Monthlog 07: May 2020
- 1315 words
- 7 min
This is the 07 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 channels on my homepage.
Read
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Floating Point Visually Explained - Having not yet finished a CS degree, I have never really delved deep into how floating-point numbers work. I know that they're not precise but I found this visual representation very helpful to understand what the two components of the floating-point mean. Discussion on HN
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Bill Joy's greatest gift to man – the vi editor - An interview from 2003 discussing the Vi editor with Bill Joy. Interesting that modem speed was a tight constraint when building Vi. Discussion on r/vim
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Wikipedia IPFS - There's been work on this for a couple of years but it looks like someone from Wikipedia finally made a solution as a passion project. Discussion on HN
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Christine Dodrill: How I Start Nix - A detailed and relatively newcomer-friendly introduction to setting up various parts of a Nix development system.
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Make LLVM Fast Again - There was a bit of discussion in Rust circles this month surrounding a performance regression in LLVM that relates specifically to Rust code. Discussion on HN
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[llvm-dev] 7-8% compile time slowdowns in LLVM 10 - A closely related mailing list extract. Discussion on r/rust
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Goodbye Docker and Thanks for all the Fish - I don't quite agree with most of what the author is trying to say in this article, however, it's a good primer on some of Docker's history and the forces that are now working against its success as a business. Discussion on HN
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Encouraging a Culture of Written Communication - With more work moving online-only, I found this article to be a useful guide to the benefits of good written communication. Discussion on HN
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How the biggest consumer apps got their first 1k users - Self-explanatory. If you're interested in the tech startup world you'll probably like this article. Discussion on HN
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Tutorial on Multiple Currency Accounting - I've been using this document to guide the accounting implementation for EARL.
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Stephen Diehl: On Marketing Haskell - A great, thorough, article on some takeaway lessons from Haskell's 'marketing'. Discusses how a language communicates it's value proposition to developers and decision-makers. A quote I enjoyed: "managing a software project isn’t about correctness or engineering anymore: it’s about running a risk portfolio of distressed assets"
Discuss
New section! I've decided to start linking the odd discussion on sites like Reddit and HN that I find interesting and that you might too.
Watch
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Bryan Cantrill @ Scale By The Bay: Rust and Other Interesting Things - It Begins.
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Bryan Cantrill: The Summer of Rust - I watched a bunch of Bryan's talks this month. His first-hand experience and involvement in the development of modern computing makes him an amazing speaker to learn from.
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Bryan Cantril @ Uptime 2017: Zebras All The Way Down - Brain uses the medical idiom - idiom? - of Zebras vs Horses to explain the types of bugs in the datapath of computer software. The key takeaway here is that a Zebra is a rare bug, but in our tried and tested systems, the only bugs we have are Zebras. We get to squash Zebras each time they appear but as Computer Scientists and Engineers we are now only faced by Zebras and they extend all the way down the datapath.
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Bryan Cantrill: Stanford Seminar - The Soul of a New Machine: Rethinking the Computer - Delivered March 2020. If you watched the previous video in which Bryan talks about the troubles of navigating firmware bugs and failure modes, Bryan's interest in creating a new computer company likely seems justified. Bryan's starting a new server company, keep an eye out for the Oxide Computer Company.
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Bryan Cantrill: GOTO 2017 - Debugging Under Fire - Great. What more can I say? If you made it to this entry in the videos from Bryan series you'll probably watch this one regardless of how I justify its relevance.
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Daniel Bryant: GOTO 2017 - The Seven (More) Deadly Sins of Microservices
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Laura Frank: KubeCon Europe 2018 - Understanding Distributed Consensus in etcd and Kubernetes
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Linus Torvalds: Tech Talk @ Google - Git - Linus is definitely outspoken and rarely holds back. I liked this somewhat older talk of his as you can get a feel for the struggles of version control before Git.
Listen
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On the Metal: Jonathan Blow - The Oxide Computer Company's podcast, Bryan Cantril leads the discussion in these.
Software and Libraries
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Excalidraw - Appeared in my GitHub Explore and seems like a useful quick sketching tool that's also open source.
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Obsidian - Obsidian looks like a good open source alternative to Roam Research. Like Roam, Obsidian offers a 'Knowledge Graph' to connect notes together. Some questions were raised in the following HN thread about the License but hopefully, the license will be revised soon. Discussion on HN
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.'