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babarock

1,840 karma · joined October 7, 2011

My name is Joe. I work at Red Hat.

The opinions I express here represent my own and not those of my employer.

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babarock··on I believe there are entire companies right now under AI psychosis
The tweet is criticizing over-reliance on the "agents will fix it anyway".

The fact that we can fix things faster now doesn't mean that we should throw away caution and prevention. The specific point of his tweet is that we're seeing a lot of people starting to skip proper release engineering.

Agents are quick to fix bugs, yes, but it doesn't mean that users will tolerate software that gets completely broken after each new feature is introduced and takes a certain number of days to heal each time.

babarock··on 7 lines of code, 3 minutes: Implement a programming language (2010)
Matt Might's website has taught me so much over the years, going all the way back to ... I want to say 2008-2009? From programming languages to Unix-fu to a huge amount of topics in-between. I'm super glad to see his writing still being shared. One of my favorite corners of the web.
babarock··on I'm OK being left behind, thanks
I don't understand the rush to be "the first". Facebook isn't the first social media, Google isn't the first search engine, iPhone is not the first smart phone, Microsoft is not the first OS, the list goes on.

Clearly there's an advantage for being an early adopter, but the advantage is often overblown, and the cost to get it is often underestimated.

babarock··on Get free Claude max 20x for open-source maintainers
> You’re a primary maintainer or core team member of a public repo with 5,000+ GitHub stars or 1M+ monthly NPM downloads.

I've been an open source maintainer of one of the biggest open source projects in the world[1], and it wouldn't fill any of these requirements. Anybody else hates it that now "open source" is conflated with Github (a private company, itself not open source) popularity?

[1]: https://www.openstack.org/

babarock··on AI fatigue is real and nobody talks about it
The way I experience this is through unprecedented amount of feature creep. We don't use AI generated code for all our projects, but in the ones we do, I see a weird anti-pattern settle in: Simply because it's faster than ever before to generate a patch and get it merged, it doesn't mean that merging 50+ commits this week makes sense.

Code and feature still need to experience time and stability in order to achieve maturity. We need to give our end users time to try stuff, to shape their opinions and habits. We need to let everyone on the dev team take the time to update their mental model of the project as patches are merged. Heck, I've seen too many Product Owners incapable of telling you clearly what went in and out of the code over the previous 2 releases, and those are usually a few weeks apart.

Making individual tasks faster should give us more time to think in terms of quality and stability. Instead, people want to add more features more often.

babarock··on Don't fall into the anti-AI hype
> Open Source is not the absolute social good we delude ourselves into thinking.

Historically the term "Open Source" was specifically developed to divorce the movement from the "social good" ideas that were promoted by Free Software.

That's where I stand. I don't do Open Source to make the world better. I do Open Source because I believe that makes my software better.

I'm not an activist. I'm an engineer. Nothing wrong with activism, all the power to the people doing it, but the licensing I chose for my code doesn't take it into account.

babarock··on Don't fall into the anti-AI hype
I don't know if you're "wrong", but I do feel differently about this.

I've written a ton of open source code and I never cared what people do with it, both "good" or "bad". I only want my code to be "useful". Not just to the people I agree with, but to anyone who needs to use a computer.

Of course, I'd rather people use my code to feed the poor than build weapons, but it's just a preference. My conviction is that my code is _freed_ from me and my individual preferences and shared for everyone to use.

I don't think my code is "stolen", if someone uses it to make themselves rich.

babarock··on Org Mode syntax is one of the most reasonable markup languages for text (2017)
Are you suggesting I should pick the markup format for my private files according to the perceived popularity of another format?

I'm not sure what's your point. Are you telling people who use org-mode that they shouldn't?

babarock··on Cloudflare CEO on the Italy fines
I think this is moving the goal post. Cloudflare isn't challenging the need to restrict access to some websites, it is challenging who has the right to decide. Quoting the tweet:

> We believe Italy, like all countries, has a right to regulate the content on networks inside its borders. But they must do so following the Rule of Law and principles of Due Process.

I live in Italy, I'm a citizen. I don't feel any safer having the internet regulated by a bunch of bureaucrats than I do state actors and bots.

babarock··on Eat Real Food
What he's saying is that the grandparent (top-rated as of this writing) comment claiming that agribusinesses are hiding the benefits of "community gardens, local food, farmers markets, grass fed, free range..." because they don't make money off of them is unfounded.

I personally don't have any insight into the situation and I definitely don't want to defend big businesses, I'm just explaining what you're replying to.

babarock··on Your job is to deliver code you have proven to work
You're not wrong, however the issue is that it's not always easy to detect if a PR includes proof that the change works. It requires that the reviewer interrupts what they're doing, switch context completely and look at the PR.

If you consider that reviewer bandwidth is very limited in most projects AND that the volume of low-effort-AI-assisted PR has grown incredibly over the past year, now we have a spam problem.

Some of my engineers refuse to review a patch if they detect that it's AI-assisted. They're wrong, but I understand their pain.

babarock··on Getting Forked by Microsoft
"breaking the licenses"?

"without attribution"?

Did we read the same article?

babarock··on Speedrunners are vulnerability researchers, they just don't know it yet
TAS: Tool-Assisted-Speedrun. A kind of speedrunning, where control inputs aren't given by humans, but are carefully pre-programmed into a bot that will replay them. This allows to do things that would otherwise be veeeeery difficult (and sometimes impossible) for humans.

GDQ: Games Done Quick, the name of the Youtube channel.

OoT: Ocarina of Time, a beloved Zelda game from the 90s.

ACE: Arbitrary Code Execution. A vulnerability that lets you run whatever you want. You can use it to skip huge parts of the game, therefore achieving the fast speedrun

babarock··on The right way to sauce pasta (2016)
You get better at it the more you do it, and naturally with experience you'll notice it takes less and less time.

That being said, I agree with you, it does take a lot of time. To me, the switch occurred when I stopped considering this time "wasted" and instead consider it fulfilling. I actively look for the time I'll spend cooking each day, I believe it's a good use of my time and I don't try to rush through it.

babarock··on The right way to sauce pasta (2016)
Agreed.

I pull it out undercooked so I have time to add enough pasta water in the pan and let it reduce. If it's already al dente by the time it's added to the pan, then I find I have to rush through the mixing.

babarock··on The right way to sauce pasta (2016)
The answer is... complicated:

- Using butter for pasta is something that is typically reserved for people with upset stomach (understand diarrhea). It's not scientific at all, but just something that is commonly done.

- Fettucine Alfredo[1] is a real italian dish invented in Rome. It's made with butter and cheese. It was originally popular in the touristy areas, targeting foreigners, but over time I notice it slowly appearing in "real" restaurants.

- "Pasta Fresca" (tagliatelle, raviolis, tortellinis, etc) is often served with butter-based sauces (like a lot of the traditional northern cuisine).

A simplistic way to think about it is that butter is a rich luxurious ingredient used in the North, whereas the South is more likely to use Olive oil.

Note that other fats can be used, it's not just olive oil: - Carbonara / Alla Gricia will use the animal fat from the _guanciale_ (the cured pig meat) and avoid using any oil or butter - Cacio e pepe will use neither and use the cheese itself as fat for the sauce. It's a simple pasta, but it's difficult to get right, since parmesan/pecorino are diffcult to emulsify. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fettuccine_Alfredo

babarock··on The right way to sauce pasta (2016)
The main reason for tagliatelle/pappardelle is to get "fresh" pasta. "Pasta Fresca" or "Pasta all'uovo" is made of different ingredients than spaghetti. It's usually soft wheat and eggs versus hard wheat (durum wheat, semolina) and water.

I agree that finding the right pairing of pasta and sauce does make a difference, but I would also say not to overthink it. Most italians will use whatever's available in the pantry, even if it's sub-optimal.

babarock··on The right way to sauce pasta (2016)
Some suggestions, take it or leave it: - delay the boiling of the pasta until after you added the tomato sauce to the pan. Tomatoes enjoy spending a bit more time on the stove, it makes a difference. - when adding the pasta to the mix, add a bit of the pasta-water (the water in which the pasta cooked). It acts as a very powerful emulsifier and will make the sauce stick better.
babarock··on The right way to sauce pasta (2016)
> Your other option is to purposely undercook the pasta by a few minutes before adding it to the sauce to let it finish.

This is super important. I don't know why the article presents it as optional. It is a vital step for success in my experience.

babarock··on Mod_blog: A Blogging Engine in C
Didn't mean to insult you. It's really meant as a friendly advice. I'm sharing experience.

I do read code. A lot. I'm not the only one. I know many people who do. I know people who print source code on paper to read on their bus ride back home.

Hell, I know people who read some of the most complicated source code you can imagine, annotate it, criticize it, and then blog about it[1].

It's very weird that you doubt it. Why would we lie? For karma and upvotes? I'm not sure I understand your point. We're literally in the comment thread of a post aimed at reading code and you're here arguing that we're not?

[1]: https://kotaku.com/the-exceptional-beauty-of-doom-3s-source-...

babarock··on Mod_blog: A Blogging Engine in C
Python/Flask on the server, and javascript in the browser (if requested) to do markdown->html conversion client-side
babarock··on Mod_blog: A Blogging Engine in C
I wrote my own blogging engine back in 2015. I am fairly certain I'm the only user. I actively use it to maintain two small websites.

Ask Me Anything :)

babarock··on Mod_blog: A Blogging Engine in C
> I would say the difference here is that no one is going to read it and see the code. As much as people fantasise about reading code, few actually do it and those that do are broadly wasting their time.

You'd be surprised how much this statement is wrong. A lot of people enjoy reading the code of the esoteric projects. Case in point, a bunch of HNers are upvoting this and commenting on it.

It's not for you, fine. You're not interested. Fine. Shrug and move on, instead of writing half a dozen posts to let the world know you personally don't care much for it.

PS: you say it's "wasting their time". I've been in software long enough to know that the people who are good at reading code make some of the best programmers on my teams. Friendly advice: Get good at reading code. Especially when it's clunky, weird and esoteric. It'll go a long way.

babarock··on German developer guilty of 'hacking' for exposing hardcoded credentials in app
It's not about "sympathy". It's about crime.

If you left your front door wide and I robbed you, I'd have committed a crime. There's no "but the front door was open" defense.

babarock··on The curse of the goitre in Switzerland
It's spelled _Hors d'œuvre_ in French, using the weird ligature of o and e[1]. According to the Wikipedia article:

> A number of words written with œ were borrowed from French and from Latin into English, where the œ is now rarely written. Modern American English spelling usually substitutes e, so diarrhœa has become diarrhea, although there are some exceptions, such as _phoenix_. In modern British English, the spellings generally keep the o but remove the ligature (e.g. diarrhoea).

In the case of _Hors d'oeuvre_, it seems like the english wikipedia keeps the _o_. [2]

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%92 [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hors_d%27oeuvre

babarock··on IBM, Red Hat and Free Software: An old maddog’s view
> but how long should we pay for digital assets that have already been created?

That's a mis-characterization of what's going on here.

Red Hat makes RHEL. Then it (used to) goes *the extra step* of debranding RHEL, removing trademarks, and publishing it to git.centos.org.

Red Hat is not (and cannot) prevent you from getting your hands on digital assets. It just stopped going out of their way to provide you an easy (almost) 1-click way to clone their product for free. You want to create a clone of RHEL? Sure the upstreams are all available, do it.

babarock··on IBM, Red Hat and Free Software: An old maddog’s view
You writing "in before" doesn't make it less true. We don't call free-clone users "freeloaders".

At the very best, "freeloader" is a term used by someone internally, but I've never ever heard it used in over 10 years in the company.

Full disclosure: Red Hat employee, not writing in the name of the company, views my own and all that. I'm also pretty pissed about CentOS dying, and like many Red Hatters, have voiced my concerns internally. I also happen to think that a lot of the online criticism is unfair, incorrect, and sometimes done in bad faith. So I'm trying to be accurate. As far as I know, nobody in Red Hat calls or even thinks of CentOS/Rocky/Alma/Oracle/... clones as "freeloaders".

babarock··on IBM, Red Hat and Free Software: An old maddog’s view
Think about it this way.

If you as a Red Hat customer redistribute the source code, Red Hat won't sue you. You didn't do anything illegal, you are doing what you are allowed to do.

Nothing in the GPL entitles you to future support from Red Hat, source code of future versions or anything of the sorts.

You're free to do whatever you want with the sources. Red Hat is free to stop business with you at any time. There's nothing contradictory here.

babarock··on Why ISO was retired (2021)
Different ISO ;)
babarock··on The Development of the C Language (1993)
People who still write C, honest question: Why?

C is full of quirks. From cryptic "undefined behaviors" to a type system that isn't really a type system (more like "size hints for the compiler"), the language doesn't feel easy to use/debug. Add to this CPP macros, a universally recognized bad idea, a clunky import system, and lack of a single reference implementation of the compiler/libC, and you have a language that is harsh to defend.

Also, documentation is all over the place. If a function isn't described in `man`, I have no idea where else to actually look for it.

I used to think "C presents the most honest representation of the low-level mechanisms of the computer", but... even this is shaky. I've been programming for almost 15 years now, and I don't think I've ever seen a computer where memory is actually a continuous array of bits sorted by memory address. The C representation of memory (and all the pointer arithmetic) is not a real representation of your hardware, and this too is an abstraction.

So, setting aside the need to maintain 30+ year old code, what would be modern reasons to start a new project in C?

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