The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
Is Linux collapsing under its own weight? (News)
Mon, 09 Sep 2024
A Rust for Linux developer resigns amidst rising tension in the Linux community, Bret Victor shows off what he's been working on for years, Rachel (by the bay) laments how useless "SRE" has become as a role, Doug Turnbull makes the case for hiring junior devs & Baldur Bjarnason says the LLM honeymoon phase is about to end.
Full Episode
What up, nerds? I'm Jared, and this is Changelog News for the week of Monday, September 9th, 2024. After our conversation with Alia Abbott last week, we decided to try Zulip in earnest for a while. So far, so good. The overall experience isn't quite as polished as Slack, but it's nerd-built, and you can tell they've put a lot of love into it.
If you'd like to kick the tires with us, I'll put the link to join at the top of this week's newsletter. Okay, let's get into the news. Is Linux collapsing under its own weight? A Rust for Linux developer, Wedson Almida Fileho, resigned from the project after an unfortunate interaction with another maintainer. Wedson's parting words, quote, I am retiring from the project.
After almost four years, I find myself lacking the energy and enthusiasm I once had to respond to some of the non-technical nonsense. so it's best to leave it up to those who still have it in them, end quote. After that, Asahi Lina, who is a developer of the Apple GPU drivers for Linux, sounded off with her own frustrations with maintainers and Rust from the DRM perspective.
Her conclusion, quote, And that's really sad, and isn't helping make Linux better. End quote. The post I'm linking to is in response to those two events. The author, who goes by CB, thinks they, quote, signal deeper issues in Linux, both technical and cultural, end quote. Some of the technical and cultural issues are explained in the post.
What does this mean, though, for the Rust for Linux project? CB says, I think Rust for Linux as a project is in danger, not because of technical reasons, but because of social ones. So what does this mean for the future of Linux? The author seems to believe an eventual fork is likely. Brett Victor introduces Dynamic Land.
Brett Victor, a well-known interface designer and computer scientist who's best known for his amazing talks on the future of technology, has been working quietly on a new project, Dynamic Land, for many years. Turns out he's done being quiet about it. Dynamic Land is essentially making the real world computational, then giving people what they need to compute it however they like.
You really should watch the six minute introduction video, which is filled with amazing statements like, you don't have to simulate a virtual world when the real world simulates itself.
And this one, which is just bonkers. So everything I've shown is taking place in our communal computing system called Real Talk, and this is it. Real Talk is not a code base, it's a poster gallery. or a bulletin board, or a binder.
To call this endeavor ambitious would be an understatement. Here's the sum, which, if they pull it off, and maybe they already have, would be a big technical achievement and an enormous cultural achievement.
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