>I don't know JS and I guess maybe I'd love to, but I'd also like to wait until the field stops moving so correctly so that I could just pick a great framework and not have to relearn everything constantly.
/js rant start
I think when that happens it won't be because JS stopped moving, it will be because people will just go "fuck it" and replace it wholly with <favourite language> + WASM.
At least that's how I managed how to not learn JS properly for years. Web frontend work is just drudgery, and I only did it few times when we decided trying to explain a frontend developer ops stuff to make admin page out of is more complex that stitching some shitty code together.
And every single time it was miserable experience and I think only thing that I made and is still in supported framework is fucking jQuery, because every other one seems to shit on backward compatibility and decide to just make new framework. Then call it same name but just increase the number after the name.
/js rant end
> Can you acknowledge that building tooling that allow devs to focus on what gives them joy is actually a nice thing?
I did just say that yes we have those tools and it is fine that dev might not care about internals, I just want to highlight that the whole "I don't care what's underneath as long as it works" might eventually bite, so doing the boring part of understanding something about underlying system might save a lot of effort going forward.
Especially if that bit extra effort allows for overall simpler architecture, as easier debugging usually comes with it. "Just look in logs" or see what process is doing in system directly using installed tools is infinitely easier than fucking with docker/k8s CLI, sidecars and other methods to observe the app in container.
Recent example: A bunch of devs in company we provide infrastructure for got starry eyed for k8s and we just recently had to re-explain that no, the "just give us big POSIX filesystem mounted everywhere" on dozens of nodes isn't gonna work well, and the fact you can tell k8s "give me storage with ReadWriteMany" won't just work. That was after they tried to make shared block device and run XFS on it, which fell apart for obvious reasons
That after same company had year+ long migration from "a big GFS2 volume that was slow as fuck because GFS2 is slow as fuck when you have dozens of nodes for it" to plain S3.
One meeting later and they figured out they don't even need shared storage in the first place, but nobody researched that before and their solution "worked" on test 1 node k8s cluster (for obvious reasons). While a bit of research would have saved the whole ordeal
So less communicative company might just go "right on, we will set up CephFS for you and go ahead" then get more maintenance and the inevitable "this clustered filesystem doesn't work EXACTLY like my XFS partition on ubuntu" problems. It would probably be better for billable hours tho...
More low-scale example: My VPS just have few systemd services for few apps I put there. unattended-upgrades and it is near-zero maintenance for years. Granted, I knew how to do it because that's my day job but I have 100x less complex setup on my VPS. Maybe I should write blog about it...
> p.s. what are you working on? Maybe we can play together. I am not being snarky. I'm collaborative and maybe you're cool too. :)
Well, pandemic/nearby war kinda fucked up every project I started
I was working on midi2sid chip eurorack module. Which was delayed for year+ just waiting to get parts. I think they might be available again, maybe I should resurrect it. It did ran in rust and actually played notes, I just ran out of pins on the MCU I used so I had nice big board with bigger MCU and some niceties added, made it ready to be assembled... right as the chipaggedon started.
I was also working on car datalogger, even got prototype working, except recent economic fuckery put any track days on hold. The plan was to finally get a house, the inflation put any sensible mortgage out of question for at least nearby future so all the fun money are going to the savings now.
The other plan was to replace car's radio with something newer and integrate that with it (via dumb "just send rPi HDMI image thru the infotainment screen" probably), but yeah, can't really do that without garage in the first place...
I experimented with home automation a bit and had some ideas (involving embedded Rust, it is surprisingly palatable) but, well, again, the plans involved having a home, and not really that much possible to do in rented apartment
In meantime like 30 projects that scratch itch nobody else but me have and were not touched after scratching part started to work fine.
I did decide to implement the CPU from The Art of Computer Programming. But it looked annoyingly weird so I just made Go Z80 "emulator". Then rewrote it in Rust as exercise (both in ImGui as frontend). Then realized that getting the other chips than Z80 "right" is a ton of work and.... not that fun work to boot so I called it learning experience for Rust and ImGui and left it alone. It did run enough assembly to do something tho. No longer runs after Rust version upgrade tho. So much for backward compat...
But currently nothing really interesting. I have those cycles, where if work is interesting I spend a most of free time in brainless/semi-brainless fun bracket, and if work is boring I do the interesting hobby stuff, and, well, recent company buyout and some other changes made sure I'm having all the "fun" at work I can take so I haven't been touching hobbies much.
/js rant start
I think when that happens it won't be because JS stopped moving, it will be because people will just go "fuck it" and replace it wholly with <favourite language> + WASM.
At least that's how I managed how to not learn JS properly for years. Web frontend work is just drudgery, and I only did it few times when we decided trying to explain a frontend developer ops stuff to make admin page out of is more complex that stitching some shitty code together.
And every single time it was miserable experience and I think only thing that I made and is still in supported framework is fucking jQuery, because every other one seems to shit on backward compatibility and decide to just make new framework. Then call it same name but just increase the number after the name.
/js rant end
> Can you acknowledge that building tooling that allow devs to focus on what gives them joy is actually a nice thing?
I did just say that yes we have those tools and it is fine that dev might not care about internals, I just want to highlight that the whole "I don't care what's underneath as long as it works" might eventually bite, so doing the boring part of understanding something about underlying system might save a lot of effort going forward.
Especially if that bit extra effort allows for overall simpler architecture, as easier debugging usually comes with it. "Just look in logs" or see what process is doing in system directly using installed tools is infinitely easier than fucking with docker/k8s CLI, sidecars and other methods to observe the app in container.
Recent example: A bunch of devs in company we provide infrastructure for got starry eyed for k8s and we just recently had to re-explain that no, the "just give us big POSIX filesystem mounted everywhere" on dozens of nodes isn't gonna work well, and the fact you can tell k8s "give me storage with ReadWriteMany" won't just work. That was after they tried to make shared block device and run XFS on it, which fell apart for obvious reasons
That after same company had year+ long migration from "a big GFS2 volume that was slow as fuck because GFS2 is slow as fuck when you have dozens of nodes for it" to plain S3.
One meeting later and they figured out they don't even need shared storage in the first place, but nobody researched that before and their solution "worked" on test 1 node k8s cluster (for obvious reasons). While a bit of research would have saved the whole ordeal
So less communicative company might just go "right on, we will set up CephFS for you and go ahead" then get more maintenance and the inevitable "this clustered filesystem doesn't work EXACTLY like my XFS partition on ubuntu" problems. It would probably be better for billable hours tho...
More low-scale example: My VPS just have few systemd services for few apps I put there. unattended-upgrades and it is near-zero maintenance for years. Granted, I knew how to do it because that's my day job but I have 100x less complex setup on my VPS. Maybe I should write blog about it...
> p.s. what are you working on? Maybe we can play together. I am not being snarky. I'm collaborative and maybe you're cool too. :)
Well, pandemic/nearby war kinda fucked up every project I started
I was working on midi2sid chip eurorack module. Which was delayed for year+ just waiting to get parts. I think they might be available again, maybe I should resurrect it. It did ran in rust and actually played notes, I just ran out of pins on the MCU I used so I had nice big board with bigger MCU and some niceties added, made it ready to be assembled... right as the chipaggedon started.
I was also working on car datalogger, even got prototype working, except recent economic fuckery put any track days on hold. The plan was to finally get a house, the inflation put any sensible mortgage out of question for at least nearby future so all the fun money are going to the savings now.
The other plan was to replace car's radio with something newer and integrate that with it (via dumb "just send rPi HDMI image thru the infotainment screen" probably), but yeah, can't really do that without garage in the first place...
I experimented with home automation a bit and had some ideas (involving embedded Rust, it is surprisingly palatable) but, well, again, the plans involved having a home, and not really that much possible to do in rented apartment
In meantime like 30 projects that scratch itch nobody else but me have and were not touched after scratching part started to work fine.
I did decide to implement the CPU from The Art of Computer Programming. But it looked annoyingly weird so I just made Go Z80 "emulator". Then rewrote it in Rust as exercise (both in ImGui as frontend). Then realized that getting the other chips than Z80 "right" is a ton of work and.... not that fun work to boot so I called it learning experience for Rust and ImGui and left it alone. It did run enough assembly to do something tho. No longer runs after Rust version upgrade tho. So much for backward compat...
But currently nothing really interesting. I have those cycles, where if work is interesting I spend a most of free time in brainless/semi-brainless fun bracket, and if work is boring I do the interesting hobby stuff, and, well, recent company buyout and some other changes made sure I'm having all the "fun" at work I can take so I haven't been touching hobbies much.