My pet theory of how great software gets started
(Inspired by yungporko’s Ask HN post, which got me thinking.)
Pretty much every community, dojo, workplace, subculture, scene you can imagine in the modern day had a software sub-scene embedded within it. It can be as small as “that guy who does our Excel”, or as large as the scene itself . This is owing to the fantastic generality of software as a way to make almost anything more efficient, but we won’t go on that tangent now.
OpenBSD, the computer appliance maker's secret weapon
Between our ESP32 prokaryotic organisms and our 24/7 Internet-enabled megafauna servers, there exists a vast and loosely-defined ecosystem of things the B2B world likes to call computer appliances. Picture a bespoke Pi 4 packaged up neatly with some Python scripts, a little fancy plastic embossing, and maybe a well-guarded id_ed25519.pub in case you end up in hot water during the (long - very long, stable cash flow for generations long) maintenance contract, and you’re in the ballpark.
Windows 11 Recall - the Last Straw
For some, this privacy nightmare from Microsoft is a surprise. But for those that have been around for a while, this is a movie they've seen before. Many times.
My progress the jumping ball app. The simulation now works. The ball jumps in the air and bounces until it stops or the stop button is pressed.
#programming #software #software_dev #clang #c #computers
See more on my blog:
https://therunner.digital/jumping-ball-progress
Ball Jumping Updates
Progress on simulating a jumping ball's behavior using velocity calculations and bounce mechanics
Doing is normally distributed, learning is log-normal
There are few things I think about more than the essays on gwern.net, and there are few with as satisfying a theoretical payout to contemplate in my orb as his essay on “leaky pipelines”, aka log-normal distributions.
The skulk: Say you’re working on a Laravel web app. You’re about 90% sure you know how to start the app. You’re 80% sure you know how to handle the infra you’ll need to get it online.
Hacker News
Houston Haynes
ChrisDouris