The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source - A plea for lean software (News)

Episode Date: January 15, 2024

Niklaus Wirth makes his plea for lean software, PocketBase puts your entire backend in 1 file, Vanna is a Python RAG framework for accurate text-to-SQL generation, Henrik Karlsson wants you to think more about what to focus on & Calvin Wankhede shares how he built a fully offline smart home (and you should too).

What up, nerds? I'm Jared, and this is Changelog News for the week of Monday, January 15th, 2024. Well, the cat is officially out of the bag. Our Ship It podcast is back in production with new episodes real soon now. Hosted by Justin Garrison and Autumn Nash, the new tagline is a podcast about everything that happens after Git Push. Changelog++ and Master Feed subscribers don't need to take any action whatsoever. New Ship It episodes will publish right into your podcast app.

Everybody else, subscribe at ShipIt.show or by searching for Ship It in your podcast app of choice. You'll find it. And if you have a topic or person you'd like to hear on Ship It, email ShipIt at changelog.com and let us know. Exciting times. More to come. Okay, let's get into the news. Today's titular story comes by way of Nicholas Wirth, the creator of Pascal, who passed away on New Year's Day about six weeks before his 90th birthday.

Perhaps Wirth rings a bell. Maybe you heard Wirth's law on our most recent Pound to Find game. Well, it all comes down to this, since Taylor is one point away from winning. He piled on, we have a Mel Taylor and Adam. They're all on number three. And so maybe they're all correct. Maybe they're all wrong.

And we play on worth's law and adage on computer performance, which states that software is getting slower, more rapidly than hardware is becoming faster. Sounds true and sounds like Worth's Law indeed. So you guys all got it correct. Yay! That is Worth's Law. Oh no, Taylor, no!

He wrote that in the linked article, which was written in 1995, in which Worth also lays out causes of what he calls fat software. The two main causes, too many features, not enough time. Sound familiar? The price of simplicity is also defined, and he shares nine lessons learned from the successful Oberon system he and a colleague designed between 1986 and 1989, which was still in use at the time of their writing. It's amazing how absolutely relevant this paper is. Almost 30 years later, Wirth's message in a nutshell, quote, software's girth has surpassed its functionality, largely because hardware advances make this possible. The way to streamline software lies in disciplined methodologies and a return to the essentials.

PocketBase puts your entire backend in one file. The backend written in Go with JS and Dart SDKs consists of an embedded SQLite database with real-time subscriptions, built-in file and users management, an admin dashboard UI, and a simple RESTful API. You can download it and use it as a standalone app or as a library that your code uses and extends to create your own custom portable backend. Cool stuff. Vana.ai is a Python RAG framework for accurate text-to-SQL generation.

It lets you chat with any relational database by accurately generating SQL queries trained via RAG, which stands for Retrieval Augmented Generation, to use with any LLM that you want. You load up your data definitions, your documentation, and any raw SQL queries you have laying around into VANA, and then you're off to the races. VANA boasts high accuracy on complex datasets, excellent security and privacy

because your database contents are never sent to the LLM or a vector DB. It boasts the ability to self-learn by choosing to auto-train on successful queries and a choose-your-own front-end approach with front-ends provided for Jupyter Notebook, Streamlit, Flask, and Slack. It's time for sponsored news. Join Sarah Guthells this Wednesday, January 17th, and learn how to get started using Sentry for your next JS apps. In the session, she will cover connecting your source code

to view unminified stack traces, adding event context with custom tags, setting up effective issue assignment and alerting, connecting front-end and back-end errors, and viewing video-like playbacks with session replay. The best part, get your questions answered live during the free session. Sign up today using your link in the show notes, and thanks once again to Sentry for sponsoring Changelog News.

Henrik Carlsen writes about life as a multi-armed bandit and how we need to oscillate between exploring and exploiting it. When you're in exploiting mode, focus is key. Henrik writes, As a rule of thumb, you can only do one or two things well. Some people are exceptional. They can do three. I'm not exceptional. I learned this, as many do, when I had my first child. I had been a bit nervous about becoming a father. Having failed to achieve what I had expected I would, I thought strapping a child in my chest meant setting myself up for permanent failure. It did not. When Maude ate about half my time, I had to force myself to make priorities. I would care for her, I would write, and I would say no to everything else.

Narrowing my life like this at least doubled how much I could achieve. When I had more time, I had spread myself too thin to get stuff done. End quote. There's a lot in this long post that rings true to me, and lots more to ponder. Definitely worth a read. Calvin Wonkheed writes, quote, As someone who grew up with a dial-up internet connection, I get anxious at the thought of any always online product or service. My smart home is no different. I rely on it to automatically cool the room when I get home, light up my closet when I open the door, and match the color temperature of my lights to the sun's

position. Why should any of that require an internet connection? That train of thought is exactly what led me to build a fully offline smart home that doesn't hinge on any third-party servers whatsoever, and here's how you can do it too. End quote. Calvin then proceeds to take you step-by-step through building a fully offline smart home and wraps up with his analysis of whether it's worth all that effort. Would you want us to pod about this?

Maybe get Calvin on the show? Let us know, and we'll work on that. That is the news for now, but if you want more, scan the companion newsletter for our clip of the week, recent good pods from us, and a roundup of excellent posts about the future of the web. Stay tuned right here. We have Alan Jude talking free BSD coming up next

and Techno Tim talking Homelab right after that. Have a great week. Tell your friends about Changelog News if you dig it. And I'll talk to you again real soon.