2020, week 48

Created: by Pradeep Gowda Updated: Nov 04, 2023 Tagged: weekly

This is the week 48 of 2020. Nov 23-29. Last week

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The sciences of tarka (logic) and vyakarana (grammar) are the foundations of Indian Sciences. Study them.

Two important things of note from Slava’s latest newsletter:

  1. Do the work. that is the biggest productivity tip there ever is.
  2. Zero Credibility. Credibility comes after you do the work, not before. So, focus on the work obsessively, and don’t worry too much about how it is going to look (likely ugly, and haphazard, and that’s fine.)

I picked this name for three reasons. First, every inventor has done their best work when no one knew or cared about what they do. There seems to be magic in having zero credibility, so this name is a reminder to stay hungry and foolish. Second, Zero Credibility is a spaceship in Ian Bank’s Culture Series. It’s one of my favorite science fiction worlds, and these essays are about getting from here to there. Third, everyone tries to inflate their own credibility, which drives me nuts. Being a contrarian, I thought it would be fitting to do the exact opposite.

(the above is not in the web version of the newsletter, only on the email, so capturing here.)

This also ties in with the “work with the garage door open” mindset.

“X through Y” – A continuing pattern first seen on Slava’s post on reading.

There is opportunity for a 6 figure paid newsletter in every “x function in y industry.” Examples: Growth marketing for enterprise SaaS businesses, Sales for media companies – via

प्रवृत्तिमार्ग

Using markdown et al to write on the web is an anti-pattern. An idea that germinated a long ago on this page. Read that page, it is a reflection on blogging for 20 years (in 2019). Most blogs die after a couple of years. Keeping it simple is the key to longetivity.

Code

Play language

https://www.play-lang.dev/ is a new stack based langauge (a Forth), that is statically typed. The implementation is compiled to WASM. Have to go back and check it again once the server is no longer being hugged to death by HN.

F# for AWS Lambda

Why I chose Fsharp for our AWS Lambda project is convincing on why to use F# over Python for (at least) lambda functions.

I think Fsharp is exactly in the sweet spot of programming languages, good enough performance, nice enough features, and a ton of great libraries. It does not have the problem that Python suffers, you can create a single zip that will work on all platforms. It also free from exposing the low-level details that I do not want to care about in business domain code, what Rust does.

Software

Guix

GNU Guix 1.2 came out this week. I have always liked Guix over Nix primarily because Guix uses Guile Scheme for configuration, and writing “derivations”. Guile Scheme is a proper language, and one that you can learn by reading tons of Scheme documentation already out there. However, much like nix (not nixos), guix can also be installed as a “user space program” (though needs root access to create the /gnu partition); I learnt of this via @technomancy on the lobste.rs thread

 guix was designed from the ground up as a userspace package manager that can work in isolation from the rest of the system; apt and yum don’t have that property. They assume they own the entire system.

I was able to install on my Mint/Ubuntu 2.0 box without a hitch.