Recent content on davlgd tech blog
It’s been about 6 months since my last post on this blog. Why? I was focused. Mostly because of work stuff, but also due to personal changes, managing my fun/office balance, exploring AI and how it changes my relationship to technology, the way I produce things. The main effect was that I lacked time to share what I was discovering on a regular basis, and that’s bad. I devoted a…
As some of you may know, I’m a fan of V , a programming language inspired by Go but trying to do better on many fronts, with great tooling and native libraries. You can learn more in its documentation , using its playground or watching this quickie session from Devoxx France 2024. I’ve already covered some aspects of V in a previous article detailing how to create a tiny web server ,…
In a previous article, I talked about what’s a (minimal) Linux and explained how to launch such a system with only a compiled kernel, an initramfs and BusyBox to get some tools. You should now understand that a Linux based system needs a filesystem to be working and useful. Rules are defined in the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (FHS) . That’s what initramfs and BusyBox provided in a…
If you read this post, this blog, you certainly know (and use?) Linux. And even if you don’t, it’s probably part of your life. Because Linux won! These days, it’s everywhere: in the Cloud, its servers, but also phones, tablets, TVs, cars, fridges, watches, cameras, routers, IoT devices, supercomputers, space stations, Mars rovers, nuclear submarines, airplanes, drones, robots,…
Yesterday, there was a blog post published at this URL, entitled “Why I now use WordPress for this blog”. Of course, it was an April fool’s joke. I am not using WordPress for this blog, nor do I plan to. I’m using a static site generator , and I’m happy with it. Of course, I edit my Markdown files with an IDE, but I’m fine with that, and I’m free to write…
As a kid, after years using an Amstrad CPC 464 (with a green/green screen), drawing rosettes in BASIC and playing video games through the cassette deck, I discovered the PC ecosystem through friends and family in the 90s. Shortly after, I got my own Intel 486 DX2 (66 MHz with Turbo) and started to learn MS-DOS 5.x, reading the official user guide in my spare time. Then MS-DOS 6.x, Windows 3.x,…
Some days ago, MJ Grzymek published an interesting piece on his blog about how Zig can be compiled in WASM and used for efficient web development. It reminded me I’ve wanted to write about Zig and WASM for months. Not because I’m in love with this language, I find it messy (and I’m not a low level guy). But its compiler is dope! Notably, it allows you to compile C/C++ code to…
PHP is an old language, born in 1995. It’s so old that when, as a teenager, I made my first “dynamic” curriculum vitae with a CRUD interface, it was based on PHP. I was proud of it, I was a web developer (kinda)! The former star returns # Like lots of old languages, it progressively became a (heavy) mess, leaving the hype to newcomers. But unlike many others, it has been able to…
One thing I like about technology, is how I can discover new things every day, even about the most basic tools. For example, last week I read a tweet about the <a> element and its download attribute. Although I’ve been creating web pages since the 90s, I didn’t know about it. So, I made some tests. Download a file or open it: let’s decide # When you create a link to a file, maybe…
Those who follow me on social networks or work with me know how much I love V . I first heard of this language a few years ago, but really started to learn it last year, during a small project about binary size . Have you ever heard of V? # I won’t try to convince you how great it is, I don’t need to. Just give it a try, you’ll find out by yourself. The GitHub repository contains…
Whether you are running GNU/Linux, macOS or even one of the BSD derivatives, you’re using a UNIX-based system. Developed in the 70s, this family of multi-user, multitasking OS is now a major standard in the IT industry. Better know UNIX # It comes with many tools. You probably use some of them on a daily basis, like ls , cd , cp , mv , rm , mkdir , etc. But there are many more, and some you…
As mentioned in a previous article , I use aliases to ease my (CLI) life. In addition to day-to-day actions, they allow me to automate “boring” stuff, which requires me to remember multiple commands, launch them the same way over and over again. A good example of this is Docker. For me, Docker is a great tool for local development. If I need to test something in a specific distribution or context,…
I’m an update junkie. I like my system and my applications to be up to date. In the new mobile « App Store » centric approach to the world, it’s quite simple. But that word is too bland and centralized to please me. I’m more of a terminal, scripts & packages manager guy. So, how do I update my desktop? Update everything with a short command # On GNU/Linux and macOS I rely on aliases for this kind…
On this blog, I often publish screen captures, pictures or AI generated images. Most of the time, I get files in JPEG or PNG format. Both are good, but not as optimized as I’d like for a thrifty static website. WebP is better for that, can be lossless and is widely supported. Keep it lean # I could rely on Astro, which optimizes files during build. But this means I’d have to store…
Multi-purpose text editors and IDE market space is wide, from vi to Visual Studio. But some tools have always been massively used as they provide a good response to the current needs of developers and (Markdown) writers. Fresh days for IDE lovers # 9 years ago, Atom was the rising star, part of the GitHub tools family. Microsoft bought GitHub, driving efforts to make Visual Studio Code the next…
You know how I love git . In recent years, it has become the go-to VCS for developers around the world. It’s fully distributed: anyone can act as a client or a server. But in most cases, we rely on external services such as GitHub, hosted GitLab, Gitea, etc. Humans remain gregarious creatures. But some developers looked for ways to integrate git with another kind of platform, more and more popular…
As a tech editor, I used to write several articles a day. Most of the time, it was enough to prepare content to publish later. In some cases, I had to wait due to a NDA, requiring to hold off until a specific date/time. Thus, my common practice is to batch-write stories when inspiration strikes, and then spread them out over time. It’s also how I work on this blog. But as it’s a static…
When you want to monitor a UNIX system, top is a good command to know. It provides information about CPU, RAM, processes, storage and network usage, with some interesting details (in a messy way). htop is a more modern and flexible alternative, as are btop , gtop or bottom (previously ytop ). But sometimes, your main concern isn’t to use a cross-platform tool. You want “close to…
I love git . Versioning things is key in my world and git made this popular, distributed, thanks to Merkle trees (among others). But it’s complicated too. You must practice a lot to really master such a tool. And when you’re good enough to think you have it, you suddenly realize you’re way off the mark. The good thing is, though, that you are constantly amazed by the new things &…
Some weeks ago, I decided to launch this tech blog based on the AstroPaper theme. After the release of Astro 4.0, it’s been upgraded with VS Code snippets, modDatetime and slug support, packages updates, share buttons, back to top link, fixes, etc. You can learn more here . So, I decided to make the move. As it’s a static blog with no 1-click process, I had to follow manual steps.…