The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source - The promise of hackable software (News)

Episode Date: February 5, 2024

Geoffrey Litt thinks browser extensions are underrated, Adolfo Ochagavía on being a generalist in a specialist's world, Jack Garbus praises the Arch Wiki, Terence Eden tries to rebuild FourSquare for ActivityPub using OpenStreetMap & Sebastien Dubois teaches us how to connect ideas together.

What up, nerds? I'm Jared, and this is Changelog News for the week of Monday, February 5th, 2024. The internet is awash with Apple Vision Pro unboxings, reviews, hot takes, and memes. But you already knew that. This humble podcast will continue our focus on telling you about stuff you don't already know about. So let's get into the news. In a post titled The Promise of Hackable Software, Jeffrey Litt writes why he thinks browser extensions are underrated. Quote, among major software platforms today, browser extensions are the rare exception that allow and encourage users to modify the apps that

we use in creative ways not intended by their original developers. On smartphone and desktop platforms, this sort of behavior ranges from unusual to impossible, but in the browser, it's an everyday activity. Browser extensions remind us what it's like to have deep control over how we use our computers, end quote. Perhaps people like us who live, breathe, and eat, metaphorically of course, open source software, take hackability for granted at times. But we shouldn't. Jeffries says it's not an accident that openness emerged on the web platform. Quote, when Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web, he imagined it fitting into this

tradition. Tim says, quote, my vision was a system in which sharing what you knew or thought should be as easy as learning what someone else knew. End Tim's quote. End Jeffrey's quote. This post was originally written in 2019, but it deservedly resurfaced this week, so Jeffrey added some 2024 updates at the end. Amongst other addenda is what Jeffrey is working on in this space, malleable software powered by AI for end-user programmability. I do not know what that means, but it sounds pretty cool. With apologies on the pronunciation, Adolfo Otracavilla says, quote, since starting out as an independent contractor, I've always felt a tension between being a generalist software engineer, yet having to market myself as a specialist. Below follows an account of my struggles, hoping it might be

useful for other adventurers out there. End quote. I can certainly commiserate with Adolfo here. I'm a longtime proponent of generalizing to maximize your impact and minimize the odds of investing big in the wrong tech, but I certainly have felt the tension between that and potential clients who have very specific needs and no good way to find someone to help them except to look for a specialist. He concludes his post by saying, quote, paradoxically, it looks like presenting yourself as a specialist is a requirement to get generalist projects. How is that possible?

My current theory is that focusing on your experience with a specific technology and on your involvement in a particular community makes it easier to establish trust with people who don't know you well. As trust grows, there's more and more room for the undercover generalist to come to the light of day. End quote. This topic is a rich one, perhaps fodder for an upcoming episode of It Depends. It depends. It's now time

for Sponsored News. Are you sick of wasting cycles playing whack-a-mole with bugs? Sentry's got you. No sales meeting required. Sentry shows developers what's broken with code level visibility from pre to post

release. Coming up Thursday, February 22nd, meet Neil Manvar, Sentry's Director of Solutions Engineering, for an unrestricted live group demo. Plus, get all your questions answered. A link to RSVP is in the show notes. Oh, and use code CHANGELOG whenever you sign up and get $100 off the team plan. Too easy, right? Thanks again to Sentry for sponsoring ChangeLog News, and don't forget to use code CHANGELOG when you sign up. Jack Garbus writes, quote, How great would it be if the solution to most errors you face were in the first place you looked? That's what the Arch Wiki has been for me, a massive wealth of

information and troubleshooting resources to help me navigate the various configuration and installation issues I've encountered. Some people claim Arch Linux is too difficult for new users, but for me, it's been the only distribution I've been able to get consistently working, and it's all thanks to the detailed documentation and known workarounds. End quote. I'm a long-time Debian user, but I did try Arch, by the way, one time back in the day. The best part of that experience was the Arch wiki, by far. So I'm picking up what Jack is putting down in this post. Here's another one. Quote, I love exciting and popular and new software, but installing Arch showed me that popular

isn't as important as understandable. Well said. Jack's conclusion, with all else equal, take the road, most documented. Here's Terrence Eden. Quote, I used to like the original Foursquare. The mayor stuff was a bit silly and my friends never left that many reviews,

but I loved being able to signal to my friends, I'm at this cool museum, or we're at this pub if you want to meet, End quote. Terrence divides the work into two parts, getting nearby points of interest and sharing location on the Fediverse. Then he gets to work, but he never pulls it all together. The bad news from the end of the post, quote, creating an activity pub server which can post geotagged notes into the Fediverse might be a little beyond my skill set. End quote. What a shame. If that part were straightforward, perhaps we'd see a trend of posts with the format, rebuilding X for activity pub using Y. That would be a trend I could get behind. Sebastian Dubois writes, as you learn and grow, you will accumulate more and

more knowledge. While each piece is important, the relationships between ideas is at least as important as the ideas themselves. End quote. This is a powerful post to help you connect ideas together with actionable steps, using knowledge graphs, tools like Obsidian, and helping decide what deserves to be linked and what doesn't. I can't do it justice here in audio. Check the link in the show notes and give it a read for yourself. That's the news for now, but check out this week's newsletter for more awesome links and tools,

including Deptree, a code-based entropy visualizer, 12 modern CSS one-line upgrades, a deep dive on pairing HTMX with web components, and ASCII Theater, which streams feature films in ASCII via SSH. Oh, and this is episode 80, so it's time once again for some Changelog++ shoutouts. Shoutout to our newest members.

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