Posts by hazelweakly@hachyderm.io
(DIR) Post #AhuFdaDlM24Pvwlz7I by hazelweakly@hachyderm.io
2024-04-05T16:21:43Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@KFosterMarks I seem to recall reading research at some point that had a fairly strong refuting of the idea that humans are inherently evil and selfish and backstabbing and that it's impossible to build a society where equitability works. But I don't know if that was research in the "we studied humans and found that they're wired that way" sense or just "we found a few groups that managed to pull it off, neat"
(DIR) Post #AhuFddXj0GowEj8T9E by hazelweakly@hachyderm.io
2024-04-05T16:22:10Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@KFosterMarks I worded the original post pretty terribly I think, my bad 😅
(DIR) Post #AhuFdhL6t76g0lGS2a by hazelweakly@hachyderm.io
2024-04-05T16:46:29Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@KFosterMarks I'd love any scholarly lit that's informed your thinking regardless, though :)
(DIR) Post #Ai1L0rCgEu5R8qu4DA by hazelweakly@hachyderm.io
2024-03-09T07:01:24Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
Something that I find missing in almost every software company is this thing that I'm not sure I've seen explicitly called out anywhere, but I'm going to call it an Engineering Language.https://hazelweakly.me/blog/engineering-language/
(DIR) Post #Ai1L0uIoiXmIkknVh2 by hazelweakly@hachyderm.io
2024-03-09T07:02:26Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
The Engineering Language is something that I would consider to be a living embodiment of how engineers speak, think, describe, and express in that problem domain. It's not a programming language, or a DSL; it's similar to a Design Language, but for engineering and architecture more directly. The Engineering Language is the tool that you use to build foundations of thought and mental models and concepts themselves, so that one can coordinate the intangible nothingness of abstraction itself.
(DIR) Post #Ai1L0xJzUdV27GMzRI by hazelweakly@hachyderm.io
2024-03-09T07:02:42Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
I think this Engineering Language is comprised of three things: An abstraction language, a protocol language, and an interface language. Together, those three things make up something that is greater than the sum of its parts.
(DIR) Post #Ai1L10FUbogTCBHwLQ by hazelweakly@hachyderm.io
2024-03-09T07:04:13Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
I'm going to switch gears for a second and talk about a theoretical business. Imagine this business, which is going to solve a problem, with a product or a service or whatnot, and tackle a certain market. In order to do so, one might start writing some software and doing some market research, validating things, learning about the domain, and so on.
(DIR) Post #Ai1L13AzizruH6CtFY by hazelweakly@hachyderm.io
2024-03-09T07:04:47Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
Something curious will eventually happen: No matter how carefully one writes the software, or how adaptable one tries to remain, the company will eventually reach two critical points of solidity:1. Some evolution in the software will disproportionately become exponentially difficult relative to its "actual" complexity2. Some evolution in market strategy, positioning, or product development, will disproportionately become exponentially difficult relative to its "actual" complexity
(DIR) Post #Ai1L169KfdJzUoS6Zk by hazelweakly@hachyderm.io
2024-03-09T07:04:59Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
But somehow, this isn't the case with language? It isn't the case with the things we learn? How? How is it so different?If we are to achieve this sort of linearity of growth as knowledge for a business domain develops, and if we are to do so in a way that lets us express this knowledge and make it concrete through computation, then surely we need a language of some sort. An Engineering Language.
(DIR) Post #Ai4Nx8oNiJ57vlKy6i by hazelweakly@hachyderm.io
2023-11-16T13:43:33Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
Any sufficiently advanced systems thinking is indistinguishable from premature optimization
(DIR) Post #AiVIc4eqNdBY1zpARs by hazelweakly@hachyderm.io
2024-06-02T02:36:42Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
Y'know how there's a pattern of behavior where someone says something is bad about the tech industry or community or OSS software or something, and then every single nerd within a 50 square mile radius says *WELL ACKTUALLY*?? I just realized that if, like, even 10% of them just... Sat down and spent some energy fixing the problem instead of insulting someone for experiencing it, we would've solved all those issues by now
(DIR) Post #AiVIc690qwuadqwm6y by hazelweakly@hachyderm.io
2024-06-02T02:43:15Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
*deep breath*GUIs are broken on Linux Good OSS photo editing tools don't existThat goes for video editing as well, and audio, and literally anything that isn't blenderMobile and touch screens? In this OSS? Pffh"Coding on an iPad means you're a fake loser" is a sentiment that needs to stopWordPress and PHP are real, useful, and your ego won't die if you admit you use themCSS is a real programming language, so is html
(DIR) Post #AiVIc7GqfIm28RcXxo by hazelweakly@hachyderm.io
2024-06-02T02:47:42Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
*deep breath continues*Low code isn't trash, you're just bad at building tools your coworkers can use"Technical user" doesn't mean "I use vim". The people from $NOT_ENGINEERING are fuckin awesome, stop refusing to acknowledge they existYour ETL pipeline could've been an excel spreadsheet if you weren't elitist about itYour whole startup could've been a pivot table + some visual basic, honestlyAlgorithmsâ„¢ aren't all bad, you just hate being reminded that you're susceptible to feelings
(DIR) Post #AiVIc7riSEGRymrzQe by hazelweakly@hachyderm.io
2024-06-02T02:52:00Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
*deeper breath*The amount of "I think logically without emotion" tone policing that goes on is absolutely outrageous. Especially when it's targeted at women and not all the people that fork every single OSS project at the slightest hint of disagreement"Communication skills are useless" says person who just spent 12 days reading the documentation wrong because they feel less manly if they ask for help"Irreplaceable" and loud toxic people suppress invaluable and quiet brilliance
(DIR) Post #AiVIc8P2SKv3e8SbMu by hazelweakly@hachyderm.io
2024-06-02T02:56:13Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
*deepest breath ever*Most of y'all will never understand or respect the deep intellect required to function on a daily level that is manifested by a black woman living under the poverty level feeding 5 people on a shoestring budget. You want to change the world? Feed people.Most startups fail, not because startups are hard, but because two affluent dudes from an ivy league have no context with which to understand what a problem worth solving actually looks like and they never will
(DIR) Post #Aihshfh73ICCeIjqIS by hazelweakly@hachyderm.io
2024-06-08T04:28:03Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
One of the hardest things for people to understand with distributed systems is that eventual consistency is the same thing as eventual inconsistency. The very same pattern that lets you non atomically deal with things also ensures that eventually you'll have a system that doesn't match your understanding.Resources will go stale, things will go missing, stuff will exist without ever having been created, and data will be destroyed that never got manifested.
(DIR) Post #AihshgjdBPnvsOvMrQ by hazelweakly@hachyderm.io
2024-06-08T04:30:22Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
"how do you prevent this?"You don't. You figure out what flavor of wrong you want and what type of inconsistency is tolerable to you and you embrace the suffering and learn to mitigate the particularly painful outliers that bite youIs bootstrapping your worst enemy? Regularly destroy and recreate the system to ensure no cycles exist in it. Of course, that means it will inevitably incur emergent instability and resource leaks. What's your preference?
(DIR) Post #AihshhXGCtVGMK90DY by hazelweakly@hachyderm.io
2024-06-08T04:34:22Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
"I know! I'll keep a fresh system around and recreate it to ensure no cycles, and I'll keep an old one around to ensure no long term leaks exist"Okay, suit yourself. I see you enjoy the wonders of non-deterministic metastability that comes from adaptive concurrency controls.Oh, you don't? So you have hard isolation between the two systems? I see. That gets you non-deterministic metastability but without needing adaptive concurrency controls. Fascinating innit?
(DIR) Post #AihshiLFD3UArLWv7w by hazelweakly@hachyderm.io
2024-06-08T04:38:39Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
Dangling, stale, metastable, zombie. That only touches the very surface"This system only restarts with warmed caches""This system can't be rebooted and scaled up at the same time""This system can do anything except be highly available during updates""This system can only be restarted in topo-sort order""This system has a deadlock if you drain it geographically from east to west during daylight savings time"Pick your choice of madness, but don't pretend you won't be drinking it dry
(DIR) Post #Ak6AoBHzTF8AjTdYOm by hazelweakly@hachyderm.io
2024-07-19T18:54:14Z
2 likes, 0 repeats