The culture war at the heart of open source

Oct 06 2024Oct 06 2024 Rust has two main string types: Rust has two main string types: StringString and and &str&str. Sometimes, people argue that these two types make Rust code difficult to write, because you have to think about which one you should be using in a given situation. My experience of writing Rust is that I don’t really think about this very much, and this post is about some rules of thumb that you can use to be like me.. Sometimes, people argue that these two types make Rust code difficult to write, because you have to think about which one you should be using in a given situation. My experience of writing Rust is that I don’t really think about this very much, and this post is about some rules of thumb that you can use to be like me. Level 1: Don’t...Level 1: Don’t...

Aug 12 2024 There’s an old saying: There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things. ― Phil Karlton I also appreciate the joke version that adds “and off by one errors.” Lately, I’ve been thinking about this saying, combined with another old joke: “The patient says, “Doctor, it hurts when I do this.” The doctor says, “Then don’t do that!” ― Henny...

Feb 24 2024 One of the reasons I am enthusiastic about BlueSky is because of the way that it works. So in this post, I am going to lay out some of the design and the principles behind this design, as I understand them. I am not on the BlueSky team, so these are my takes only. Let’s begin. Why does BlueSky exist? Here’s what the BlueSky Website says right...

Feb 17 2024 A very, very long time ago, I was introduced to Gerrit. To be honest, I hated it. However, lately I have become interested in divesting from git and GitHub, and so have decided to re-visit various “forges” to see what’s out there. The “why” for this will come later, and I’m not leaving them just yet, just, you know, doing some exploring. Anyway, in order to play...

Dec 21 2023 TL;DR: I think that a focus on memory safe languages (MSLs) versus non memory-safe languages is a bit of a red herring. The actual distinction is slightly bigger than that: languages which have defined behavior by default, with a superset where undefined behavior is possible, vs languages which allow for undefined behavior anywhere in your program. Memory safety is an important aspect of this, but it is necessary, not sufficient. Rust’s marketing has...