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Category: Development

The Hidden Costs of Open Source: Maintainer Burnout and User Entitlement

2025-04-07
The Hidden Costs of Open Source: Maintainer Burnout and User Entitlement

This article addresses the growing sense of entitlement among users of open-source software. The author clarifies that open-source doesn't automatically equate to free support, feature requests, or the developer's time. Many developers contribute freely, yet face abuse and unreasonable demands. The article urges users to respect developers' work, learn how to seek help effectively, and advocates for financial support of valuable open-source projects.

(vale.rocks)
Development developer rights user responsibility

A Journey to Optimize Cloudflare D1 Database Queries

2025-04-07
A Journey to Optimize Cloudflare D1 Database Queries

A frontend developer encountered performance bottlenecks while using Cloudflare Workers and the D1 database. By monitoring the D1 dashboard, examining query statements, and analyzing row read/write counts, they identified several key issues: slow single queries, inefficient batch writes, unnecessary row reads due to including IDs in update operations, full table scans from count queries, Cartesian product explosions from multi-table joins, and suboptimal bulk inserts. Solutions involved leveraging D1 batch operations, excluding IDs from updates, implementing cursor-based pagination, splitting multi-table join queries, and optimizing bulk insert statements. These optimizations drastically improved query performance, reducing execution time from 78ms to 14ms in some cases. The experience highlights the importance of continuous monitoring, iterative optimization, and the crucial differences between server-side and client-side performance issues.

(gist.github.com)
Development database optimization

Fitness-Based Function Testing in Lisp

2025-04-07

This code defines a Lisp function called `fitness` that evaluates the fitness of a generated function. It compares the output of the generated function (`form`) with the output of a target function (`fitness-fn`), calculating a fitness value between 0 and 1, where a higher value indicates better fitness. The function includes error handling; it returns `NIL` if the generated function executes illegal code. `fitness` iterates through a list of test inputs (`test-input`), ultimately returning the product of all fitness values as the overall fitness. Examples demonstrate how the function is applied to different generated functions and their fitness scores are calculated.

(aerique.blogspot.com)
Development Function Testing

Moldable Development: Reshaping Programming with Contextual Tools

2025-04-07
Moldable Development: Reshaping Programming with Contextual Tools

Moldable Development is a programming paradigm employing contextual tools tailored to each problem. It's based on the principle that no single perspective on a system is universally correct; different parts require different representations. These representations summarize the system from specific viewpoints, enabling concise communication and a novel feedback loop. Glamorous Toolkit serves as a comprehensive case study, demonstrating how contextual tools enhance programming capabilities. It boasts thousands of extensions and examples covering the entire system, aiming to make system internals easily understandable.

(gtoolkit.com)
Development Moldable Development Contextual Tools

Rive's Revolutionary Vector Feathering: A Performance Breakthrough

2025-04-06
Rive's Revolutionary Vector Feathering: A Performance Breakthrough

Rive has revolutionized vector graphics rendering by ditching the traditional Gaussian blur approach to feathering and creating a fully vector-based system. This system calculates soft edges directly from vector curves, eliminating expensive rasterization and convolution filtering. The result is infinite scalability, real-time adjustments, and significantly improved performance while preserving the vector nature of the graphics. This breakthrough challenges established vector graphics specifications, opening a new chapter in vector rendering.

(rive.app)
Development rendering engine

C String Literal `const` Qualification: A Survey of Potential Impacts

2025-04-06
C String Literal `const` Qualification: A Survey of Potential Impacts

Martin Uecker has proposed changing the type of string literals in C to a const-qualified base type, mirroring C++. While compilers have long supported this (some even by default), this normative change could impact existing code. To gauge the impact, Uecker is seeking factual reports from developers on their experiences using compiler options for const qualification (e.g., GCC's -Wwrite-strings). The goal is to gather data on the ease of implementation, exposure of qualification bugs, and overall feasibility before proceeding with the proposal, prioritizing facts over opinions.

(gustedt.wordpress.com)
Development const qualifier code compatibility

Fail-Safe AI Calls using OpenAI Library and Gemini API

2025-04-06

This article demonstrates a fail-safe approach to making AI calls using the OpenAI TS/JS library. The method allows for fallback to other OpenAI models if the Gemini API hits rate limits. A custom function allows developers to specify multiple AI models as alternatives, ensuring application stability and reliability. Type-safe structured output functions are also provided to simplify handling AI responses.

(sometechblog.com)
Development AI calls fail-safe mechanism

macOS Sequoia Switches from rsync to openrsync

2025-04-06
macOS Sequoia Switches from rsync to openrsync

In macOS Sequoia, Apple replaced the nearly two-decade-old rsync 2.6.9 with openrsync. This change stems from compliance issues with the GPLv3 license used by rsync 3.x. openrsync uses the more permissive ISC license, allowing Apple more flexibility in updating and maintaining it. While openrsync is compatible with rsync, it only supports a subset of rsync's command-line arguments, meaning some older functionalities might be lost. Users should refer to the official documentation for supported features.

(derflounder.wordpress.com)
Development

MonkeysPaw: An LLM-Powered, Intention-Driven Web Framework

2025-04-06
MonkeysPaw: An LLM-Powered, Intention-Driven Web Framework

MonkeysPaw is a revolutionary Ruby web framework that disrupts traditional web development. Instead of writing HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, developers describe page content using natural language; the framework generates complete web pages based on the LLM's interpretation of the intent. This makes development faster and more efficient, but also presents challenges like performance and accuracy. MonkeysPaw represents a new way of developing in an AI-first world, prioritizing content and using natural language as code, lowering the barrier between thought and implementation.

(worksonmymachine.substack.com)
Development Natural Language Programming

Rust's Safety Traps: Even Safe Rust Isn't Foolproof

2025-04-06
Rust's Safety Traps: Even Safe Rust Isn't Foolproof

This article unveils common pitfalls in safe Rust code that the compiler misses. It covers integer overflows, type casting errors, array out-of-bounds issues, invalid states, sensitive data exposure, and more, providing solutions like checked arithmetic, TryFrom, the `get` method, and custom types. The author emphasizes that even with Rust's memory safety guarantees, developers need discipline, combining testing, linting, and fuzzing to build robust applications.

(corrode.dev)
Development

Gracefully Hiding JavaScript-Dependent Elements

2025-04-06
Gracefully Hiding JavaScript-Dependent Elements

This article explores three elegant ways to hide web elements that rely on JavaScript. The first method dynamically adds a class name using JavaScript, but it's not concise enough. The second method uses the `` and `` tags to directly hide elements in CSS, but it has higher maintenance costs. The third method, and the recommended approach, uses a generic class name `d-js-required` along with the `<noscript>` and `<style>` tags. This only requires modifying a single CSS rule to hide all JavaScript-dependent elements, offering a clean and efficient solution.

(0xda.de)
Development progressive enhancement

From Curiosity to Code: A Software Engineer's 30th Birthday Reflection

2025-04-06
From Curiosity to Code: A Software Engineer's 30th Birthday Reflection

On his 30th birthday, the author reflects on his 12-year journey from a curious kid who loved breaking computers to a software engineer. This first installment of a multi-part series details his path: from experimenting with command lines and learning to program via online forums, to building (and repeatedly breaking) Linux systems, and finally creating Neopets shops using HTML and CSS. He highlights the importance of curiosity, exploration, the role of online communities in learning, and the effectiveness of gamified learning.

(danielsada.tech)
Development

mem-isolate: Safely Running Unsafe Code

2025-04-06
mem-isolate: Safely Running Unsafe Code

mem-isolate executes your function via a fork(), waits for the result, and returns it to the parent process, preventing unsafe code from affecting the parent's memory footprint. It handles memory leaks and heap fragmentation, enforcing memory purity even for impure functions. Currently supporting only Unix-like systems, it adds approximately 1ms overhead compared to direct function calls—a reasonable trade-off for memory safety in critical applications.

(github.com)
Development memory isolation inter-process communication safe programming

In-Browser WASM Performance: DuckDB, Apache Arrow, and Web Workers in Action

2025-04-06
In-Browser WASM Performance: DuckDB, Apache Arrow, and Web Workers in Action

Motif Analytics built a highly interactive in-browser analytics tool using DuckDB WASM, Apache Arrow, and Web Workers, enabling users to experiment without commitment. The article details the upsides and downsides of this tech stack, including DuckDB WASM's performance (slower than native but optimizations help), and schema inconsistencies encountered when parallelizing with Web Workers (e.g., data insertion failures due to schema mismatches). Bugs and limitations are shared, highlighting DuckDB WASM's rapid development and promising future improvements.

(motifanalytics.medium.com)
Development

React Hydration Errors in Server-Side Rendering: Causes and Solutions

2025-04-06
React Hydration Errors in Server-Side Rendering: Causes and Solutions

This article delves into the common hydration errors encountered in React server-side rendering (SSR). Using a simple React/Express app example, it demonstrates how hydration errors occur: when the HTML initially rendered by the server doesn't match the component structure React expects during client-side hydration. The article thoroughly explains the difference between `hydrateRoot` and `createRoot`, and provides multiple solutions, including verifying consistency between server and client renders, handling browser-specific APIs, and using `useEffect` to prevent rendering before hydration completes. It also highlights the importance of avoiding invalid HTML and handling browser environment specifics like localStorage. The ultimate goal is ensuring consistent server and client renders to avoid hydration errors and improve user experience.

(www.propelauth.com)
Development

The Comma Conundrum: Why JSON's Syntax Needs a Rethink

2025-04-06

This post questions the necessity of commas in JSON. The author argues that commas in JSON are not a clever design choice, but rather increase the likelihood of syntax errors and reduce readability. The author proposes removing commas, utilizing spaces and colons to distinguish key-value pairs, and uses JSON5 as an example of improvements, although JSON5 only partially addresses the issue. The post concludes by mentioning a curious side effect of using AI systems in text generation.

(simonsafar.com)
Development syntax

Benchmark: Six Open-Source PostGIS Vector Tile Servers Compared

2025-04-06
Benchmark: Six Open-Source PostGIS Vector Tile Servers Compared

Fabian Rechsteiner's master's thesis benchmarks six open-source PostGIS vector tile servers (BBOX, ldproxy, Martin, pg_tileserv, Tegola, TiPg) for speed. Results are presented via an interactive map comparison at vectormap.ch and a GitHub repository with reproducible code. While speed isn't the only factor, this benchmark provides valuable insights for choosing a vector tile server.

(spatialists.ch)
Development vector tiles

Mysterious SSH Password Disable Bug on Ubuntu 24.04

2025-04-06

Disabling SSH password access over the internet while allowing it on the local LAN on an Ubuntu 24.04 server seemed straightforward using sshd_config. However, a custom configuration file in /etc/ssh/sshd_config.d/ was ignored after restarting the SSH daemon. The culprit was sshd_config's 'first-come, first-served' configuration rule, and a system-generated '50-cloud-init.conf' file containing 'PasswordAuthentication yes', which loaded before the custom file. Renaming the custom configuration file to '10-no-passwords.conf' solved the problem by ensuring it loaded first.

(utcc.utoronto.ca)
Development Server Configuration

Owl: Spaced Repetition for Enhanced Memory and Creativity

2025-04-06

Owl leverages the science of spaced repetition to boost memory retention and creativity. Create your own flashcards or utilize our expanding library of public decks. Learn anything, anytime, anywhere—for free! Owl is used across various industries to improve recall, accelerate learning, and generate more ideas. Built for our own needs, we're now sharing it with you. Happy learning!

(owl.cards)
Development memory learning flashcards

ADHD Body Doubling: A Surprisingly Effective Productivity Hack

2025-04-06
ADHD Body Doubling: A Surprisingly Effective Productivity Hack

This article explores 'ADHD body doubling,' a productivity technique where someone with ADHD works alongside another person – the 'body double' – to improve focus and task completion. A retired VP, David, struggling with everyday tasks despite organizational skills, discovered the unexpected effectiveness of having his wife nearby. The presence, not the advice, of the body double acts as an anchor, combating distractions. While the scientific mechanism is unclear, the article proposes several theories, including social pressure, mirror neuron effects, and energy balance, along with benefits and tips for finding the right body double.

(add.org)
Development

Sleuthing a Windows Auto-Lock Bug: A Tale of Hidden Dialogs and Power Requests

2025-04-06
Sleuthing a Windows Auto-Lock Bug: A Tale of Hidden Dialogs and Power Requests

A new feature in a software product prevented Windows machines from auto-locking, and even going to sleep. Debugging revealed the culprit: `PowerCreateRequest` and `PowerSetRequest` functions were being used to keep the display on by a seemingly innocuous 'What's New' dialog. Even closing the dialog didn't solve the problem. Further investigation with Spy++ showed the dialog was merely hidden, not closed, leaving a persistent power request. The team responsible for the new feature fixed the bug. The article also details alternative diagnostic tools like `powercfg`, `pwrtest`, and the powerful ETW tracing method.

(peteronprogramming.wordpress.com)
Development Bug Debugging

Reverse Engineering a Children's Learning Device

2025-04-06
Reverse Engineering a Children's Learning Device

This blog post details the author's first reverse engineering project: a children's learning device (LeapFrog LeapStart/VTech MagiBook). The journey begins with acquiring the firmware from the VTech software's cache files. Key files identified include 'System' and 'FileSys'. 'FileSys' is a FAT32 filesystem image containing app, audio, and book data. 'System' appears to be an ARM binary, containing C++ information, logs, and kernel information (uC/OS-II). Future steps involve deeper analysis of these files, aiming to understand the dot-recognition and audio playback code, and potentially adding custom audio.

(leloubil.prose.sh)
Development firmware analysis

XNU Kernel: The Foundation of Apple's Ecosystem

2025-04-06
XNU Kernel: The Foundation of Apple's Ecosystem

This deep dive explores the architecture and evolution of XNU, the core kernel powering Apple's operating systems (macOS, iOS, etc.). XNU is a unique hybrid kernel combining the strengths of the Mach microkernel and BSD Unix, balancing modularity and performance. Tracing XNU's history from its Mach microkernel origins, the article covers architectural transitions from PowerPC to Intel to Apple Silicon, improvements in multi-core support, 64-bit capabilities, and enhanced security mechanisms (SIP, Secure Enclave, Exclaves). XNU's success lies in its flexibility and scalability, adapting to devices ranging from iPhones to Mac Pros and providing a powerful foundation for Apple's ecosystem.

(tansanrao.com)
Development Apple operating systems

Testing Isn't a Sunk Cost: How It Accelerates Your Team

2025-04-05
Testing Isn't a Sunk Cost: How It Accelerates Your Team

This article explores why software engineers commonly resist writing tests and emphasizes the importance of testing for improving code quality and team efficiency. The author uses personal experiences to illustrate that abandoning testing, even in high-pressure startup environments, is a mistake. The article highlights that testing isn't just about the distinctions between unit tests, integration tests, etc., but rather about verifying chunks of code that validate the core functionality. Tests should be on-demand, rapidly repeatable, replicable elsewhere, and automatable. The author also points out that writing tests forces developers to write more test-friendly code, leading to better code quality, increased modularity, and ultimately, improved team efficiency. The author concludes by urging engineers to prioritize testing, viewing it as key to increasing productivity and reducing bugs, and leveraging AI to assist with testing, but not relying on it entirely.

(medium.com)
Development

Automating QEMU Output and Control with Shell Scripts

2025-04-05
Automating QEMU Output and Control with Shell Scripts

This article demonstrates how to configure QEMU virtual machine console output and automate control using shell scripts. It covers various methods, including redirecting serial port output to the host terminal, using named pipes for input/output, and employing the expect and ssh tools for automation. Each method is explained in detail with steps, precautions, code examples, and download links for practical application. This guide is beneficial for both beginners and experienced users seeking efficient QEMU virtual machine management and control.

(fadeevab.com)
Development VM Automation

Landrun: A Lightweight, Kernel-Level Secure Sandbox for Linux

2025-04-05
Landrun: A Lightweight, Kernel-Level Secure Sandbox for Linux

Landrun is a lightweight and secure sandbox for running Linux processes, leveraging the kernel-native Landlock security module. It offers fine-grained control over filesystem and network access without requiring root privileges, containers, or complex SELinux/AppArmor configurations. Landrun provides read, write, and execute permissions for files and directories, along with TCP network access control. It's highly configurable and supports Linux kernels 5.13+ (network restrictions require 6.7+). With clear examples and systemd integration, Landrun makes it easy to securely run commands and services with enhanced security.

(github.com)
Development

Improving Database Protocols: A Developer Experience Perspective

2025-04-05

This article discusses shortcomings in SQL database client protocols, specifically MySQL and PostgreSQL. The author points out issues with connection management, error recovery, and prepared statements, leading to increased development complexity. For example, mutable connection state makes error recovery difficult, while the session-scoped nature of prepared statements limits their use in connection pools. The author proposes improvements borrowing from the Redis protocol, such as an explicit configuration phase, idempotency keys, and globally scoped prepared statement identifiers. These changes would simplify development workflows and improve the reliability of database clients, resulting in a better developer experience and more user-friendly databases.

(byroot.github.io)
Development protocol

Rich Text, Poor Text: The Hidden Pain of Character Encoding

2025-04-05

This article delves into the issue of how font styles (bold, italics, etc.) are stored in rich text editing. The author argues that these styles aren't mere 'decorations' but integral parts of language expression, similar to punctuation. However, early character encoding standards (like ASCII) didn't include this styling information, leading to the use of embedded markup. This 'pollutes' text data, impacting efficiency and consistency in text processing. The author proposes a wider character encoding scheme to directly encode style information into characters, solving this problem.

(laemeur.sdf.org)
Development character encoding rich text
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