Over the past couple of years I’ve been working on a particular side project. I’ve had the idea kicking around for a while, and planned on releasing it to the public (at least in a limited form) last year, but then 2020 happened, and we’re still in all of that in 2021, so there’s been a few delays. I’m still a way away from actually releasing anything, but now is a good time to talk about some of the infrastructure work there, as I think it’s worth sharing.
Before I start this I should clarify something: yes, I know it’s just a show for kids, and I’m a fan of the lessons and techniques it’s using behind the candy-coated facade. However it’s also weirding me out in various ways, and so I felt this needed discussing. I’ve only actually watched the first two episodes (along with my toddler), but I think this got enough of the core concept over that I can at least vaguely talk about this.
TL;DR: Proposal for a way to define multiple-machine systems in a immutable way, without requiring by-hand layouts.
Lewisham Council have what at first glance appears to be a perfectly good webpage for figuring out what day your recycling is on. Except, there’s no API, and the pages appear to have been designed for the explicit goal of breaking every option for scripting them.
I saw a blog post recently by Simon Willison that shows you how to use a somewhat hidden feature of Github (as in it seems well known on the internet, but it’s not in their docs). Normally, a Github profile just contains either a random set of repositories, or you can pin particular repositories if you want. However, it turns out there’s an extra hidden feature: if you have a repo with the same name as your username (e.g. palfrey/palfrey for me) and it has a README.md, that will get displayed at the top of your profile.
About 18 months ago I was wondering how to make Rust tests run in serial occasionally and I wrote a little crate called “serial_test” to solve this. I was digging through some other things, and idly noted that serial_test now has over 100,000 downloads, and so it’s probably a good time for a little retrospective on it.
Due to the current pandemic, we're all on at least social distancing, and some of us on full-on lockdown. This has curtailed most people's social lives somewhat (mine less so, but a 1 year old will do that), and so various people are now doing various meetups on Zoom, Skype, Houseparty, etc. I've used these tools before, and they're good for certain use cases, but less good for others.
So we build a pub. Of sorts. Here's the model I've got in my head...
Despite the ongoing good work in many places to move to fully digital options, many organisations remain committed to sending you shards of dead tree through the post (particularly the NHS, though I can understand that given how they’ve been burnt in the past). Keeping track of all this paper is tricky, and particularly hard…
So, you've just made your first software project and are wondering how to license it. Well, here's a quick guide to some options you may want to (not) take.
Traditionally there are approximately 4 different paths for licensing:
Long time readers will note this post as being similarly clickbait as my earlier ‘How to be a Rockstar developer!‘. Don’t worry, hopefully there’s useful information here. (I’ve been inspired here by Keavy McKinn’s post ‘Thriving on the Technical Leadership Path’, which talks about many good things, but a lot of is about how to…
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