software development

Bilingual

Help wanted
2 months ago
- The author refuses to change their software's license from AGPLv3-or-later to MIT despite user demands.
- They reject unsolicited contributions and have restricted pull requests to only themselves and a friend.
- The author prioritizes values like love of software over popularity metrics such as GitHub stars.
- They mock AI-driven development and corporate sponsorship while affirming their own open-source principles.
- The author sarcastically addresses a supply chain attack accusation and stands by their no-warranty license.
- They dismiss vulnerability reports and redirect them to AI companies.
- A trusted contributor turns hostile, forking the project and gaining more popularity after adding Windows support.
- The author ends by seeking job opportunities while maintaining a defiant tone.
AI doesn't generate working products, that's still your job
2 months ago
- AI tools can rapidly create working prototypes, but the distance from a prototype to a production-grade system remains significant.
- Building production-grade software requires judgment, system design, error handling, security, scalability, and observability—areas AI does not automate.
- Learning computer science is more valuable than ever because it provides a mental model to evaluate AI-generated code for flaws like performance issues or race conditions.
- The demand for mechanical coding is declining, but engineers with deep understanding who use AI as a force multiplier will reach new productivity heights.
- Engineers who rely on AI as a substitute for understanding will be left behind, unable to fix, scale, or explain their systems.
- Success comes from using AI as a tool on top of strong fundamentals, not as a replacement for them.
The development pipeline is a production system
2 months ago
- The development pipeline should be treated as a production system because outages directly prevent developers from delivering software.
- Problems with build tools, QA environments, CI/CD, and other pipeline components are as urgent as customer-facing production outages.
- When the pipeline breaks (e.g., code can't compile or QA server is down), the team cannot produce software, making it a top-priority outage.
- The pipeline includes all steps from 'customer wants something' to delivery, such as issue trackers, IDEs, build tools, test suites, and deployment systems.
- Treating pipeline outages with the same urgency as customer outages is essential for maintaining productivity and software delivery.
The Conductor Developer
2 months ago
- AI has shifted software development's bottleneck from coding to human attention, making it the scarce resource.
- Developers now act like conductors, orchestrating multiple AI agents in parallel instead of deep work alone.
- Great developers provide context, evaluate outputs, and manage energy, similar to executive roles.
- The software industry needs to redesign engineering careers around attention and energy management.
LLMs and Xfwl4
2 months ago
- LLMs are a tool with positive and negative aspects, including concerns over training data and copyright infringement.
- Environmental and social impacts of LLMs include high resource consumption and secret deals that burden local ratepayers.
- GPU and RAM supply issues are exacerbated by AI demand, making personal hardware upgrades expensive.
- The author uses Claude extensively for research and planning in developing xfwl4, such as analyzing xfwm4 source code.
- Implementation is mostly done manually, with Claude used for validation, code review, and occasional boilerplate code generation.
- Claude is highly effective for bug fixing, often finding issues faster than the author.
- Unit tests in xfwl4 were written by Claude due to the author's distaste for testing.
- The author avoids vibe-coding and focuses on understanding the code for future manual maintenance.
- LLM usage has saved months of time, particularly in problem-solving and debugging, despite ethical discomfort.
- The author provides transparency about LLM use in the xfwl4 development process.
How To Build A Smartwatch: Software - Setting Expectations & Roadmap
2 months ago
- Pebble 2 Duo shipping: 70% delivered, 14% in transit, 16% shipped next week; sold out with no more production.
- Company operates with 5 full-time employees (vs. 180 previously) to ensure sustainability; prioritize core features and manageable growth.
- Software development trade-offs: core functions must work reliably, but bugs, rough edges, and occasional broken features are accepted; focus on stability over new features.
- Software roadmap priorities include: getting PebbleOS ready for Pebble Time 2, improving battery life from 17 to 30 days, adding language packs, quality-of-life improvements, PebbleKit Android, adjustable watch settings from mobile, notifications overhaul, developer SDK enhancements, voice assistant, and watchface generator.
- PebbleOS history: built on FreeRTOS with $15M+ investment and 20 firmware engineers; open sourced by Google in 2025 after Fitbit acquisition.
- Key PebbleOS strengths: constraints-driven creativity, efficient protocol, backwards compatibility, excellent SDK that enabled 10,000+ apps/faces, and community-driven development.
- Core plans: retain existing UI/UX, preserve backwards compatibility, replace old mobile apps with new open-source libpebble3 library, and add local speech-to-text.
- Firmware work includes supporting new microcontrollers (nRF52840, SiFli), reducing power consumption, and integrating Moddable JavaScript runtime.
- SDK improvements: web-based Pebble Cloud SDK (under 1 minute to start), new code examples, APIs for touchscreen/speaker, and easier app submission.
- Appstore enhancements: better discoverability, filtering non-working apps, highlighting new watchfaces, and exploring a donation subscription funnel for developers.
History of PuTTY's development
2 months ago
- PuTTY began as a personal project (STel) in 1996 to address poor terminal emulation in Windows Telnet clients.
- In 1998, it was converted into a multi-protocol client with SSH-1 support and renamed PuTTY.
- First public release in 1999 with a single executable and no installer, manual, or zip file.
- Key features were added through community contributions: SCP (1999), X11 forwarding (2001), TCP port forwarding (2001), and Unicode support (2001).
- A manual was finally written in 2002.
- In 2002, the terminal emulator was ported to Linux, creating pterm and a full Linux version of PuTTY.
- Later major features include serial port support (2007) and connection sharing (2015), both requiring significant code restructuring.
- A server-side SSH refactoring in 2019 was done as a development tool, not for production use.
- Development was driven by 'dogfooding' (using the software personally) and community contributions, with little long-term planning.
- Serial port support was an exception: written by the original author due to user demand, despite lacking personal need.
<antirez>
2 months ago
- Redis is celebrating its 5th anniversary since its initial HN announcement.
- The project's success is attributed to great coders who adopted it early and contributed patches and ideas.
- The Redis community consists of outstanding coders whose skills are not indicated by social media followers or GitHub repos.
- Redis aims to explore unconventional design ideas and popularized concepts like data structures in key-value stores and scripting in databases.
- The project will deprecate weak features and pursue diverse goals, such as focusing on API improvements in Redis 3.2.
- The author remains motivated to continue work on Redis, seeing it as an ongoing journey, not driven by external pressures.
LotusNotes
2 months ago
- The military was a key early customer and funder of digital computing, with many innovations emerging from university research labs serving military contracts.
- PLATO (Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations) was an early computer-based education system developed at the University of Illinois with military funding, emphasizing collaboration and user-generated content.
- PLATO's 'notes' system, created by high school students, became a popular public messaging platform that influenced later social networks and online communities.
- Lotus Notes, developed by Ray Ozzie and Iris Associates, was a groupware platform derived from PLATO's notes system, using a replicated database model for collaboration.
- Lotus Notes was a flexible, schema-less platform that could be customized for various business needs, including email, calendars, and workflow automation.
- Despite early dominance, Lotus Notes declined due to competition from Microsoft Exchange, proprietary standards, and its complex multipurpose nature, eventually being sold to HCL in 2018.
Algorithms we develop software by
2 months ago
- Start each day by writing a feature from scratch, deleting previous work except unit tests, to enforce clean solutions.
- If a feature can't be implemented after a few days, first implement the groundwork infrastructure or refactoring needed.
- Rewriting code twice can yield 2x quality for 1.25x time, beneficial for long-term maintenance.
- Solving the same problem repeatedly helps retain knowledge of patterns, crucial for junior engineers to reach 100K lines of experience.
- The 'gun to the head' heuristic breaks anchoring bias by forcing a radically different solution under a tight deadline, often reducing time from weeks to days.
- Engineering heuristics are like pathfinding algorithms, each with pros and cons; becoming a better engineer involves better navigation of problem space.
Implementing OpenSSH certificate support in PuTTY
2 months ago
- Certificate support in PuTTY required changes across almost all code areas except terminal emulation, making it a far-reaching feature.
- The implementation was done in parallel across subsystems, with frequent context-switching to avoid rework of completed parts.
- A new global configuration system was introduced for CA settings, as per-session configuration was insufficient for host key certificates.
- A custom Boolean expression syntax was designed for CA trust rules, allowing simple wildcards like '*.example.com' and compound expressions with '&&' and '||'.
- User certificates can be provided via modified PPK files, separate certificate files, or command-line options, supporting multiple certificates per key.
- Pageant's key storage was refactored into separate public and private key data structures to ensure related keys are encrypted/decrypted together.
- A rekey bug caused crashes after an hour due to oversight in testing; fixed before release.
- Pre-release builds were announced for the first time to gather user feedback, successfully catching bugs before the final release.
Symbiosisware
2 months ago
- "Symbiosisware" is software designed for a single user who is also its developer.
- It often has more minor bugs because fixing them is less effort-efficient than working around them.
- It is tailored to the developer's specific environment, ignoring portability and generalizability.
- User interface metaphors are often absent because the developer already understands the program's inner workings.
- The software and user co-adapt to each other, making it hard to separate them, akin to biological symbiosis.
- Converting symbiosisware into released software requires significant effort in both redesigning the software and retraining the developer's habits.
Code review antipatterns
2 months ago
- Code review can be used constructively to improve code and skills, but also obstructively with dark-side antipatterns.
- The 'Death of a Thousand Round Trips' involves repeatedly nitpicking to delay the patch, often across time zones.
- Hostage-taking: demanding unrelated work in exchange for approving a critical patch.
- Review ping-pong: two reviewers make incompatible demands, bouncing the developer back and forth.
- The Guessing Game: vague criticism of a solution without suggesting alternatives, forcing the developer to guess.
- Small nits first, then dropping a major rewrite: making the developer waste effort on trivial fixes before a fundamental change.
- Design wholesale: demanding justification for the entire project design during a minor patch review.
- One big patch vs. many small patches: criticizing whichever approach the developer chose.
- Arbitrary inconsistency: objecting to a pattern previously accepted, forcing the developer to update old code.
- The article is a joke; the real message is to avoid these behaviors, use review authority responsibly, and be constructive.
- In peer review, authority is temporary and should be used only to improve the patch, not for personal agendas.
- In gatekeeping (e.g., unsolicited patches), criticism can be legitimate but should be clear and not passive-aggressive.
Optimising for trust
2 months ago
- The hardest problem in software development is managing people, not technology.
- Processes for software teams are context-dependent; there is no one-size-fits-all approach.
- The key heuristic for evaluating processes and tools is to 'optimise for trust'.
- Trust can be built in four areas: technical (tests), architectural (code review), interpersonal (team-building), and organisational (agile methodologies).
- High-performing teams build trust in all these areas, but the required effort varies by team context.
- If processes are not working, examine where trust is lacking and make changes accordingly.
How Do You Speak Pidgin To A Probability Distribution?
2 months ago
- Frameworks are like a master carpenter's jigs: they remember which specific shape matters, unlike AI that can generate any shape but lacks context.
- Pidgin languages emerge as simplified bridges between speakers of different languages for trade, and when children grow up speaking them, they become full creole languages.
- Similarly, frameworks like Rails and React are 'creoles' that AI models understand natively, enabling efficient communication.
- Even when AI can write any code, frameworks remain essential for shared vocabulary among humans, AIs, and future developers.
- Internal or obscure frameworks are like pidgins—AI hasn't seen them, so we must teach them each time, often with limited success.
- The author's VSM framework explores building frameworks that can explain themselves, using meta-tools and CLI generators to facilitate pidgin conversations with AI.
- Senior developers get the most from AI coding assistants because they share a creole language with the AI, while beginners get pidgin and poorer results.
- Frameworks may evolve into self-aware participants that teach their own idioms, becoming active translators rather than static code.
- All frameworks start as pidgins; the ones that become widespread become creoles that shape how AI thinks and dreams.
Passive Voice Considered Harmful
2 months ago
- Passive voice omits critical information like who performs an action, creating ambiguity.
- Active voice follows 'actor → verb → object' structure, which is clearer and easier to parse.
- Converting passive sentences to active voice often reveals gaps in thinking or design.
- Passive voice can be useful to avoid assigning blame in problem discussions.
- It can communicate mistakes tactfully without sounding accusatory.
- It can omit irrelevant details that don't contribute to the core narrative.
- Recognizing passive voice involves spotting a form of 'to be' plus a past participle.
Can You Spot the Passive Voice?
2 months ago
- The exercise tests the ability to recognize passive voice in software development context.
- Users must click 'Active' or 'Passive' for each sentence.
- The results show accuracy, correct and incorrect answers, and a score percentage.
Can You Spot the Passive Voice?
2 months ago
- The exercise tests the ability to recognize passive voice in the context of software development.
- For each sentence, the user clicks 'Active' if no passive voice or 'Passive' if it contains passive voice.
- The results display accuracy percentage, number of correct and incorrect answers, and a final score statement written in passive voice.
How to Write Useful Commit Messages
2 months ago
- Effective commit messages simplify code reviews, communicate changes to teams and users, aid future debugging, and provide data for development tools.
- Structure commit messages using the 'inverted pyramid' style, placing the most critical information first, and use headings for long messages.
- The commit title should describe the effect of the change ('what'), while the body must clearly explain the motivation ('why') and how it impacts users.
- Provide essential context by cross-referencing issues and bugs, summarizing external references, and justifying new dependencies.
- Document learnings, alternative solutions considered, testing instructions and limitations, and searchable artifacts like specific error messages.
- Highlight breaking changes, supplement UI changes with screenshots/videos, and place rants or stories at the very end of the message.
- Leave out information obvious from the code diff, ephemeral review discussions, and critical maintenance details that belong documented directly in the code.
'Weekly' Links for February 14, 2025
2 months ago
- Fewer students are enrolling in doctoral degrees.
- Frequent AI tool usage is significantly negatively correlated with critical thinking abilities.
- AI code generation leads to more code, more duplicated code, less cohesive systems, and more defects.
- Residential networking over telephone is being explored.

software development

Help wanted

AI doesn't generate working products, that's still your job

The development pipeline is a production system

The Conductor Developer

LLMs and Xfwl4

How To Build A Smartwatch: Software - Setting Expectations & Roadmap

History of PuTTY's development

<antirez>

LotusNotes

Algorithms we develop software by

Implementing OpenSSH certificate support in PuTTY

Symbiosisware

Code review antipatterns

Optimising for trust

How Do You Speak Pidgin To A Probability Distribution?

Passive Voice Considered Harmful

Can You Spot the Passive Voice?

Can You Spot the Passive Voice?

How to Write Useful Commit Messages

'Weekly' Links for February 14, 2025