisp and Clojure is a Lisp dialect. So many of Emacs’ default keybindings started clicking for me once I started working with a language in the same tradition, editing structurally and by semantic units rather than line-by-line or character-by-character. I’m not alone in loving both and there’s clearly a lot of overlap between the two communities, which is evident from the number of Clojure packages for Emacs.

Building Your First Emacs Config

Thu, 21 Dec 2023 23:29:00 +0100

Emacs is a wonderful piece of software. It’s easily my favourite program of all time. It can also be a little overwhelming to configure for the first time.

One of the many things that make Emacs great, though, is its dedicated and helpful user base. I hope to add a small contribution to that community with this post, going over what I would have told my past self as I was just starting out using Emacs and trying to write my first Emacs configuration file.

Prettifying Emacs Org Mode

Thu, 10 Aug 2023 22:19:00 +0200

In my opinion, the power of Emacs is that you’re able to program your own working environment. Other editors may be just as, or possibly more, efficient to use, but I haven’t come across any that give you control over as many aspects of your editor as Emacs does. Customising and tweaking your configuration may be an endless endeavour, but it’s also a highly rewarding one.

All that being said, I was inspired to tweak the look of my Org Mode setup, especially after reading the blog post Beautifying Org Mode in Emacs. Below you can find screenshots and code. I hope there’s something in here that you might want to steal for your own config! In case I change these settings later, my most recently updated config is always available on my GitHub.

About

Thu, 08 Jun 2023 17:43:00 +0200

I’m Sophie! I was born in Oslo in 1999, and after some moving back and forth for my studies, I’m back in my home city.

I’m very interested in programming, coffee, natural languages, and music.

Currently, I’m working as a software engineer at Ardoq.

I recently graduated with an MSc from the University of Oslo, where I wrote my thesis on property-based testing. I designed and implemented a small functional language called Contra, which has native support for defining properties and a built-in property-checker. It’s capable of automatically generating counterexamples, even for user-defined algebraic data types, using SMT solving.

Education

Thu, 08 Jun 2023 14:48:00 +0200

MSc

I have a master’s degree in Programming and System Architecture from the University of Oslo, Norway, with a specialisation in software. 🌱

My thesis project and thesis text are available on GitHub.

The courses I have taken at UiO are briefly summarised below.

Courses in Programming and System Architecture at UiO (in order of attendance)

IN5130 - Modelling Unassailable IT-Systems
IN5170 - Models of Concurrency
TEK5510 - Security in Operating Systems and Software
IN5570 - Distributed Objects
IN5580 - Computability Theory
INF5110 - Compiler Construction
Special Curriculum - Advanced Functional Programming, Semantics, and Types

BSc

I have a bachelor’s degree in Cognitive Science from the University of Bergen, Norway.

Static Site Generation with Hugo

Thu, 08 Jun 2023 12:18:00 +0200

This website is built with Hugo and ox-hugo, an exporting engine that lets me write my posts in Org mode and then put it online easily.

Org mode is a really clever and powerful plain text format that works great for note taking, text editing, and TODO lists/agendas. Moreover, there are a lot of convenient features for us Emacs users when using ox-hugo to write our blogs (besides staying in the comfort of a well-known format and editing flow).