31–40 of 155 posts
Is this a play on the rail safety videos? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IJNR2EpS0jw https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eq-GYfRjxhM https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yhJJws3kgzY Edit: Yes. "The Melbourne Metro safety campaign this post is named after closes with “be safe around trains,” which is more actionable than anything I’ve got."
In the past we had software stacks where once code is written it's just done, it will keep working years and even decades later.
E.g. https://sapaclisp.common-lisp.dev/ you can download code written in 1993 and just load it in latest SBCL.
Joke aside, these do represent surface of attack.
It's ridiculous that everything is expected to be maintained on a weekly basis. In the past we had software stacks where once code is written it's just done, it will keep working years and even decades later. E.g. https://sapaclisp.common-lisp.dev/ you can download code written in 1993 and just load it in latest SBCL.
Call me old but there was a time when “open source project” meant “I had a problem, this is my solution, if someone has the same problem then you are free to use my solution”. These days is more: - building personal brand - showcasing your skills - trying to outsmart somebody else, often because they didn’t merge your pr - sometimes just having fun And if you work for big org it’s also often “this looks vaguely simil…
In my experience you can pretty much always bet on greed, money, and psychopathy to ruin anything that reaches beyond Dunbar's number.
It's sad when your playground gets overrun by drug lords (metaphorically speaking); I don't really have an answer to that. It's my central trauma.
Call me old but there was a time when “open source project” meant “I had a problem, this is my solution, if someone has the same problem then you are free to use my solution”. These days is more: - building personal brand - showcasing your skills - trying to outsmart somebody else, often because they didn’t merge your pr - sometimes just having fun And if you work for big org it’s also often “this looks vaguely simil…
However, the amount of devs have grown exponentially, and the number of non-niche problems without a solution have dramatically decreased.
A focused tool that does one thing well starts getting PRs and issues for tangential features. The maintainer, wanting to be responsive, merges them. Six months later the project is a Swiss army knife that's hard to maintain, hard to onboard new contributors to, and the original use case is buried under complexity.
The antidote is a clear CONTRIBUTING.md that says "here's what this project IS and ISN'T" and being comfortable closing issues with "out of scope, but would make a great separate project."
Easier said than done when you're a solo maintainer and every closed issue feels like you're letting someone down.
Call me old but there was a time when “open source project” meant “I had a problem, this is my solution, if someone has the same problem then you are free to use my solution”. These days is more: - building personal brand - showcasing your skills - trying to outsmart somebody else, often because they didn’t merge your pr - sometimes just having fun And if you work for big org it’s also often “this looks vaguely simil…
For example C was shared, C++ was evangelized. The difference is the effort put into convincing people to adopt your stuff.
Java for instance was mega evangelized, Sun thought it might reverse their fortunes.
Linux was initially “here you go, hope it works for you” but then it attracted many people who decided to create an ecosystem around it.
Call me old but there was a time when “open source project” meant “I had a problem, this is my solution, if someone has the same problem then you are free to use my solution”. These days is more: - building personal brand - showcasing your skills - trying to outsmart somebody else, often because they didn’t merge your pr - sometimes just having fun And if you work for big org it’s also often “this looks vaguely simil…
I remember having this discussion a long time ago that instead of dependencies we should build a function and type hub that lets you pick tested function and type definitions. Each individual artefact is tiny so forking it is really simple. Instead of building a massive library you mix and match for your use case. The platform itself can host test cases decoupled from the definition. With AI this sounds much more rea…