My notes on information technology, technology, science and other matters, as taken from various podcasts, videos and other online flotsam, and summarized on Twitter. This month: No, it is the unit tests that are wrong; the cases for and against the 10x Programmer; Google and user interfaces; imperative pipelines and multiple management models; and why apps, not machines, are the center of the universe.
Tech Notes
Development
DevOps is a fuzzy name for all of the disciplines and skill sets involved in everything that happens between writing software and making it reliably available as a service for users. It’s everything from tools to processes to shifts in organizational culture.
— Anil Dash (@anildash) September 4, 2020
Rule #1: Never use the system Python 🚫 pic.twitter.com/Cbn1fj959v
— A Cloud Guru (@acloudguru) September 17, 2020
"Highly productive developers (10x or otherwise) are problem-solving at a much higher level. Their productivity won’t be apparent from a narrow test..." @payne92 https://t.co/N4069E0WmI
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) September 28, 2020
Have I ever. pic.twitter.com/pcrehZqHXU
— Abby Fuller (@abbyfuller) September 7, 2020
this but for the deployed version rather than the same code running on my laptop pic.twitter.com/bGM72kvh9G
— Aidan Skinner (@aidanskinner) September 17, 2020
“Google is really good at making infrastructure tooling. But I'd argue they're not the best at making their user experience." -- @soloio_inc's @Idit_Levine on creating a #Docker-like #WASM support infrastructure for extending @EnvoyProxy, @thenewstack https://t.co/01KgT9zCvc
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) September 25, 2020
Operations
Operations involving state--such as storage and networking--can't be easily managed through a declarative model. A #ServiceMesh fails where it must deal with state. "When you have state, you end up being imperative." -- @etherealmind, @packetpushers https://t.co/XDCH5Bb4MD #K8s
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) September 9, 2020
OAM, the Kubernetes Application Model Bridging Development and Deployment https://t.co/EaDQVKH2OG @Joab_Jackson #OAM @CloudNativeFdn #kubernetes
— The New Stack (@thenewstack) September 1, 2020
“Having these things glued together in the imperative pipelines [leads to] multiple management models. It becomes increasingly difficult to master the interactions and the failure modes across all these tools." -- @prasek, on OAM, #KubeConhttps://t.co/iokwECIKyO
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) September 1, 2020
Every single time you read about a talent shortage, fill in the rest of the sentence with "...at a price they want to pay." Upskilling internal folks is cheaper than buying those skills on the open market. pic.twitter.com/33mokUL9xR
— Corey Quinn (@QuinnyPig) September 15, 2020
“Developers started realizing that machines are not the center of the universe, but instead that their applications are the most important thing [...] This defined a shift from a machine-centric control plane to an application-focused control plane.” https://t.co/8iNMtayzoA
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) September 16, 2020
#grep 3.5 gets the messaging right: https://t.co/t8vCrnhw85 #Linux #Unix
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) September 28, 2020
A "Shape Aura," ("Drifter") by Palma Blank (The Hole, NYC).
Science
“In an atmosphere composed mostly of carbon dioxide, like Venus’s, phosphine should be able to survive only briefly before chemistry destroys it. So [...] something must be producing it at the same rate as atmospheric chemistry gets rid of it.” https://t.co/Y4sWBKMHga
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) September 15, 2020
Machine Learning
"According to Hindenburg, the company 'had the truck towed to the top of a hill on a remote stretch of road and simply filmed it rolling down the hill.'” https://t.co/WwQLOdPl8r
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) September 25, 2020
Surveillance Capitalism
"...what was once thought of as propaganda or psychological warfare was subsumed and legitimized by behavioral scientists, who rechristened the field with the anodyne label of 'mass communication.'" https://t.co/FozZOEM3Je
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) September 20, 2020
COVID-19
“...if a man in his 30s and a man in his 60s both contract COVID-19, it is more likely that the 30-something will develop a months-long illness than that the 60-something will die.” https://t.co/URgj4u0R1o
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) September 7, 2020
Could someone please invent some sort of combination facemask/earpods?? It’d be one less thing I have to worry about grabbing on my way out the door... pic.twitter.com/tXgFRY1fqd
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) September 5, 2020
Tech Editing
It's also a sign of a writer who is tired and just wants to finish writing the damn story 🤣🤣 https://t.co/6CfNgUheEl
— Joab Jackson (@Joab_Jackson) September 29, 2020
A substantial fraction of the book-revision process is deleting the word "that" again and again.
— Jordan Ellenberg (@JSEllenberg) September 21, 2013
Twitter impressions, September 2020: 24,000
More Technology Notes
