Architecture is hard sometimes--people keep offering up some new idea that quickly becomes the mainstream “way to do it” without any context or nuance, and the industry, desperate to find ways to improve their architecture, snaps it up without hesitation. Microservices was the latest in the trend, and it’s time we dissected the idea and got to the real root of what’s going on.

source: CaptainPatate

There are hackers—believe it or not—who just love the art of building software. They do it for the challenge, for the fun of it. They aren’t trying to make a million dollars.

Monolith vs microservices ... small server vs big server...

We have all gotten so familiar with virtualization and abstractions between our software and the servers that run it. These days, “serverless” computing is all the rage, and even “bare metal” is a class of virtual machine. However, every piece of software runs on a server. Since we now live in a world of virtualization, most of these servers are a lot bigger and a lot cheaper than we actually think.

Did Ken, Dennis, and Brian choose wrong with NUL-terminated text strings?

source: communications of the acm

In this article, we provide a holistic view of the Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX) abstractions by a systematic review of their historical evolution. We discuss some of the key factors that drove the evolution and identify the pitfalls that make them infeasible when building modern applications.

source: https://www.usenix.org

this collection of thoughts on software development gathered by grug brain developer

grug brain developer not so smart, but grug brain developer program many long year and learn some things although mostly still confused

This is an attempt to stop a war. I hope it is not too late and that somehow, magically perhaps, peace will prevail again.

The latecomers into the arena believe that the issue is: “What is the proper byte order in messages?”.

source: queue.acm.org

People who know what they are doing run FreeBSD! Everyone in the communication industry run FreeBSD!

source: unixsheikh

There is something special in simple code. Here I’m not referring to simplicity to fight complexity or over engineering, but to simplicity per se, auto referential, without goals if not beauty, understandability and elegance.

Adoring admirers have fed Linux goodies to a disheartening state of obesity.
If only some reincarnation with the genius and sensibility of Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie were still guiding the evolution of Unix!

source: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Unix_philosophy

Real, productive workers are relentlessly squeezed and exploited. The remainder are divided between a terrorised stratum of the, universally reviled, unemployed and a larger stratum who are basically paid to do nothing, in positions designed to make them identify with the perspectives and sensibilities of the ruling class (managers, administrators, etc.)—and particularly its financial avatars—but, at the same time, foster a simmering resentment against anyone whose work has clear and undeniable social value.

source: dhh

Lawrence Gilman Roberts (December 21, 1937 – December 26, 2018) was an American engineer...

As a program manager and later office director at the Advanced Research Projects Agency, Roberts and his team created the ARPANET using packet switching techniques invented by British computer scientist Donald Davies and American Paul Baran.

source: book; where wizards stay up late

A curated list of openbsd’s innovations

What happens inside the cpu? how things get delayed...

Talk from Andrew Kelley about data oriented design and how it can help to reduce memory footprint from workload with careful design.

It’s hard to believe, looking at the modern computing world, but there is still more to life than Windows or Unix… and today, most of the alternatives run on vanilla x86 hardware and are free.

Paul Baran (born Pesach Baran /ˈbærən/; April 29, 1926 – March 26, 2011) was a Polish-American engineer who was a pioneer in the development of computer networks. He was one of the two independent inventors of packet switching.

source: book; where wizards stay up late