The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source - Southwest flies high over CrowdStrike outage (News)

Episode Date: July 22, 2024

Brendan Gregg details how eBPF can help us have no more blue Fridays, Misty De Meo thinks GitHub is starting to feel like legacy software, Gavin D. Howard does not want Rust to be used for everything, The Notion team published a deep dive into how they used the WASM version of SQLite to improve browser performance & Gregor Ojstersek writes up how to build good relationships inside and outside your engineering teams.

What up, nerds? I'm Jared, and this is Changelog News. For the week of Monday, July 22nd, 2024. Friday's CrowdStrike outage sent shockwaves through every Windows-dominated industry. Hospitals, banks, and airlines were hit particularly hard. Delta, American, Spirit, Frontier, United, and Allegiant all had issues, but not Southwest. How'd they do it? By running their entire operation on Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 machines.

Brilliant! Brilliant! They don't make them like they used to. Okay, let's get in to this week's news. No more Blue Fridays. Brendan Gregg sprinkles some optimism on the waste and wild landscape left behind after Friday's largest outage in the history of information technology. Quote, for Linux systems, the company behind this outage was already in the process of adopting eBPF, which is immune to such crashes. Once

Microsoft's eBPF support for Windows becomes production ready, Windows security software can be ported to eBPF as well. These security agents will then be safe and unable to cause a Windows kernel crash. He goes on, The worst thing an eBPF program can do is to merely consume more resources than is desirable, such as CPU cycles and memory. eBPF cannot prevent developers writing poor code, but it will prevent serious issues that cause a system to crash. And he finishes with this call to action. If your

company is paying for commercial software that includes kernel drivers or kernel modules, you can make eBPF a requirement. It's possible for Linux today and Windows soon. While some vendors have already proactively adopted eBPF, others might need a little encouragement from their paying customers. Please help raise awareness, and together we can make such global outages a lesson of the past. GitHub is starting to feel like legacy software. Misty DeMeo writing about her frustrating experience using GitHub's blame view. Quote, I'd heard rumblings that GitHub's in the middle of shipping a front-end rewrite in React, and I realized this

must be it. The problem wasn't that the line I wanted wasn't on the page. It's that the whole document wasn't being rendered at once, so my browser's built-in search bar just couldn't find it. On a hunch, I tried disabling JavaScript entirely in the browser, and suddenly it started working again. GitHub is able to send a fully server-side rendered version of the page, which End quote. I've stumbled across a fair number of UI bugs in recent months myself, but Misty isn't solely pinning the legacy software vibes on the fallout of a React rewrite. Quote, The corporate branding, the new AI-powered developer platform slogan, makes it clear that what I think of as GitHub,

the traditional website, what are to me the core features, simply isn't Microsoft's priority at this point in time. I know many talented people at GitHub who care, but the company's priorities just don't seem to value what I value about the service. End quote. I can't tell if Microsoft is ignoring GitHub

or if they're just busy helping their customers recover from the largest outage in the history of information technology. Why I hope Rust does not oxidize everything. Gavin D. Howard is not against Rust, but he is against Rust being used for everything. Quote, Don't let Rust infect everything. Don't let the culture of the programming industry shift towards Rust or Bust.

If you make your choice between alternatives purely by if one was written in Rust, you are the problem. Rust does not automatically make things better. It should be used where it can make things better, but not on any more than that. In other words, a programming language monoculture would be disastrous for our industry. Don't let it happen. End quote. If ever there was a time to warn your fellow devs about the danger of monocultures, it would be right after a single vendor caused the largest outage in the history of information technology.

It's now time for Sponsored News. Intel Innovation 2024 Accelerate the Future Registration is now open for Intel's Innovation 2024 event in San Jose, California. Quote, this event is all about you, the developer and technologist community, and the critical role you play in tackling the toughest challenges across the industry. Ignite your passion for AI and beyond. Grow your skills to maximize your impact. And network with your peers as we unleash the next wave of advancements in technology.

End quote. You'll hear from industry experts, technologists, entrepreneurs, and fellow developers, along with Intel leaders. Pat Gelsinger, the CEO, and Greg Lavender, the CTO. Don't miss Early Bird Pricing. It ends August 2nd. Register today using the link in your chapter data and in the newsletter. And thank you to Intel for sponsoring ChangeLog News. How we sped up Notion in the browser with Wasm SQLite. The Notion team published a deep dive into how they used the Wasm version of SQLite to improve browser performance. Quote, using SQLite improved page navigation times by 20% in all modern browsers,

and the difference was even more pronounced for users who are subject to especially slow API response times due to external factors like their internet connection. For example, page nav times sped up by 28% for users in Australia, by 31% for users in China, and by 33% for users in India. End quote. It wasn't easy. They had to develop a novel shared service worker approach where only one tab accesses SQLite at a time and overcome multiple major stumbling blocks along the way. I love engineering deep dives like this. They are great reading while you wait for those Windows machines to reboot in the wake of the largest outage in the history of information technology. How to build good relationships inside and outside your engineering team. This article by Gregor Odstersik might help you out in more than just your work environment. Quote, engineers who are considered high performers often have two things. One, their overall skill set is at a high level.

Two, they have good communication and collaboration abilities, which helps them build good relationships with their colleagues. So, building good relationships is a prerequisite to success in the role. Remember, software development is a team sport and relationships play a huge part in contributing effectively. End quote. Gregor goes on to detail three main pieces of advice, all of which I can co-sign. One, be genuinely interested in getting to know your colleagues better. Two, actively put in the effort to understand their problems and help them resolve them. Three, focus on asking

great questions instead of making strong opinionated statements and say, I don't know, if you don't know. The hard part about number one is the genuinely bit. That means you actually have to care. But if you do, that makes number two much easier. How do you gin up genuine interest if it isn't already there? I don't know. Maybe ask them if they too were impacted by the largest outage in the history of information technology. That's the news for now, but we have some great episodes coming right up. Adam Lissagor from Sandwich joins us on Wednesday, and on Friday, Robert Ross from Fire Hydrant is coming on Friends to talk with us about, you guessed it, the largest outage in the

history of information technology. Have a great week, leave us a five-star review if you dig our work. And I'll talk to you again real soon.