The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source - The missing sync layer for modern apps (News)

Episode Date: September 25, 2023

ElectricSQL is a project that offers a local-first sync layer for web and mobile apps, Ned Batchelder writes about the myth of the myth of "learning styles", Carl Johnson thinks XML is better than YAML, Berkan Sasmaz defines and describes "idempotency" & HyperDX is an open source alternative Datadog or New Relic.

What up nerds, I'm Jared and this is Changelog News for the week of Monday, September 25th, 2023. True story, at Strangeloop last week, somebody approached our booth quite excitedly and said it's ya boy and I had no idea what he was talking about. Confused, he followed up, the Jay-Z sample from 99 Problems? That's you, right? Finally, it clicked, and we both had a good laugh. Moral of the story? If you see me at All Things Open in October or CubeCon in November and yell out, I will totally know what you're talking about. Okay, let's get into the news. Electric SQL is a project that offers a local first sync layer for web and mobile apps.

If local first is new to you, here's a primer. Quote, local first is a new development paradigm where your app code talks directly to an embedded local database and data syncs in the background via active-to-active data replication, end quote. Built with Elixir, Electric SQL is drop-in compatible with your existing data model, migrations tooling, web framework, and component library. The only requirement is Postgres. Check it out if your app needs instant reactivity, real-time multi-user interactions, and or conflict-free offline sync. Ned Batchelder was chastised, my word not his, for advising folks to quote learn how you learn on his blog. That's because the long-believed theory of learning styles has been scientifically debunked for a while now, but it's still common to believe that there are visual learners, auditory learners, about learning styles at all.

He says, quote, should be. There are many effective ways to learn how to program, and you have to choose your way. End quote. In the linked post, Ned goes on to ask a bunch of great questions you should ask yourself to help decide how you learn. Questions like, do you want to start with computer science theory or jump into writing small programs? Do you want to know the inner workings of things or just how to use them? And do you like videos or reading text? This is important because we are spoiled for choice when it comes to software development learning resources, and the paradox of choice is no myth. Okay, it's gig time. What t-shirt am I gonna wear? Can't decide. Can't decide, brain aneurysm! On our recent GoTime episode about Go 1.21, frequent guest Carl Johnson shared an unpopular opinion that was so spicy

that we turned it into a changelog post and a YouTube video. My spicy take is that XML is better than YAML because there are situations where XML is appropriate, but there is no situation where YAML is appropriate. Damn, shots fired. This sparked a ton of discussion online about the virtues and downfalls of XML, YAML, JSON, QLang, and many other protocols. Turns out Carl's opinion was a little popular on X, with 55% of 79 voters agreeing with him,

and a little unpopular on Mastodon, with 52% of 191 voters disagreeing. It's now time for sponsored news. Tailscale for VS Code just got a major upgrade. It's called Machine Explorer, and it unlocks the ability to explore, edit, and transfer the files on any of the nodes in your tailnet that you can reach through SSH directly in VS Code.

Quote, For the millions of developers who use VS Code regularly, this new extension brings all of your remote files into a familiar and powerful editing environment that helps you get stuff done with your code without worrying about using an ancient version of nano on some remote server or getting the syntax of scp commands just right end quote check out their linked blog post introducing this awesome feature to learn how to install it and watch a video demonstrating how

this new extension works thanks once again to Tailscale for sponsoring ChangeLog News. In a post titled Every Programmer Should Know Item Potency, Burkan Sosmaz says, quote, In the world of programming, there are many concepts that every developer should understand

in order to build efficient and reliable systems. One such vital concept is item potency, which refers to the property of an operation or function that produces the same result when applied multiple times as it does when applied only once. End quote. Burkhan does a great job breaking down why this concept is important for all of us to understand and why it has significant implications for building distributed systems. HyperDX is like Datadog or New Rel faster by centralizing and correlating logs, metrics, traces, exceptions, and session replays in one place.

The HyperDX stack ingests, stores, and searches slash graphs your telemetry data. After standing up the Docker Compose stack, you'll want to instrument your app to send data over to HyperDX. End quote. the Docker Compose stack, you'll want to instrument your app to send data over to HyperDX, end quote. It speaks open telemetry, which means it probably works with whatever you're working with. The project is open core, so most features are self-hostable and available under an MIT license, but they do offer a cloud-hosted version and a few additional features that are not open source. Let's finish up this week with two quick updates to ongoing stories and a follow-up to a question I asked on ChangeLoggingFriends. OpenTF joined the Linux Foundation and got renamed to OpenTofu,

ending their beef with HashiCorp. See what I did there? Unity apologized to devs and put some constraints around their new fee structure. But is it too little, too late? On our What Do We Want From A Web Browser episode of ChangeLoginFriends, I said, Is there still a Firefox iOS app or is that gone now? That's a good question. There was a Firefox mobile browser.

Anyways, there's Chrome, there's Brave, there's Arc probably, maybe, I don't know. Sort of. Meanwhile, Claire So from Mozilla was listening along while vacuuming and stopped right in her tracks. She couldn't believe we didn't know this. Yes, there is a Firefox for iOS. So she approached Adam and I at Strange Loop last week to set the record straight. Sorry about that, Mozilla people. I had a feeling there was a Firefox app. I just couldn't remember.

We also received some criticism that we didn't give Firefox a fair shake while discussing the various web browsers. Maybe true, but if it wasn't clear on the show, I have massive respect for Firefox and the impact it's had on the world. I know it is a huge effort by many people for many years, and I thank all of you for your work. In fact, my relationship to Mozilla and Firefox is a lot like Hansel's relationship to Sting in the Zoolander movie. Richard Gere's a real hero of mine. Sting. Sting would be another person who's a hero. The music that he's created over the years, I don't really listen to it. But the fact that he's making it, I respect that. That is the news for now. But our epic Strangeloop episode will drop on Wednesday, and we are experimenting with our very first game show for Changelog and Friends on Friday.

Have a great week, tell your friends about Changelog News if you dig it, and I'll talk to you again real soon.