The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source - Windows Subsystem for Linux is open source (News)

Episode Date: May 19, 2025

Microsoft finally opens the source of WSL, Paolo Scanferla describes an inherent trade-off in TypeScript's type system, Alberto Fortin is taking a step back from heavy LLM use while coding, a pseudonymous hacker spent two weeks coding from their Android phone, and NLWeb might become the HTML of the open agentic web.

What up nerds, I'm Jared and this is ChangeLog News for the week of Monday, May 19th, 2025. I may sound a little different than usual because I'm in a hotel in Seattle and I'm shipping this out a little later than usual, because Adam and I spent the morning attending the Microsoft Build 2025 keynote, where Satya Nadella and company mentioned AI agents 187 times. Yes, I counted. That excludes mentions of copilot, MCP, or models, which would have ballooned the count even more, because I'm only a man, not a machine.

The good news, there was at least one cool non-agentic announcement. Okay, let's get into the news. Windows Subsystem for Linux is open source. The announcement that WSL is now finally open source garnered perhaps the biggest applause break of the entire build keynote. Turns out, opening the source of a beloved developer tool slash platform at a developer conference is an easy win. From the announcement post, quote,

WSL could never have been what it is today without its community. Even without access to WSL's source code, people have been able to make major contributions that led to what WSL is now. This is why we are incredibly excited to open source WSL today. We've seen how much the community has contributed to WSL without access to the source code, and we can't wait to see how WSL will evolve now that the community can make direct code contributions to the project." Windows Subsystem for Linux is one of the coolest things

Microsoft has built this decade, and having it out there in the open makes it even cooler. Hypertyping. Paolo Scanfurla describes an inherent trade-off in TypeScript's type system. Stricter types are safer, but often more complex. He calls this phenomenon hypertyping, which is, quote, where libraries,

in pursuit of perfect type safety, end up with overly complex types that are hard to understand, produce cryptic errors, and paradoxically even lead to unsafe workarounds. End quote. Paolo argues that simpler types, or even type generation, often lead to a more practical and enjoyable developer experience,

despite being less perfect. Turns out, perfect really is the enemy of good, even in TypeScript. I'm going back to using my brain. Alberto Fortin is taking a step back from heavy LLM use while coding. Why? Quote, one morning, I decided to actually inspect closely what's all this code

that cursor has been writing. It's not like I was blindly prompting without looking at the end result, but I was optimizing for speed and I hadn't actually sat down just to review the code. I was just building building building. So I do a coding review session and the horror ensues. End quote. I won't list all the horrors here. You can probably guess what they are. Here's Alberto's experience after stepping back. Since I've taken a step back, debugging has become easier. Maybe I'm not as fast,

but I don't have this weird feeling of, I kind of wrote this code, but I actually have no idea what's in it. I'm still using LLMs, but for dumber things, like rename all occurrences of this parameter, or here's some pseudocode, give me the go equivalent. It's now time for sponsored news. Everything you need to know about vibe coding.

Vibe coding, love it or hate it, is here to stay. Everyone has an opinion about it and Retools' Keenan Coppenhaver does does a good job explaining the trends potential and risks with developers in mind. Quote, where Vibe coding enables non-engineers to create without learning the code, experienced engineers are freed up to focus on advanced problem solving and relieved of undifferentiated heavy lifting,

such as changing the entire app's color scheme, rebuilding a data table for the 100th time, or implementing a known algorithm in a new language. Think of the flow state you could achieve or the creativity you could harness if you could just remove these kinds of tasks from your project." The reality, as we both know, isn't so straightforward. Keenan goes on to lay out the security concerns, the team-wide inconsistencies, and the tech debt that Vibe coding can produce. Thanks to Keenan for the great write-up

and to Retul for sponsoring changelog news. Check them out at retul.com. Coding without a laptop. Did you know you can run a full desktop Linux environment on your phone? Not some clunky virtual machine and not an outright OS replacement like Ubuntu Touch or Post Market OS, just native ARM64 binaries

running inside a little Cheroot container on Android. Pretty cool. The pseudonymous hacker who blogs at holdtherobot.com had a two week trip coming up where they needed to work and they got obsessed with the idea of leaving their laptop at home and just using their phone. So they added a folding keyboard and some AR glasses. The whole setup cost 636 bucks and here's four reasons why they still like the idea after trying it on for a bit. One, it really does fit into your pockets. No bag, nothing to carry. Two, I can use

it outdoors in bright sunlight. I wrote most of this blog post sitting at a picnic table in a park. Screen glare and brightness is not an issue. Three, I can fit into tight spaces. This setup was infinitely more comfortable than a laptop when on a plane. Some coffee shops also have narrow bars that are too small for a laptop, but not for this. And four, the phone has a cellular connection so I'm not tied to wifi. That said, there are plenty of pain points too. Check the link in the newsletter for the full story.

Microsoft wants this to be the HTML of the agentic web. The most interesting segment of today's build keynote in my eyes was when CTO Kevin Scott took the stage to discuss the open agentic web and Microsoft's commitment to it. He emphasized the importance of protocols and Microsoft's support of MCP. Then he compared MCP to HTTP and said we need an HTML equivalent to sit on top. That's when he introduced NLWeb as Microsoft's attempt at defining the HTML of the agentic web. Quote, NLWeb is a collection of open protocols and associated open source tools. Its main focus is establishing a foundational layer for the AI web, much like HTML revolutionized document sharing.

To make this vision a reality, NLWeb provides practical implementation code, not as the definitive solution, but as proof of concept demonstrations showing one possible approach." This is early days and things are moving fast. Sounds like a great time to get involved. That's the news for now, but go and subscribe to the ChangeLog newsletter for the full scoop of links worth clicking on, such as a leap year check in three instructions, cat-slash-etc-slash-itter.conf, and an online museum of internet artifacts. Get in on the newsletter at changelog.com slash news.

Have yourself a great week, like, subscribe, and leave us a 5 star review if you dig the show and I'll talk to you again real soon.