Monthlog 04: February 2020

• March 01, 2020
• 955 words
• 5 min

This is the 04 installment in my 'Monthlog' - a public list of blog posts, announcements, videos, podcasts, software and libraries that catch my attention each month. I hope that regular readers will skim through the listings and find one, or multiple, things that pique their interest.

Note: Posts are not ordered in any particular way. If you find an article you think I might like, send it to me via one of the messaging channels on my homepage.

Read

• Cloudflare: Technical Details of Why Cloudflare Chose AMD EPYC for Gen X Servers - AMD Epyc is starting to really improve AMD's server positioning. The author identifies improved cache locality, due to a larger L3 cache, providing performance benefits over Intel CPU's with the same number of cores. Discussion on HN

• I want off Mr. Golang's Wild Ride - A Rust user outlines - in "rant" form - many of the issues they have bumped into when writing Go code over 'thousands of hours'. Discussion on r/rust

• Why is Rust the Most Loved Programming Language? - A Rust user outlines a few language features that might explain Rust's position as the most loved language in the StackOverflow survey. Discussion on r/rust

• Antoyo's Vim Tips - A Vim users personal database of Vim tips. Discussion on r/vim

• Fuschia Programming Language Policy - Document from the Google Fuschia (A new operating system) source repository outlines the language guidelines for Fuschia. The big surprises here seem to be a complete rejection of Golang, even though Google is a big Go supporter, and the decision not to use Rust in the Kernel.

• Avoid rewriting a legacy system from scratch, by strangling it - It's quite a common sentiment that full project rewrites almost always end badly. This article explains the challenges faced when rewriting projects and a method to make full rewrites more achievable.

• Running servers (and services) well is not trivial - A response to the notion that 'self-hosting isn't that hard'.

Watch

• MIT, Lecture 3: Editors (vim) (2020) - MIT 'The Missing Semester' introduction to Vim. If you've used Vim for a while, listen to this in the background and you might learn a thing or two. Even if you don't plan to use Vim, the analysis of Vim's modal editing might be of interest.

• FOSDEM: Cargo Deny - 'A talk about cargo-deny, why we created it, and how it helps us manage our dependencies in the long term.'

Listen

• Rustacean Station: What's New in Rust 1.41 - A 45 Minute outline of the new features and changes in Rust version 1.41.

Software and Libraries

• Pueue - 'A daemon for managing long-running shell commands.' Written in Rust, could be really useful for long-running tasks that must run sequentially, like Machine Learning workloads.

• Lorri - 'Your project's nix-env.' Finally started using this. Written in Rust, Lorri provides a Daemon to build nix-shell environments in the background. If you use nix, you'll know the pain of long shell builds. Lorri builds things in the background so your nix-env loads more quickly and reloads transparently whenever you change your shell definition. Expect to see a post on how I use lorri day to day soon.

• ytop - 'A TUI system monitor written in Rust.' Yet another rewrite by CJbassi of his 'top' program. This time it's written in Rust, currently approaching feature parity with the old gotop.

• Materialize - A newly announced company offering a tool to use SQL queries on live, streaming data. Cool to see Rust being used here, in a very latency-sensitive environment with high data throughput. A year ago I would imagine Go would be used for this kind of task but I think people are slowly coming around to Rust being used in this kind of situation.

Recommended Sources to Follow

Below are a few media sources and voices I follow.

Blogs

• Matthias Endler: Rust developer and host of 'Hello, Rust!'
• Paul Graham: Member of YC, offers insightful well-written posts about business and software.
• Victor Zhou: Recent Princeton CS Graduate publishing informative guides with some focus on Machine Learning.
• Francesc Campoy: Gopher and JustForFunc host.
• Deterministic.Space - Pascal Hertleif's blog (g/KillerCup): Mostly Rust stuff.

Newsletters

• This Week In Rust - Rust news every week.
• EthHub Weekly - Weekly Ethereum updates, a quick paragraph summarising each headline.

Podcasts

• The Changelog: 'Conversations with the hackers, leaders, and innovators of software development.'
• Software Engineering Daily: Daily conversations covering anything Software Development related.
• Linux Unplugged: A Jupiter Broadcasting show. Relaxed, focused on Linux but touches on all things Unix and Open Source.
• Invest Like the Best: Finance and investing podcast often featuring Crypto.
• Y Combinator: Conversations with Y Combinator founders.
• Into the Ether: 'Focusing on all things Ethereum, the leading blockchain for decentralized applications.'