Monthlog 08: June 2020

• July 02, 2020
• 693 words
• 4 min

This is the 08 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

• Time to upgrade your monitor - A font designer's commentary on what monitor you should buy and why. In a very succinct manner, this article taught me a lot about font rendering and why some displays look better than others.

• Teach Yourself CS - At a high level this website provides both a book and a video course to cover each domain of Computer Science. A great resource for people who can code but want to become Computer Scientists. Discussion on HN

• Jepsen: Redis Raft Analysis - I'd never looked at Jepsen testing but found this document an interesting read. It essentially covers the failure/inconsistency modes of the Redis raft implementation. Discussion on HN

• Raph Levien: Xi-Editor Retrospective - I watched the development of Xi periodically over the past few years. It's sad to see that the project didn't work out, or at least, didn't quite reach the full vision it had intended to achieve. Post mortems are always a good read as you can see the decisions that lead to a product's failure. Discussion on HN

• Dave Cheney: Building a high-performance JSON parser - JSON decoding is a relatively expensive and slow process in most languages; this post goes into great detail outlining how a faster JSON parser in Go was implemented. Linked in the previous Hacker News discussion

• Ars Technica: ZFS 101—Understanding ZFS storage and performance - I've been doing some more reading on filesystems and in particular, the design differences between Zfs and Btrfs - two Copy-on-Write filesystems. This article is a precise explanation of how some of Zfs is architected at a high level.

Discuss

• Ask HN: What do you self-host? - I self host a few things, including a Bitwarden_rs instance. It's always interesting to see what others self-host, and also the incredible range of open-source software that exists for different niches.

Software and Libraries

• Zettlr - Last month I mentioned Obsidian, an alternative to Roam Research. Zettlr follows in the same vein and is an open-source markdown editor and knowledge base. I'm interested to see how this develops.

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.'