Conversations about programming. By Andreas Ekeroot and Lars Wikman, funded by Underjord.io.
About Remote Work
How do we feel about working remotely? Pretty good, on the whole.Chairs and other basics are of course important, as is making your way of remote work a nice way of doing remote work for you. It is also nice to need to wear your work face less.The challenges are more around the social sides - communicating differently, but generally replacing and rebuilding ways of being social with people both inside and outside of your work interests. That takes work.Also, some talk about audio and video gear for remote meetings. It's nice to come off as full-fidelity people!Links Conan the barbarian Eventual consistency Gamers Nexus on gamin chairs Ullman Nite-Flite RFC process Røde procaster XLR Ghost power (phantom power) Shotgun microphone The Kodsnack Slack Quotes My real comfy legendary office chair My chair was kinda good Fluffy parts It's me and Conan I go for the floof Eventually ergonomic Eventually comfortable Whenever I don't have one, I create one Your spine has a very particular taste in chairs A prosumer phase of life Definitely dialled in Make sure you have a social life I fetch a lot fewer coffees than most people Ghost power! Full-fidelity people It's very much my office I don't have to wear my work face all day My work face
About Distributed Systems
Lars is thinking about distributed systems, and Andreas kind of fears them. The best thing to do for most cases might be to avoid distributing things at all. But if you do end up needing to distribute, you may run into one of the places in the world where worse is better is not necessarily better? Adding distribution on top of something not really built for it is one of the hard problems.There are deep dives into reconciliation, vector clocks, normalization, and places where fun goes to die. And there, still, are no magical solutions.Links Phoenix pubsub Worse is better ElectricSQL CRDT:s - conflict-free replicated data type The CAP theorem Soft real time Highlander N-tier architecture Postgres replication Vector clock Elixir outlaws Phoenix presence Operational transformations Split-brain Riak CouchDB Raft Paxos Normal forms for databases Googles' Mapreduce Google Spanner CockroachDB Cassandra Contentful The Cambria paper - schema evolution in distributed systems with edit lenses Quotes Distributed systems are interesting I'm doing an insert! A special little server The devil is always in the failure details The naive threshold The absolute wrong number of machines Where all the fun goes to die A good, sortable name They lie and they drift A simple incrementing number is incredibly useful Git merge for vector clocks Three is the best number
About Hackers
About Hackers Thinking about the term "hacker". Time to take it back to mean something rather down to earth, rather than a pedistal requiring years of C and a black hoodie?What do airlines have against Erlang anyway?There's also the mindset angle: the hacking mindset can be when exploring, versus when needing to solve a specific problem.The discussion goes into labels one feels comfortable with, switching between different modes, and the ever present, ever hard to find dark matter developers.Over time, labels can easily go bad in one way or another. But regardless of labels, we can all agree on duct tape and enthusiasm, right?Links Let it crash Burning man Activitypub Static site generator CMS The Unix philosophy COM FFmpeg vi Perl Ecto Dark matter developers Quotes So security, very programming Joy and playfulness My mind goes off Creative systems thinking Think through as many eyes as possible Many things are intended as complete packages Handing you the fun bits Things that provide you the entire world Not very together-bashable The media version of Vi Creating SQL that you didn't intend Mostly mindset What happens in the outliers Neutron programmers The unsung programmers Duct tape and enthusiasm
About Being Wrong
About Being WrongWherein polite gentlemen at gaming conventions explain how people didn't have their variables separate enough with regard to the Dunning-Kruger effect. Lars thinks Andreas has drawn the wrong learnings from this.It's a good idea to be humble … but strong opinions loosely held may not be the perfect thing, either?Also discussed is the curse of the expert - teaching across a large gap in experience, and how to actually go about changing systems and having better discussions. Have you considered being god's advocate instead of the devil's when in a discussion?Links Gothcon The Dunning-Kruger effect Autocorrelation The Dunning-Kruger effect is autocorrelation Golden ratio The curse of the expert The halting problem Linus Torvalds Strong opinions loosely held Steelmanning an argument Yes, and … Two's complement podcast Quotes I attempted to make friends Hard to know what you don't know If you don't have your variables separate They fumbled on the input data I think you have the wrong takeaway The curse of the expert Have you looked at presidents recently? Exhaust the universe The halting problem of the universe Sons of pedagogy I feel comfortable, but I don't feel certain A really badass judo throw I can ignore many things A multitude of parts Bit by bit, you shift the system Taking small stands Very happy to be wrong God's advocate Random ideas, loosely shared A good crowd for this question
About Estimates
About EstimatesEstimates are a nasty subject, Andreas doesn't know how to handle it.Fortunately, Lars has one weird trick, which doctors hate.When you have plenty of control, estimates can be useful.Not useful: unexplained deadlines.Finally: when things get stuck. (Lars is usually available to blame.)(In an alternate timeline, Andreas' tells us everything his relatives taught him about quark cake.)Links Deadlines whooshing past The XKCD about determining if you're in a national park, and check if your photo is of a bird Basecamp Shape up Elm Zenos' paradoxes - you can't run past a tortoise The travelling salesman problem NP-complete problems CRUD Lean manufacturing Quotes Their due dates, their deadlines I have this one weird trick, that doctors hate A constraint for the work The magnitude of the task Some real dumb things, and some very decent ideas Skate curve The smallest unit is always a day Not agile enough Slightly confused and maybe a little bit sad If you think that's a map (, I think you're using it wrong) Assorted concerns You can't run past a tortoise You can always split a cake in two Quark cake Accelerate a cake A fixed estimate on the travelling salesman problem Usually available to blame
About Meeting Developers
Passing pandemics make it possible to meet developers in real life again. Elixir-Lars makes a splash, and tells about recent and coming real-life events he's enjoyed. Things learned from real-life events and the need - or not - of constant learning are mentioned.(It's not bit rot, it's data composting!)Finally, a deep dive into the art of arranging good events, including preparatory pre-event events.Who wouldn't like a movie night with a bunch of developers and pizza?Linkable matter Elixirconf EU 2023, in Lisbon Varberg Code BEAM - there are so many of them TDD - test-driven development Lettuce Cucumber NAND Nerves' Ramoopslogger Textalk Software craftsmanship Göteborg Event sourcing Redux Hackers Gleam Membrane Code BEAM Stockholm 2023 Code BEAM Europe 2023 in Berlin Title-like quotes Developers in my local area A splash as Elixir-Lars I guess I'm visible I met one developer I enjoy meeting developers Leads and future prosperity Composting becomes very natural Harness the entropy It's not bit rot, it's data composting The series of events that brought us here A speedrun of "Well, you have options"
About Open Alternatives
The continued cratering of Twitter, and the joy of discovering open alternatives. Lars and many others find themselves on the open and federated Mastodon instead of Twitter, having a great time, and feeling more excited about open systems than in a long time.On the level of individuals, owning and controlling your own data feels back in fashion, but there is even more to dig into on the level of large organizations.Perhaps when GDPR says no and the good spirit of the internet is strong, there is a chance for municipalities and other public sector organizations to get and help build open alternatives to the closed, proprietary, and often hair-raisingly expensive and poorly received software they have today?Lars sees exciting business opportunities, better software for all, as well as the interesting challenges of navigating tender processes and plain old corruption.Links Mastodon genserver.social fosstodon.org Ruby on rails PostgreSQL Object storage Redis Pleroma Akkoma glitch-soc - "Mastodon Glitch Edition" - where Mastodon UI discovers new features Glesys' object storage PeerTube Pixelfed Activitypub SpaceX rockets exploding compilation video WebTorrent Element and Matrix eSam Mattermost SPF - Sender policy framework - email authentication method Skolplattformen Offentlighetsprincipen Quotes Elon happened A very straight path to somewhere else As open as email Satiate my doomscrolling needs A Twitter on IRC I don't trust the ecosystem under my feet Lectured about a culture I'm not in Teams was dubbed illegal videos.varberg.se The good spirit of the internet GDPR says no! People software You have people living in you I want "Svenska IT-myndigheten" Pointless, annoying, and wasteful
About Teaching Functional Programming
How to teach functional programming? What are the proper steps, beyond the first ones? Especially when you can't or don't want to point to a framework and say "we do it this way!"Lars outlines his ideas for teaching Elixir to someone without requiring any prior programming experience.There is also discussion of mapping, reducing, and representing one in terms of the other. Also things which are better in Haskell than Elixir, perfectly named modules, and - inevitably - why you don't just use Rust instead.Links Chalmers](https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chalmers_tekniska_h%C3%B6gskola) CakeML](https://cakeml.org/) Elixir in action - Saša's Elixir book Monad Map Reduce Filter MapReduce Elixir's enum module Multiple function heads in an anonymous function Immutability Guards in Elixir and Haskell Witchcraft - the module Nerves Frank Hunleth REPL Quotes It felt like I cheated, I don't know if I did In my bone marrow! Putting the module before the functions Try to explain a monad (there is no second step) Pretend that the rest of computing doesn't exist Ignore the rest of the world Save brain cycles Solid, sound, and true It's going to have to be a reduce I never really updated my map
About Archives
Archives are cool. How do you keep your digital things in order and, hopefully, backed up?We need more archivists.Andreas has re-read Snowcrash, and while it isn't the manual for the world to adopt it doesn't seem to stop the megacorps from thinking it is and trying. Where did Google go wrong, and why? And why aren't we jealous of their recruiting?Linkable matter The library of Alexandria - overrated? Backblaze B2 Syncthing Tailscale Nextcloud Hetzner Storage Share (NextCloud) ZFS Borg - backup handling software Andreas' Instagram account Dragonbox algebra (5 yo / 12 yo) Snowcrash by Neal Stephenson Ender's game by Orson Scott Card Meta's new professional Quest headset The Corecursive podcast episode about Android Supabase Swedish archive paper Better titles Overrated library though Perfectly gitted and dotfiled Way too pragmatic A virtual private server and magic Nested backups Suddenly: math More stacks of logos; less clarity Preparing for the metaverse 1984 isn't the manual Snowcrash isn't the manual Designing dystopia The opportunity for amazing glitches Need to try harder at working less A strong ack
About Good Things in Programming
There are good things in programming, many of which are enumerated in this episode.Among other nice things: the best features in Elixir. Lars won open source? Bots and realtime-y stuff. Not to mention a type system that screams at you.Also: Lists in lists, in lists (in lists).Code made by other people is not one of the things, however. Code made by other people is always upsetting. CSS does not make the list either, but Tailwind does, prompting a discussion of fractally difficult things, leaky abstractions, and progressive enhancement.Linkable matter IO-lists - lists in lists in lists with eventually some binary data in them Id3vx - The now published ID3 library LiveView Phoenix Either in Haskell Clowns to the Left of me, Jokers to the Right (the paper) Stealers Wheel - Stuck in The Middle With You Functors Elm Fmap and bind in Haskell Lars' Telegram bots Genserver Moment.js Autobots and Decepticons Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson Tailwind CSS Graceful degradation Progressive enhancement Better titles Keeps giving nil Carefully optimistically happy A JSON-thingy You won open source I have written the code, and it's not my problem Murdering your garbage collector A type system that screams at me The maybes I got over pretty quickly They never stopped being results An inherited Erlang footgun The speaker that was in the monkey It's not only that I'm a backend developer
About Miscellaneous Hardware
The hardware woes episode. But first: the joy and wonder of ID3v2.3.Implementing the specification of a binary format as a library.Lars' next laptop. Then Lars' gear situation. Power bricks and cable capabilities are … a labyrinth.The trials and tribulations of getting and setting up a Steam deck.Linkable matter* The ID3v2.3 spec* EXIF* Fold left and fold right* Lars' blog post about working with ID3* CRDT* Apple's WWDC keynote* The M2 Macbook air* The Framework laptop* Linux on M*-chip computers* Dell's XPS laptops* RJ45* Steam deck* Slackware* PopOS* Reglyph? Reglef? Desktop environment* Aspyre* Frank C-something of Nerves and his bechmark suite* Sony A7CIf we had titles* Trying to be clever, and doing it poorly* It still reverses the whole thing* Arbitrary comments* The future of mp3:s* The world is less and less file-centric* A USB-C-shape cable
About Cyberdecks
Elon Musk wanting to buy Twitter leads naturally into the topic of cyberdecks and jacking in, which in turn naturally leads one to talk about audio on Linux.But what is a cyberdeck? How do you build one? And when would you use it?The sad state of video calls compared to Star Trek - why don't they have to install Teams to hail the Microsoft ship?Lamenting the sad state of the current crop of dystopic overlords. Who runs Google, really? Amazon might be the most attractive target, just don't take down all our clouds by accident, okay?Cyberpunk wasn't prepared for crypto, but when other things get bad enough that ceases to be a problem. Let's not papercut ourselves all the way to dystopia.Linkable material* Elon Musk has or has not yet bought Twitter* Cyberdecks* Jack - the sound library* Shadowrun* Keytar* Pi 400* Pi TFT* Touchbar Lemmings* The Framework laptop* Google glass still exists* FPGA* Obsbot PTZ Camera* Cory Doctorow on the Corecursive podcast* Lightning - the on-top-of-Bitcoin payment system* Podcast index* Mer - the Swedish cordial-type drinkAlternate titles* Jack in* Something vulgar about it* As far as cyberdecks go* The keytar of keyboards* Just hack the Gibson* Rearview mirrors, but cameras* Out cyberdecking* The current crop of dystopic overlords* Web-scale capitalism* Our current psychopaths* Papercut our way to dystopia
About Proprietary Things
Notes will improve when beatings continue.