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Owning a production Postgres database is never boring. The other day, I’m looking for trouble (as I am wont to do), and I notice this weird curve in the production database metrics: So we’ve got these spikes in WALWrite: the number of processes waiting to write to the write-ahead log (or “WAL”). The write-ahead log … Continue reading did u ever read so hard u accidentally wrote?
I recently had the pleasure of reading anthropologist David Graeber’s 2018 book, Bullshit Jobs: A Theory. Graeber defines a bullshit job as, a form of paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence even though, as part of the conditions of employment, the employee feels … Continue reading Is ops a bullshit job?
Queues are not just architectural widgets that you can insert into your architecture wherever they're needed. Queues are spontaneously occurring phenomena, just like a waterfall or a thunderstorm.
I was recently delighted to be interviewed by Adam Hawkins on his podcast Small Batches. We discussed a huge variety of topics. Here is the full episode, and on that page you’ll find meticulously timestamped links to specific topics. Check out the rest of Adam’s podcast, it’s phenomenal!
More in programming
How do cryptocurrencies actually work, though? Join Alice and Bob as they embark on designing a new digital ledger for secure “Bobcoin” transactions.
Understand how computers represent numbers and perform operations at the bit level before diving into assembly
To be a successful founder, you have to believe that what you're working on is going to work — despite knowing it probably won't! That sounds like an oxymoron, but it's really not. Believing that what you're building is going to work is an essential component of coming to work with the energy, fortitude, and determination it's going to require to even have a shot. Knowing it probably won't is accepting the odds of that shot. It's simply the reality that most things in business don't work out. At least not in the long run. Most businesses fail. If not right away, then eventually. Yet the world economy is full of entrepreneurs who try anyway. Not because they don't know the odds, but because they've chosen to believe they're special. The best way to balance these opposing points — the conviction that you'll make it work, the knowledge that it probably won't — is to do all your work in a manner that'll make you proud either way. If it doesn't work, you still made something you wouldn't be ashamed to put your name on. And if it does work, you'll beam with pride from making it on the basis of something solid. The deep regret from trying and failing only truly hits when you look in the mirror and see Dostoevsky staring back at you with this punch to the gut: "Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing." Oof. Believe it's going to work. Build it in a way that makes you proud to sign it. Base your worth on a human on something greater than a business outcome.
I learned a new word: ductile. Do you know it? I’m particularly interested in its usage in a physics/engineering setting when talking about materials. Here’s an answer on Quora to: “What is ductile?” Ductility is the ability of a material to be permanently deformed without cracking. In engineering we talk about elastic deformation as deformation which is reversed once the load is removed for example a spring, conversely plastic deformation isn’t reversed. Ductility is the amount (usually expressed as a ratio) of plastic deformation that a material can undergo before it cracks or tears. I read that and started thinking about the “ductility” of languages like HTML, CSS, and JS. Specifically: how much deformation can they undergo before breaking? HTML, for example, is famously forgiving. It can be stretched, drawn out, or deformed in a variety of ways without breaking. Take this short snippet of HTML: <!doctype html> <title>My site</title> <p>Hello world! <p>Nice to meet you That is valid HTML. But it can also be “drawn out” for readability without losing any of its meaning. It’ll still render the same in the browser: <!doctype html> <html> <head> <title>My site</title> </head> <body> <p>Hello world!</p> <p>Nice to meet you.</p> </body> </html> This capacity for the language to undergo a change in form without breaking is its “ductility”. HTML has some pull before it breaks. JS, on the other hand, doesn’t have the same kind of ductility. Forget a quotation mark and boom! Stretch it a little and it breaks. console.log('works!'); // -> works! console.log('works!); // Uncaught SyntaxError: Invalid or unexpected token I suppose some would say “this isn’t ductility, this is merely forgiving error-parsing”. Ok, sure. Nevertheless, I’m writing here because I learned this new word that has very practical meaning in another discipline to talk about the ability of materials to be stretched and deformed without breaking. I think we need more of that in software. More resiliency. More malleability. More ductility — prioritized in our materials (tools, languages, paradigms) so we can talk more about avoiding sudden failure. Email · Mastodon · Bluesky
I recently went into a deep dive on “UART” and will publish a much longer article on the topic. This is just a recap of the basics to help put things in context. Many tutorials focus on using UART over USB, which adds many layers of abstraction, hiding what it actually is. Here, I deliberately … Continue reading How to use “real” UART → The post How to use “real” UART appeared first on Quentin Santos.
