Delighted by code, data and creativity. Author of Rust in Action. Founder of Accelerant (https://accelerant.dev)
All of a sudden, the Rust community has a long list of podcasts! This is another indicator of the maturity of the Rust language community. QnA with Friends YouTube Irine Kokilashvili (aka mamaicode and girlyops) who seems to have spent much of the last several months traveling all around Europe talking Rust at cloud conferences, has started a podcast (*) called QnA with Friends featuring fun,…
I’ve finally had a chance to pause after getting back from London. An immeasurable thank you to Ernest Kissiedu for the invitation to present. Because I suck at selfies, but selfies are extremely popular, here is a selfie of me not looking at the camera: A real business Seeing my logo next to many others definitely made me take a breath and realise that I have created something meaningful.…
Something super cool happened on stage in the closing keynote of Rust Nation UK 2024. Tokio 1.37 was released and published live. The audience cheered (watch the clip below for confirmation). I was very impressed. ✂️ Tokio 1.37 Released I was also terrified. It confirmed that there’s no external scrutiny placed on Tokio releases. Tokio isn’t just an open source side project that is…
Perhaps I’m showing my age, but the density of games that were able to chart completely new territory is impressive. Dune II - 4X strategy Sim City - simulation games Star Control II - open world procgen Doom - first-person shooter Monkey Island (or Age of the Tentacle) - adventure Civilization - strategy I’m not sure if they’ve had the same impact, but they had a massive impact…
For about 5 years now, tech giants have had access to a secret weapon: access to the world’s top Rust talent. With hiring freezes and layoffs as the trends du jour, they’re giving that access away. Many of the strongest developers that I have known are currently looking for work. Even if teams are not affected directly by layoffs (yet), they’re still operating within a climate of fear and…
A template for you, an employee at “ForkJoin” to you adapt. An AI writing assistant wrote most of it. If you have suggestions for improvement (it’s not quite as polished as I would like), please contact me on LinkedIn , Mastodon or Twitter . Subject: Enabling Rust as a choice for our software developers Dear [Stakeholders/Management], I am writing to propose that we investigate…
This won’t be an original idea – but I wonder if startups all chase the same metrics and therefore amazing businesses never thrive because they’re not recognisd and supported. Moneyball (the book at least) was all about the fact that Billy Beane discovered a metric that others were ignoring - percentage to first base. Every other coach focused on much more heroic stats, such as…
Agile development is “faster”. But, it’s not about velocity, rather it enables you to correct your orientation. Adoption an agile process won’t make you move faster, but will still help you get to the destination sooner. The term agile left software long ago and has crept into almost everywhere in business. Unfortunately, it’s often misunderstood and rarely well implemented. Agile doesn’t make…
The transition from horse to combustion engine was an important one for humanity. For the first time, people were able to move between cities of their choosing at faster than walking pace. I will risk being laughed at by predicting that we’ll see similar transition for communication within the next 10-20 years. Consider ChatGPT. In 3 years’ time, it will be seen as impressive — yet slightly quaint…
One of the great mysteries is how we as a species are able to to get anything done. Is it because we are so good at tricking ourselves to believe it’s going to be easy? Some things are very difficult and very expensive (however you measure cost). Many structures built centuries ago took centuries to build. For example. the Colonge Cathedral wasn’t finished until 600 years after construction…
Programming languages emerge, thrive and then wilt. This in an incomplete essay that’s being published to attract early feedback. Perhaps send me an email if you would like to provide a comment? Emergence Someone introduces a new programming language to the world. They’re unsatisfied with the status quo and believe that they owe it to the world–or at least themselves–to try…
Surf by Tim McNamara 4 colour dithered image. Based on an original by Tim Marshall , used under licence.
Rust has a reputation for being difficult to learn. This perception directly conflicts with one of the community aims: empowerment. Doubt breeds fear. And fear makes it harder for people to justify learning a new skill. Rust provides the world with an opportunity to write software that’s resource efficient and resistant to security concerns. Any time that someone is put off from attempting to…
It can feel polished to always use a functional style. In Rust, for example, programmers often use .map(|x| { ... }) to apply a transformation to the data being processed. This is generally an elegant idiom, but can feel forced. Creating an inner closure adds syntactic noise to the program via the vertical bars, and new variable name(s). Taking advantage of .map() and its uncommonly seen cousin…
BBC Radio 4 - The Digital Human, Series 6, Maps : That time I was interviewed for a BBC 4 programme.
It’s actually okay to be a 1x programmer. Or even a 0.7x programmer. Programming is a tool, little more It’s absolutely fine to treat programming like a tool, rather than something that has value in and of itself. If you’re worried about not being good enough, I assure that skill will come over time. If you’re making progress, extending yourself and somehow avoiding burnout - then you’re doing…
Last month was tough, this month is tougher and Christmas will be hell. You’re not the only one who is finding it difficult to sleep at the moment. Your team members are working too many hours. Your customers are worried about the effect that the outbreak will have on their kids’ education. Their kids are worried about the effect COVID-19 is having on their parents’ ability to…
It’s now mandatory to keep records of arrivals at many places, events and locations. Unfortunately, 2021 hasn’t been a great year for data security in New Zealand. The technology industry has a role to play in ensuring that personally identifiable information is recorded accurately, kept secure and destroyed promptly. Without the community’s trust, the pandemic response will…
This series details how to how to convert between Rust’s data types and how to navigate some of the edge cases. Background Rust is a strongly-typed programming language with static typing. It’s also quite pedantic. For example, it’s impossible to compare two integers with each other if they are of the different types. To avoid any extra work at runtime, such as reflection , Rust requires us to be…
So, Edward Snowden has endorsed the Rust programming language . It has been rated by Stack Overflow users as the most loved programming language 5 years in a row. Google, Microsoft, AWS, Mozilla, Facebook and many other companies are funding its development . Why? I can’t say for sure, but here are a few of the reasons that I like the language so much that I wrote a book about it : Safety…