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diff --git a/src/content/blog/2020/08/10/guix-srht.adoc b/src/content/blog/2020/08/10/guix-srht.adoc
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+---
+title: Guix inside sourcehut builds.sr.ht CI
+date: 2020-08-10
+updated_at: 2020-08-19
+layout: post
+lang: en
+ref: guix-inside-sourcehut-builds-sr-ht-ci
+---
+After the release of the [NixOS images in builds.sr.ht][0] and much
+usage of it, I also started looking at [Guix][1] and
+wondered if I could get it on the awesome builds.sr.ht service.
+
+[0]: https://man.sr.ht/builds.sr.ht/compatibility.md#nixos
+[1]: https://guix.gnu.org/
+
+The Guix manual section on the [binary installation][2] is very thorough, and
+even a [shell installer script][3] is provided, but it is built towards someone
+installing Guix on their personal computer, and relies heavily on interactive
+input.
+
+[2]: https://guix.gnu.org/manual/en/guix.html#Binary-Installation
+[3]: https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git/plain/etc/guix-install.sh
+
+I developed the following set of scripts that I have been using for some time to
+run Guix tasks inside builds.sr.ht jobs. First, `install-guix.sh`:
+
+```shell
+#!/usr/bin/env bash
+set -x
+set -Eeuo pipefail
+
+VERSION='1.0.1'
+SYSTEM='x86_64-linux'
+BINARY="guix-binary-${VERSION}.${SYSTEM}.tar.xz"
+
+cd /tmp
+wget "https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/guix/${BINARY}"
+tar -xf "${BINARY}"
+
+sudo mv var/guix /var/
+sudo mv gnu /
+sudo mkdir -p ~root/.config/guix
+sudo ln -fs /var/guix/profiles/per-user/root/current-guix ~root/.config/guix/current
+
+GUIX_PROFILE="$(echo ~root)/.config/guix/current"
+source "${GUIX_PROFILE}/etc/profile"
+
+groupadd --system guixbuild
+for i in $(seq -w 1 10);
+do
+  useradd -g guixbuild                       \
+          -G guixbuild                       \
+          -d /var/empty                      \
+          -s "$(command -v nologin)"         \
+          -c "Guix build user ${i}" --system \
+          "guixbuilder${i}";
+done
+
+mkdir -p /usr/local/bin
+cd /usr/local/bin
+ln -s /var/guix/profiles/per-user/root/current-guix/bin/guix .
+ln -s /var/guix/profiles/per-user/root/current-guix/bin/guix-daemon .
+
+guix archive --authorize < ~root/.config/guix/current/share/guix/ci.guix.gnu.org.pub
+```
+
+Almost all of it is taken directly from the [binary installation][2] section
+from the manual, with the interactive bits stripped out: after downloading and
+extracting the Guix tarball, we create some symlinks, add guixbuild users and
+authorize the `ci.guix.gnu.org.pub` signing key.
+
+After installing Guix, we perform a `guix pull` to update Guix inside `start-guix.sh`:
+```shell
+#!/usr/bin/env bash
+set -x
+set -Eeuo pipefail
+
+sudo guix-daemon --build-users-group=guixbuild &
+guix pull
+guix package -u
+guix --version
+```
+
+Then we can put it all together in a sample `.build.yml` configuration file I'm
+using myself:
+
+```yaml
+image: debian/stable
+packages:
+  - wget
+sources:
+  - https://git.sr.ht/~euandreh/songbooks
+tasks:
+  - install-guix: |
+      cd ./songbooks/
+      ./scripts/install-guix.sh
+      ./scripts/start-guix.sh
+      echo 'sudo guix-daemon --build-users-group=guixbuild &' >> ~/.buildenv
+      echo 'export PATH="${HOME}/.config/guix/current/bin${PATH:+:}$PATH"' >> ~/.buildenv
+  - tests: |
+      cd ./songbooks/
+      guix environment -m build-aux/guix.scm -- make check
+  - docs: |
+      cd ./songbooks/
+      guix environment -m build-aux/guix.scm -- make publish-dist
+```
+
+We have to add the `guix-daemon` to `~/.buildenv` so it can be started on every
+following task run. Also, since we used `wget` inside `install-guix.sh`, we had
+to add it to the images package list.
+
+After the `install-guix` task, you can use Guix to build and test your project,
+or run any `guix environment --ad-hoc my-package -- my script` :)
+
+## Improvements
+
+When I originally created this code I had a reason why to have both a `sudo`
+call for `sudo ./scripts/install-guix.sh` and `sudo` usages inside
+`install-guix.sh` itself. I couldn't figure out why (it feels like my past self
+was a bit smarter 😬), but it feels ugly now. If it is truly required I could
+add an explanation for it, or remove this entirely in favor of a more elegant solution.
+
+I could also contribute the Guix image upstream to builds.sr.ht, but there
+wasn't any build or smoke tests in the original [repository][4], so I wasn't
+inclined to make something that just "works on my machine" or add a maintainence
+burden to the author. I didn't look at it again recently, though.
+
+[4]: https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/builds.sr.ht
diff --git a/src/content/blog/2020/08/31/database-i-with-i-had.adoc b/src/content/blog/2020/08/31/database-i-with-i-had.adoc
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+---
+title: The database I wish I had
+date: 2020-08-31
+updated_at: 2020-09-03
+layout: post
+lang: en
+ref: the-database-i-wish-i-had
+eu_categories: mediator
+---
+
+I watched the talk
+"[Platform as a Reflection of Values: Joyent, Node.js and beyond][platform-values]"
+by Bryan Cantrill, and I think he was able to put into words something I already
+felt for some time: if there's no piece of software out there that reflects your
+values, it's time for you to build that software[^talk-time].
+
+[platform-values]: https://vimeo.com/230142234
+[^talk-time]: At the very end, at time 29:49. When talking about the draft of
+    this article with a friend, he noted that Bryan O'Sullivan (a different
+    Bryan) says a similar thing on his talk
+    "[Running a startup on Haskell](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZR3Jirqk6W8)",
+    at time 4:15.
+
+I kind of agree with what he said, because this is already happening to me. I
+long for a database with a certain set of values, and for a few years I was just
+waiting for someone to finally write it. After watching his talk, Bryan is
+saying to me: "time to stop waiting, and start writing it yourself".
+
+So let me try to give an overview of such database, and go over its values.
+
+## Overview
+
+I want a database that allows me to create decentralized client-side
+applications that can sync data.
+
+The best one-line description I can give right now is:
+
+> It's sort of like PouchDB, Git, Datomic, SQLite and Mentat.
+
+A more descriptive version could be:
+
+> An embedded, immutable, syncable relational database.
+
+Let's go over what I mean by each of those aspects one by one.
+
+### Embedded
+
+I think the server-side database landscape is diverse and mature enough for
+my needs (even though I end up choosing SQLite most of the time), and what I'm
+after is a database to be embedded on client-side applications itself, be it
+desktop, browser, mobile, *etc.*
+
+The purpose of such database is not to keep some local cache of data in case of
+lost connectivity: we have good solutions for that already. It should serve as
+the source of truth, and allow the application to work on top of it.
+
+[**SQLite**][sqlite] is a great example of that: it is a very powerful
+relational database that runs [almost anywhere][sqlite-whentouse]. What I miss
+from it that SQLite doesn't provide is the ability to run it on the browser:
+even though you could compile it to WebAssembly, ~~it assumes a POSIX filesystem
+that would have to be emulated~~[^posix-sqlite].
+
+[sqlite]: https://sqlite.org/index.html
+[sqlite-whentouse]: https://sqlite.org/whentouse.html
+[^posix-sqlite]: It was [pointed out to me](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24338881)
+    that SQLite doesn't assume the existence of a POSIX filesystem, as I wrongly
+    stated. Thanks for the correction.
+
+    This makes me consider it as a storage backend all by itself. I
+    initially considered having an SQLite storage backend as one implementation
+    of the POSIX filesystem storage API that I mentioned. My goal was to rely on
+    it so I could validate the correctness of the actual implementation, given
+    SQLite's robustness.
+
+    However it may even better to just use SQLite, and get an ACID backend
+    without recreating a big part of SQLite from scratch. In fact, both Datomic
+    and PouchDB didn't create an storage backend for themselves, they just
+    plugged on what already existed and already worked. I'm beginning to think
+    that it would be wiser to just do the same, and drop entirely the from
+    scratch implementation that I mentioned.
+
+    That's not to say that adding an IndexedDB compatibility layer to SQLite
+    would be enough to make it fit the other requirements I mention on this
+    page. SQLite still is an implementation of a update-in-place, SQL,
+    table-oriented database. It is probably true that cherry-picking the
+    relevant parts of SQLite (like storage access, consistency, crash recovery,
+    parser generator, *etc.*) and leaving out the unwanted parts (SQL, tables,
+    threading, *etc.*) would be better than including the full SQLite stack, but
+    that's simply an optimization. Both could even coexist, if desired.
+
+    SQLite would have to be treated similarly to how Datomic treats SQL
+    databases: instead of having a table for each entities, spread attributes
+    over the tables, *etc.*, it treats SQL databases as a key-value storage so it
+    doesn't have to re-implement interacting with the disk that other databases
+    do well.
+
+    The tables would contain blocks of binary data, so there isn't a difference
+    on how the SQLite storage backend behaves and how the IndexedDB storage
+    backend behaves, much like how Datomic works the same regardless of the
+    storage backend, same for PouchDB.
+
+    I welcome corrections on what I said above, too.
+
+[**PouchDB**][pouchdb] is another great example: it's a full reimplementation of
+[CouchDB][couchdb] that targets JavaScript environments, mainly the browser and
+Node.js. However I want a tool that can be deployed anywhere, and not limit its
+applications to places that already have a JavaScript runtime environment, or
+force the developer to bundle a JavaScript runtime environment with their
+application. This is true for GTK+ applications, command line programs, Android
+apps, *etc.*
+
+[pouchdb]: https://pouchdb.com/
+[couchdb]: https://couchdb.apache.org/
+
+[**Mentat**][mentat] was an interesting project, but its reliance on SQLite
+makes it inherit most of the downsides (and benefits too) of SQLite itself.
+
+[mentat]: https://github.com/mozilla/mentat
+
+Having such a requirement imposes a different approach to storage: we have to
+decouple the knowledge about the intricacies of storage from the usage of
+storage itself, so that a module (say query processing) can access storage
+through an API without needing to know about its implementation. This allows
+the database to target a POSIX filesystems storage API and an IndexedDB storage
+API, and make the rest of the code agnostic about storage. PouchDB has such
+mechanism (called [adapters][pouchdb-adapters]) and Datomic has them too (called
+[storage services][datomic-storage-services]).
+
+[pouchdb-adapters]: https://pouchdb.com/adapters.html
+[datomic-storage-services]: https://docs.datomic.com/on-prem/storage.html
+
+This would allow the database to adapt to where it is embedded: when targeting
+the browser the IndexedDB storage API would provide the persistence layer
+that the database requires, and similarly the POSIX filesystem storage API would
+provide the persistence layer when targeting POSIX systems (like desktops,
+mobile, *etc.*).
+
+But there's also an extra restriction that comes from by being embedded: it
+needs to provide and embeddable artifact, most likely a binary library object
+that exposes a C compatible FFI, similar to
+[how SQLite does][sqlite-amalgamation]. Bundling a full runtime environment is
+possible, but doesn't make it a compelling solution for embedding. This rules
+out most languages, and leaves us with C, Rust, Zig, and similar options that
+can target POSIX systems and WebAssembly.
+
+[sqlite-amalgamation]: https://www.sqlite.org/amalgamation.html
+
+### Immutable
+
+Being immutable means that only new information is added, no in-place update
+ever happens, and nothing is ever deleted.
+
+Having an immutable database presents us with similar trade-offs found in
+persistent data structures, like lack of coordination when doing reads, caches
+being always coherent, and more usage of space.
+
+[**Datomic**][datomic] is the go to database example of this: it will only add
+information (datoms) and allows you to query them in a multitude of ways. Stuart
+Halloway calls it "accumulate-only" over "append-only"[^accumulate-only]:
+
+> It's accumulate-only, it is not append-only. So append-only, most people when
+> they say that they're implying something physical about what happens.
+
+[datomic]: https://www.datomic.com/
+[^accumulate-only]: Video "[Day of Datomic Part 2](https://vimeo.com/116315075)"
+    on Datomic's information model, at time 12:28.
+
+Also a database can be append-only and overwrite existing information with new
+information, by doing clean-ups of "stale" data. I prefer to adopt the
+"accumulate-only" naming and approach.
+
+[**Git**][git] is another example of this: new commits are always added on top
+of the previous data, and it grows by adding commits instead of replacing
+existing ones.
+
+[git]: https://git-scm.com/
+
+Git repositories can only grow in size, and that is not only an acceptable
+condition, but also one of the reasons to use it.
+
+All this means that no in-place updates happens on data, and the database will
+be much more concerned about how compact and efficiently it stores data than how
+fast it does writes to disk. Being embedded, the storage limitation is either a)
+how much storage the device has or b) how much storage was designed for the
+application to consume. So even though the database could theoretically operate
+with hundreds of TBs, a browser page or mobile application wouldn't have access
+to this amount of storage. SQLite even [says][sqlite-limits] that it does
+support approximately 280 TBs of data, but those limits are untested.
+
+The upside of keeping everything is that you can have historical views of your
+data, which is very powerful. This also means that applications should turn this
+off when not relevant[^no-history].
+
+[sqlite-limits]: https://sqlite.org/limits.html
+[^no-history]: Similar to
+    [Datomic's `:db/noHistory`](https://docs.datomic.com/cloud/best.html#nohistory-for-high-churn).
+
+### Syncable
+
+This is a frequent topic when talking about offline-first solutions. When
+building applications that:
+
+- can fully work offline,
+- stores data,
+- propagates that data to other application instances,
+
+then you'll need a conflict resolution strategy to handle all the situations
+where different application instances disagree. Those application instances
+could be a desktop and a browser version of the same application, or the same
+mobile app in different devices.
+
+A three-way merge seems to be the best approach, on top of which you could add
+application specific conflict resolution functions, like:
+
+- pick the change with higher timestamp;
+- if one change is a delete, pick it;
+- present the diff on the screen and allow the user to merge them.
+
+Some databases try to make this "easy", by choosing a strategy for you, but I've
+found that different applications require different conflict resolution
+strategies. Instead, the database should leave this up to the user to decide,
+and provide tools for them to do it.
+
+[**Three-way merges in version control**][3-way-merge] are the best example,
+performing automatic merges when possible and asking the user to resolve
+conflicts when they appear.
+
+The unit of conflict for a version control system is a line of text. The
+database equivalent would probably be a single attribute, not a full entity or a
+full row.
+
+Making all the conflict resolution logic be local should allow the database to
+have encrypted remotes similar to how [git-remote-gcrypt][git-remote-gcrypt]
+adds this functionality to Git. This would enable users to sync the application
+data across devices using an untrusted intermediary.
+
+[3-way-merge]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merge_(version_control)
+[git-remote-gcrypt]: https://spwhitton.name/tech/code/git-remote-gcrypt/
+
+### Relational
+
+I want the power of relational queries on the client applications.
+
+Most of the arguments against traditional table-oriented relational databases
+are related to write performance, but those don't apply here. The bottlenecks
+for client applications usually aren't write throughput. Nobody is interested in
+differentiating between 1 MB/s or 10 MB/s when you're limited to 500 MB total.
+
+The relational model of the database could either be based on SQL and tables
+like in SQLite, or maybe [datalog][datalog] and [datoms][datoms] like in
+Datomic.
+
+[datalog]: https://docs.datomic.com/on-prem/query.html
+[datoms]: https://docs.datomic.com/cloud/whatis/data-model.html#datoms
+
+## From aspects to values
+
+Now let's try to translate the aspects above into values, as suggested by Bryan
+Cantrill.
+
+### Portability
+
+Being able to target so many different platforms is a bold goal, and the
+embedded nature of the database demands portability to be a core value.
+
+### Integrity
+
+When the local database becomes the source of truth of the application, it must
+provide consistency guarantees that enables applications to rely on it.
+
+### Expressiveness
+
+The database should empower applications to slice and dice the data in any way
+it wants to.
+
+## Next steps
+
+Since I can't find any database that fits these requirements, I've finally come
+to terms with doing it myself.
+
+It's probably going to take me a few years to do it, and making it portable
+between POSIX and IndexedDB will probably be the biggest challenge. I got myself
+a few books on databases to start.
+
+I wonder if I'll ever be able to get this done.
+
+## External links
+
+See discussions on [Reddit][reddit], [lobsters][lobsters], [HN][hn] and
+[a lengthy email exchange][lengthy-email].
+
+[reddit]: https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/ijwz5b/the_database_i_wish_i_had/
+[lobsters]: https://lobste.rs/s/m9vkg4/database_i_wish_i_had
+[hn]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24337244
+[lengthy-email]: https://lists.sr.ht/~euandreh/public-inbox/%3C010101744a592b75-1dce9281-f0b8-4226-9d50-fd2c7901fa72-000000%40us-west-2.amazonses.com%3E
diff --git a/src/content/blog/2020/10/05/cargo2nix-demo.tar.gz b/src/content/blog/2020/10/05/cargo2nix-demo.tar.gz
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diff --git a/src/content/blog/2020/10/05/cargo2nix.adoc b/src/content/blog/2020/10/05/cargo2nix.adoc
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+= cargo2nix: Dramatically simpler Rust in Nix
+
+date: 2020-10-05 2
+
+layout: post
+
+lang: en
+
+ref: cargo2nix-dramatically-simpler-rust-in-nix
+
+---
+
+In the same vein of my earlier post on
+[swift2nix]({% link _articles/2020-10-05-swift2nix-run-swift-inside-nix-builds.md %}), I
+was able to quickly prototype a Rust and Cargo variation of it:
+[cargo2nix].
+
+
+The initial prototype is even smaller than swift2nix: it has only
+37 lines of code.
+
+[cargo2nix]: https://euandre.org/static/attachments/cargo2nix.tar.gz
+
+Here's how to use it (snippet taken from the repo's README):
+
+```nix
+let
+  niv-sources = import ./nix/sources.nix;
+  mozilla-overlay = import niv-sources.nixpkgs-mozilla;
+  pkgs = import niv-sources.nixpkgs { overlays = [ mozilla-overlay ]; };
+  src = pkgs.nix-gitignore.gitignoreSource [ ] ./.;
+  cargo2nix = pkgs.callPackage niv-sources.cargo2nix {
+    lockfile = ./Cargo.lock;
+  };
+in pkgs.stdenv.mkDerivation {
+  inherit src;
+  name = "cargo-test";
+  buildInputs = [ pkgs.latest.rustChannels.nightly.rust ];
+  phases = [ "unpackPhase" "buildPhase" ];
+  buildPhase = ''
+    # Setup dependencies path to satisfy Cargo
+    mkdir .cargo/
+    ln -s ${cargo2nix.env.cargo-config} .cargo/config
+    ln -s ${cargo2nix.env.vendor} vendor
+
+    # Run the tests
+    cargo test
+    touch $out
+  '';
+}
+```
+
+That `cargo test` part on line 20 is what I have been fighting with every
+"\*2nix" available for Rust out there. I don't want to bash any of them. All I
+want is to have full control of what Cargo commands to run, and the "*2nix" tool
+should only setup the environment for me. Let me drive Cargo myself, no need to
+parameterize how the tool runs it for me, or even replicate its internal
+behaviour by calling the Rust compiler directly.
+
+Sure it doesn't support private registries or Git dependencies, but how much
+bigger does it has to be to support them? Also, it doesn't support those **yet**,
+there's no reason it can't be extended. I just haven't needed it yet, so I
+haven't added. Patches welcome.
+
+The layout of the `vendor/` directory is more explicit and public then what
+swift2nix does: it is whatever the command `cargo vendor` returns. However I
+haven't checked if the shape of the `.cargo-checksum.json` is specified, or
+internal to Cargo.
+
+Try out the demo (also taken from the repo's README):
+
+```shell
+pushd "$(mktemp -d)"
+wget -O- https://euandre.org/static/attachments/cargo2nix-demo.tar.gz |
+	tar -xv
+cd cargo2nix-demo/
+nix-build
+```
+
+Report back if you wish.
diff --git a/src/content/blog/2020/10/05/cargo2nix.tar.gz b/src/content/blog/2020/10/05/cargo2nix.tar.gz
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+++ b/src/content/blog/2020/10/05/cargo2nix.tar.gz
diff --git a/src/content/blog/2020/10/05/swift2nix-demo.tar.gz b/src/content/blog/2020/10/05/swift2nix-demo.tar.gz
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/content/blog/2020/10/05/swift2nix-demo.tar.gz
diff --git a/src/content/blog/2020/10/05/swift2nix.adoc b/src/content/blog/2020/10/05/swift2nix.adoc
new file mode 100644
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+= swift2nix: Run Swift inside Nix builds
+
+date: 2020-10-05 1
+
+layout: post
+
+lang: en
+
+ref: swift2nix-run-swift-inside-nix-builds
+
+---
+
+While working on a Swift project, I didn't find any tool that would allow Swift
+to run inside [Nix][nix] builds. Even thought you *can* run Swift, the real
+problem arises when using the package manager. It has many of the same problems
+that other package managers have when trying to integrate with Nix, more on this
+below.
+
+I wrote a simple little tool called [swift2nix] that allows you trick
+Swift's package manager into assuming everything is set up. Here's the example
+from swift2nix's README file:
+
+```
+let
+  niv-sources = import ./nix/sources.nix;
+  pkgs = import niv-sources.nixpkgs { };
+  src = pkgs.nix-gitignore.gitignoreSource [ ] ./.;
+  swift2nix = pkgs.callPackage niv-sources.swift2nix {
+    package-resolved = ./Package.resolved;
+  };
+in pkgs.stdenv.mkDerivation {
+  inherit src;
+  name = "swift-test";
+  buildInputs = with pkgs; [ swift ];
+  phases = [ "unpackPhase" "buildPhase" ];
+  buildPhase = ''
+    # Setup dependencies path to satisfy SwiftPM
+    mkdir .build
+    ln -s ${swift2nix.env.dependencies-state-json} .build/dependencies-state.json
+    ln -s ${swift2nix.env.checkouts} .build/checkouts
+
+    # Run the tests
+    swift test
+    touch $out
+  '';
+}
+```
+
+The key parts are lines 15~17: we just fake enough files inside `.build/` that
+Swift believes it has already downloaded and checked-out all dependencies, and
+just moves on to building them.
+
+I've worked on it just enough to make it usable for myself, so beware of
+unimplemented cases.
+
+[nix]: https://nixos.org/
+[swift2nix]: https://euandre.org/static/attachments/swift2nix.tar.gz
+
+## Design
+
+What swift2nix does is just provide you with the bare minimum that Swift
+requires, and readily get out of the way:
+
+1. I explicitly did not want to generated a `Package.nix` file, since
+   `Package.resolved` already exists and contains the required information;
+2. I didn't want to have an "easy" interface right out of the gate, after
+   fighting with "*2nix" tools that focus too much on that.
+
+The final actual code was so small (46 lines) that it made me
+think about package managers, "*2nix" tools and some problems with many of them.
+
+## Problems with package managers
+
+I'm going to talk about solely language package managers. Think npm and cargo,
+not apt-get.
+
+Package managers want to do too much, or assume too much, or just want to take
+control of the entire build of the dependencies.
+
+This is a recurrent problem in package managers, but I don't see it as an
+intrinsic one. There's nothing about a "package manager" that prevents it from
+*declaring* what it expects to encounter and in which format. The *declaring*
+part is important: it should be data, not code, otherwise you're back in the
+same problem, just like lockfiles are just data. Those work in any language, and
+tools can cooperate happily.
+
+There's no need for this declarative expectation to be standardized, or be made
+compatible across languages. That would lead to a poor format that no package
+manager really likes. Instead, If every package manager could say out loud what
+it wants to see exactly, than more tools like swift2nix could exist, and they
+would be more reliable.
+
+This could even work fully offline, and be simply a mapping from the lockfile
+(the `Package.resolved` in Swift's case) to the filesystem representation. For
+Swift, the `.build/dependencies-state.json` comes very close, but it is internal
+to the package manager.
+
+Even though this pain only exists when trying to use Swift inside Nix, it sheds
+light into this common implicit coupling that package managers have. They
+usually have fuzzy boundaries and tight coupling between:
+
+1. resolving the dependency tree and using some heuristic to pick a package
+   version;
+2. generating a lockfile with the exact pinned versions;
+3. downloading the dependencies present on the lockfile into some local cache;
+4. arranging the dependencies from the cache in a meaningful way for itself inside
+   the project;
+5. work using the dependencies while *assuming* that step 4 was done.
+
+When you run `npm install` in a repository with no lockfile, it does 1~4. If you
+do the same with `cargo build`, it does 1~5. That's too much: many of those
+assumptions are implicit and internal to the package manager, and if you ever
+need to rearrange them, you're on your own. Even though you can perform some of
+those steps, you can't compose or rearrange them.
+
+Instead a much saner approach could be:
+
+1. this stays the same;
+2. this also stays the same;
+3. be able to generate some JSON/TOML/edn which represents the local expected
+   filesystem layout with dependencies (i.e. exposing what the package manager
+   expects to find), let's call it `local-registry.json`;
+4. if a `local-registry.json` was provided, do a build using that. Otherwise
+   generate its own, by downloading the dependencies, arranging them, *etc.*
+
+The point is just making what the package manager requires visible to the
+outside world via some declarative data. If this data wasn't provided, it can
+move on to doing its own automatic things.
+
+By making the expectation explicit and public, one can plug tools *à la carte*
+if desired, but doesn't prevent the default code path of doing things the exact
+same way they are now.
+
+## Problems with "*2nix" tools
+
+I have to admit: I'm unhappy with most of they.
+
+They conflate "using Nix" with "replicating every command of the package manager
+inside Nix".
+
+The avoidance of an "easy" interface that I mentioned above comes from me
+fighting with some of the "\*2nix" tools much like I have to fight with package
+managers: I don't want to offload all build responsibilities to the "*2nix"
+tool, I just want to let it download some of the dependencies and get out of the
+way. I want to stick with `npm test` or `cargo build`, and Nix should only
+provide the environment.
+
+This is something that [node2nix] does right. It allows you to build
+the Node.js environment to satisfy NPM, and you can keep using NPM for
+everything else:
+
+```shell
+ln -s ${node2nix-package.shell.nodeDependencies}/lib/node_modules ./node_modules
+npm test
+```
+
+Its natural to want to put as much things into Nix as possible to benefit from
+Nix's advantages. Isn't that how NixOS itself was born?
+
+But a "*2nix" tool should leverage Nix, not be coupled with it. The above
+example lets you run any arbitrary NPM command while profiting from isolation
+and reproducibility that Nix provides. It is even less brittle: any changes to
+how NPM runs some things will be future-compatible, since node2nix isn't trying
+to replicate what NPM does, or fiddling with NPM's internal.
+
+**A "*2nix" tool should build the environment, preferably from the lockfile
+directly and offload everything else to the package manager**. The rest is just
+nice-to-have.
+
+swift2nix itself could provide an "easy" interface, something that allows you to
+write:
+
+```shell
+nix-build -A swift2nix.release
+nix-build -A swift2nix.test
+```
+
+The implementation of those would be obvious: create a new
+`pkgs.stdenv.mkDerivation` and call `swift build -c release` and `swift test`
+while using `swift2nix.env` under the hood.
+
+[node2nix]: https://github.com/svanderburg/node2nix
+
+## Conclusion
+
+Package managers should provide exact dependencies via a data representation,
+i.e. lockfiles, and expose via another data representation how they expect those
+dependencies to appear on the filesystem, i.e. `local-registry.json`. This
+allows package managers to provide an API so that external tools can create
+mirrors, offline builds, other registries, isolated builds, *etc.*
+
+"\*2nix" tools should build simple functions that leverage that
+`local-registry.json`[^local-registry] data and offload all the rest back to the
+package manager itself. This allows the "*2nix" to not keep chasing the package
+manager evolution, always trying to duplicate its behaviour.
+
+[^local-registry]: This `local-registry.json` file doesn't have to be checked-in
+    the repository at all. It could be always generated on the fly, much like
+    how Swift's `dependencies-state.json` is.
diff --git a/src/content/blog/2020/10/05/swift2nix.tar.gz b/src/content/blog/2020/10/05/swift2nix.tar.gz
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..bfab3f1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/content/blog/2020/10/05/swift2nix.tar.gz
diff --git a/src/content/blog/2020/10/19/feature-flags.adoc b/src/content/blog/2020/10/19/feature-flags.adoc
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c62c2d1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/content/blog/2020/10/19/feature-flags.adoc
@@ -0,0 +1,305 @@
+---
+title: "Feature flags: differences between backend, frontend and mobile"
+date: 2020-10-19
+updated_at: 2020-11-03
+layout: post
+lang: en
+ref: feature-flags-differences-between-backend-frontend-and-mobile
+eu_categories: presentation
+---
+
+*This article is derived from a [presentation][presentation] on the same
+subject.*
+
+When discussing about feature flags, I find that their
+costs and benefits are often well exposed and addressed. Online articles like
+"[Feature Toggle (aka Feature Flags)][feature-flags-article]" do a great job of
+explaining them in detail, giving great general guidance of how to apply
+techniques to adopt it.
+
+However the weight of those costs and benefits apply differently on backend,
+frontend or mobile, and those differences aren't covered. In fact, many of them
+stop making sense, or the decision of adopting a feature flag or not may change
+depending on the environment.
+
+In this article I try to make the distinction between environments and how
+ feature flags apply to them, with some final best practices I've acquired when
+ using them in production.
+
+[presentation]: {% link _slides/2020-10-19-rollout-feature-flag-experiment-operational-toggle.slides %}
+[feature-flags-article]: https://martinfowler.com/articles/feature-toggles.html
+
+## Why feature flags
+
+Feature flags in general tend to be cited on the context of
+[continuous deployment][cd]:
+
+> A: With continuous deployment, you deploy to production automatically
+
+> B: But how do I handle deployment failures, partial features, *etc.*?
+
+> A: With techniques like canary, monitoring and alarms, feature flags, *etc.*
+
+Though adopting continuous deployment doesn't force you to use feature
+flags, it creates a demand for it. The inverse is also true: using feature flags
+on the code points you more obviously to continuous deployment. Take the
+following code sample for example, that we will reference later on the article:
+
+```javascript
+function processTransaction() {
+  validate();
+  persist();
+  // TODO: add call to notifyListeners()
+}
+```
+
+While being developed, being tested for suitability or something similar,
+`notifyListeners()` may not be included in the code at once. So instead of
+keeping it on a separate, long-lived branch, a feature flag can decide when the
+new, partially implemented function will be called:
+
+```javascript
+function processTransaction() {
+  validate();
+  persist();
+  if (featureIsEnabled("activate-notify-listeners")) {
+    notifyListeners();
+  }
+}
+```
+
+This allows your code to include `notifyListeners()`, and decide when to call it
+at runtime. For the price of extra things around the code, you get more
+dynamicity.
+
+So the fundamental question to ask yourself when considering adding a feature
+flag should be:
+
+> Am I willing to pay with code complexity to get dynamicity?
+
+It is true that you can make the management of feature flags as
+straightforward as possible, but having no feature flags is simpler than having
+any. What you get in return is the ability to parameterize the behaviour of the
+application at runtime, without doing any code changes.
+
+Sometimes this added complexity may tilt the balance towards not using a feature
+flag, and sometimes the flexibility of changing behaviour at runtime is
+absolutely worth the added complexity. This can vary a lot by code base, feature, but
+fundamentally by environment: its much cheaper to deploy a new version of a
+service than to release a new version of an app.
+
+So the question of which environment is being targeted is key when reasoning
+about costs and benefits of feature flags.
+
+[cd]: https://www.atlassian.com/continuous-delivery/principles/continuous-integration-vs-delivery-vs-deployment
+
+## Control over the environment
+
+The key differentiator that makes the trade-offs apply differently is how much
+control you have over the environment.
+
+When running a **backend** service, you usually are paying for the servers
+themselves, and can tweak them as you wish. This means you have full control do
+to code changes as you wish. Not only that, you decide when to do it, and for
+how long the transition will last.
+
+On the **frontend** you have less control: even though you can choose to make a
+new version available any time you wish, you can't force[^force] clients to
+immediately switch to the new version. That means that a) clients could skip
+upgrades at any time and b) you always have to keep backward and forward
+compatibility in mind.
+
+Even though I'm mentioning frontend directly, it applies to other environment
+with similar characteristics: desktop applications, command-line programs,
+*etc*.
+
+On **mobile** you have even less control: app stores need to allow your app to
+be updated, which could bite you when least desired. Theoretically you could
+make you APK available on third party stores like [F-Droid][f-droid], or even
+make the APK itself available for direct download, which would give you the same
+characteristics of a frontend application, but that happens less often.
+
+On iOS you can't even do that. You have to get Apple's blessing on every single
+update. Even though we already know that is a [bad idea][apple] for over a
+decade now, there isn't a way around it. This is where you have the least
+control.
+
+In practice, the amount of control you have will change how much you value
+dynamicity: the less control you have, the more valuable it is. In other words,
+having a dynamic flag on the backend may or may not be worth it since you could
+always update the code immediately after, but on iOS it is basically always
+worth it.
+
+[f-droid]: https://f-droid.org/
+[^force]: Technically you could force a reload with JavaScript using
+    `window.location.reload()`, but that not only is invasive and impolite, but
+    also gives you the illusion that you have control over the client when you
+    actually don't: clients with disabled JavaScript would be immune to such
+    tactics.
+
+[apple]: http://www.paulgraham.com/apple.html
+
+## Rollout
+
+A rollout is used to *roll out* a new version of software.
+
+They are usually short-lived, being relevant as long as the new code is being
+deployed. The most common rule is percentages.
+
+On the **backend**, it is common to find it on the deployment infrastructure
+itself, like canary servers, blue/green deployments,
+[a kubernetes deployment rollout][k8s], *etc*. You could do those manually, by
+having a dynamic control on the code itself, but rollbacks are cheap enough that
+people usually do a normal deployment and just give some extra attention to the
+metrics dashboard.
+
+Any time you see a blue/green deployment, there is a rollout happening: most
+likely a load balancer is starting to direct traffic to the new server, until
+reaching 100% of the traffic. Effectively, that is a rollout.
+
+On the **frontend**, you can selectively pick which user's will be able to
+download the new version of a page. You could use geographical region, IP,
+cookie or something similar to make this decision.
+
+CDN propagation delays and people not refreshing their web
+pages are also rollouts by themselves, since old and new versions of the
+software will coexist.
+
+On **mobile**, the Play Store allows you to perform
+fine-grained [staged rollouts][staged-rollouts], and the App Store allows you to
+perform limited [phased releases][phased-releases].
+
+Both for Android and iOS, the user plays the role of making the download.
+
+In summary: since you control the servers on the backend, you can do rollouts at
+will, and those are often found automated away in base infrastructure. On the
+frontend and on mobile, there are ways to make new versions available, but users
+may not download them immediately, and many different versions of the software
+end up coexisting.
+
+[k8s]: https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/workloads/controllers/deployment/#creating-a-deployment
+[staged-rollouts]: https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/6346149?hl=en
+[phased-releases]: https://help.apple.com/app-store-connect/#/dev3d65fcee1
+
+## Feature flag
+
+A feature flag is a *flag* that tells the application on runtime to turn on or
+off a given *feature*. That means that the actual production code will have more
+than one possible code paths to go through, and that a new version of a feature
+coexists with the old version. The feature flag tells which part of the code to
+go through.
+
+They are usually medium-lived, being relevant as long as the new code is being
+developed. The most common rules are percentages, allow/deny lists, A/B groups
+and client version.
+
+On the **backend**, those are useful for things that have a long development
+cycle, or that needs to done by steps. Consider loading the feature flag rules
+in memory when the application starts, so that you avoid querying a database
+or an external service for applying a feature flag rule and avoid flakiness on
+the result due to intermittent network failures.
+
+Since on the **frontend** you don't control when to update the client software,
+you're left with applying the feature flag rule on the server, and exposing the
+value through an API for maximum dynamicity. This could be in the frontend code
+itself, and fallback to a "just refresh the page"/"just update to the latest
+version" strategy for less dynamic scenarios.
+
+On **mobile** you can't even rely on a "just update to the latest version"
+strategy, since the code for the app could be updated to a new feature and be
+blocked on the store. Those cases aren't recurrent, but you should always assume
+the store will deny updates on critical moments so you don't find yourself with
+no cards to play. That means the only control you actually have is via
+the backend, by parameterizing the runtime of the application using the API. In
+practice, you should always have a feature flag to control any relevant piece of
+code. There is no such thing as "too small code change for a feature flag". What
+you should ask yourself is:
+
+> If the code I'm writing breaks and stays broken for around a month, do I care?
+
+If you're doing an experimental screen, or something that will have a very small
+impact you might answer "no" to the above question. For everything else, the
+answer will be "yes": bug fixes, layout changes, refactoring, new screen,
+filesystem/database changes, *etc*.
+
+## Experiment
+
+An experiment is a feature flag where you care about analytical value of the
+flag, and how it might impact user's behaviour. A feature flag with analytics.
+
+They are also usually medium-lived, being relevant as long as the new code is
+being developed. The most common rule is A/B test.
+
+On the **backend**, an experiment rely on an analytical environment that will
+pick the A/B test groups and distributions, which means those can't be held in
+memory easily. That also means that you'll need a fallback value in case
+fetching the group for a given customer fails.
+
+On the **frontend** and on **mobile** they are no different from feature flags.
+
+## Operational toggle
+
+An operational toggle is like a system-level manual circuit breaker, where you
+turn on/off a feature, fail over the load to a different server, *etc*. They are
+useful switches to have during an incident.
+
+They are usually long-lived, being relevant as long as the code is in
+production. The most common rule is percentages.
+
+They can be feature flags that are promoted to operational toggles on the
+**backend**, or may be purposefully put in place preventively or after a
+postmortem analysis.
+
+On the **frontend** and on **mobile** they are similar to feature flags, where
+the "feature" is being turned on and off, and the client interprets this value
+to show if the "feature" is available or unavailable.
+
+## Best practices
+
+### Prefer dynamic content
+
+Even though feature flags give you more dynamicity, they're still somewhat
+manual: you have to create one for a specific feature and change it by hand.
+
+If you find yourself manually updating a feature flags every other day, or
+tweaking the percentages frequently, consider making it fully dynamic. Try
+using a dataset that is generated automatically, or computing the content on the
+fly.
+
+Say you have a configuration screen with a list of options and sub-options, and
+you're trying to find how to better structure this list. Instead of using a
+feature flag for switching between 3 and 5 options, make it fully dynamic. This
+way you'll be able to perform other tests that you didn't plan, and get more
+flexibility out of it.
+
+### Use the client version to negotiate feature flags
+
+After effectively finishing a feature, the old code that coexisted with the new
+one will be deleted, and all traces of the transition will vanish from the code
+base. However if you just remove the feature flags from the API, all of the old
+versions of clients that relied on that value to show the new feature will go
+downgrade to the old feature.
+
+This means that you should avoid deleting client-facing feature flags, and
+retire them instead: use the client version to decide when the feature is
+stable, and return `true` for every client with a version greater or equal to
+that. This way you can stop thinking about the feature flag, and you don't break
+or downgrade clients that didn't upgrade past the transition.
+
+### Beware of many nested feature flags
+
+Nested flags combine exponentially.
+
+Pick strategic entry points or transitions eligible for feature flags, and
+beware of their nesting.
+
+### Include feature flags in the development workflow
+
+Add feature flags to the list of things to think about during whiteboarding, and
+deleting/retiring a feature flags at the end of the development.
+
+### Always rely on a feature flag on the app
+
+Again, there is no such thing "too small for a feature flag". Too many feature
+flags is a good problem to have, not the opposite. Automate the process of
+creating a feature flag to lower its cost.
diff --git a/src/content/blog/2020/10/20/wrong-interviewing.adoc b/src/content/blog/2020/10/20/wrong-interviewing.adoc
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9cdfefb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/content/blog/2020/10/20/wrong-interviewing.adoc
@@ -0,0 +1,331 @@
+---
+title: How not to interview engineers
+date: 2020-10-20
+updated_at: 2020-10-24
+layout: post
+lang: en
+ref: how-not-to-interview-engineers
+---
+This is a response to Slava's
+"[How to interview engineers][how-to-interview-engineers]" article. I initially
+thought it was a satire, [as have others][poes-law-comment], but he has
+[doubled down on it][slava-on-satire]:
+
+> (...) Some parts are slightly exaggerated for sure, but the essay isn't meant
+> as a joke.
+
+That being true, he completely misses the point on how to improve hiring, and
+proposes a worse alternative on many aspects. It doesn't qualify as provocative,
+it is just wrong.
+
+I was comfortable taking it as a satire, and I would just ignore the whole thing
+if it wasn't (except for the technical memo part), but friends of mine
+considered it to be somewhat reasonable. This is a adapted version of parts of
+the discussions we had, risking becoming a gigantic showcase of
+[Poe's law][poes-law-wiki].
+
+In this piece, I will argument against his view, and propose an alternative
+approach to improve hiring.
+
+It is common to find people saying how broken technical hiring is, as well put
+in words by a phrase on [this comment][hn-satire]:
+
+> Everyone loves to read and write about how developer interviewing is flawed,
+> but no one wants to go out on a limb and make suggestions about how to improve
+> it.
+
+I guess Slava was trying to not fall on this trap, and make a suggestion on how
+to improve instead, which all went terribly wrong.
+
+[how-to-interview-engineers]: https://defmacro.substack.com/p/how-to-interview-engineers
+[poes-law-comment]: https://defmacro.substack.com/p/how-to-interview-engineers/comments#comment-599996
+[slava-on-satire]: https://twitter.com/spakhm/status/1315754730740617216
+[poes-law-wiki]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law
+[hn-satire]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24757511
+
+## What not to do
+
+### Time candidates
+
+Timing the candidate shows up on the "talent" and "judgment" sections, and they
+are both bad ideas for the same reason: programming is not a performance.
+
+What do e-sports, musicians, actors and athletes have in common: performance
+psychologists.
+
+For a pianist, their state of mind during concerts is crucial: they not only
+must be able to deal with stage anxiety, but to become really successful they
+will have to learn how to exploit it. The time window of the concert is what
+people practice thousands of hours for, and it is what defines one's career,
+since how well all the practice went is irrelevant to the nature of the
+profession. Being able to leverage stage anxiety is an actual goal of them.
+
+That is also applicable to athletes, where the execution during a competition
+makes them sink or swim, regardless of how all the training was.
+
+The same cannot be said about composers, though. They are more like book
+writers, where the value is not on very few moments with high adrenaline, but on
+the aggregate over hours, days, weeks, months and years. A composer may have a
+deadline to finish a song in five weeks, but it doesn't really matter if it is
+done on a single night, every morning between 6 and 9, at the very last week, or
+any other way. No rigid time structure applies, only whatever fits best to the
+composer.
+
+Programming is more like composing than doing a concert, which is another way of
+saying that programming is not a performance. People don't practice algorithms
+for months to keep them at their fingertips, so that finally in a single
+afternoon they can sit down and write everything at once in a rigid 4 hours
+window, and launch it immediately after.
+
+Instead software is built iteratively, by making small additions, than
+refactoring the implementation, fixing bugs, writing a lot at once, *etc*.
+all while they get a firmer grasp of the problem, stop to think about it, come
+up with new ideas, *etc*.
+
+Some specifically plan for including spaced pauses, and call it
+"[Hammock Driven Development][hammock-driven-development]", which is just
+artist's "creative idleness" for hackers.
+
+Unless you're hiring for a live coding group, a competitive programming team, or
+a professional live demoer, timing the candidate that way is more harmful than
+useful. This type of timing doesn't find good programmers, it finds performant
+programmers, which isn't the same thing, and you'll end up with people who can
+do great work on small problems but who might be unable to deal with big
+problems, and loose those who can very well handle huge problems, slowly. If you
+are lucky you'll get performant people who can also handle big problems on the
+long term, but maybe not.
+
+An incident is the closest to a "performance" that it gets, and yet it is still
+dramatically different. Surely it is a high stress scenario, but while people
+are trying to find a root cause and solve the problem, only the downtime itself
+is visible to the exterior. It is like being part of the support staff backstage
+during a play: even though execution matters, you're still not on the spot.
+During an incident you're doing debugging in anger rather than live coding.
+
+Although giving a candidate the task to write a "technical memo" has
+potential to get a measure of the written communication skills of someone, doing
+so in a hard time window also misses the point for the same reasons.
+
+[hammock-driven-development]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc
+
+### Pay attention to typing speed
+
+Typing is speed in never the bottleneck of a programmer, no matter how great
+they are.
+
+As [Dijkstra said][dijkstra-typing]:
+
+> But programming, when stripped of all its circumstantial irrelevancies, boils
+> down to no more and no less than very effective thinking so as to avoid
+> unmastered complexity, to very vigorous separation of your many different
+> concerns.
+
+In other words, programming is not about typing, it is about thinking.
+
+Otherwise, the way to get those star programmers that can't type fast enough a
+huge productivity boost is to give them a touch typing course. If they are so
+productive with typing speed being a limitation, imagine what they could
+accomplish if they had razor sharp touch typing skills?
+
+Also, why stop there? A good touch typist can do 90 WPM (words per minute), and
+a great one can do 120 WPM, but with a stenography keyboard they get to 200
+WPM+. That is double the productivity! Why not try
+[speech-to-text][perl-out-loud]? Make them all use [J][j-lang] so they all need
+to type less! How come nobody thought of that?
+
+And if someone couldn't solve the programming puzzle in the given time window,
+but could come back in the following day with an implementation that is not only
+faster, but uses less memory, was simpler to understand and easier to read than
+anybody else? You'd be losing that person too.
+
+[dijkstra-typing]: https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD05xx/EWD512.html
+[j-lang]: https://www.jsoftware.com/#/
+[perl-out-loud]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mz3JeYfBTcY
+
+### IQ
+
+For "building an extraordinary team at a hard technology startup", intelligence
+is not the most important, [determination is][pg-determination].
+
+And talent isn't "IQ specialized for engineers". IQ itself isn't a measure of how
+intelligent someone is. Ever since Alfred Binet with Théodore Simon started to
+formalize what would become IQ tests years later, they already acknowledged
+limitations of the technique for measuring intelligence, which is
+[still true today][scihub-paper].
+
+So having a high IQ tells only how smart people are for a particular aspect of
+intelligence, which is not representative of programming. There are numerous
+aspects of programming that are covered by IQ measurement: how to name variables
+and functions, how to create models which are compatible with schema evolution,
+how to make the system dynamic for runtime parameterization without making it
+fragile, how to measure and observe performance and availability, how to pick
+between acquiring and paying technical debt, *etc*.
+
+Not to say about everything else that a programmer does that is not purely
+programming. Saying high IQ correlates with great programming is a stretch, at
+best.
+
+[pg-determination]: http://www.paulgraham.com/determination.html
+[scihub-paper]: https://sci-hub.do/https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2F1076-8971.6.1.33
+
+### Ditch HR
+
+Slava tangentially picks on HR, and I will digress on that a bit:
+
+> A good rule of thumb is that if a question could be asked by an intern in HR,
+> it's a non-differential signaling question.
+
+Stretching it, this is a rather snobbish view of HR. Why is it that an intern in
+HR can't make signaling questions? Could the same be said of an intern in
+engineering?
+
+In other words: is the question not signaling because the one
+asking is from HR, or because the one asking is an intern? If the latter, than
+he's just arguing that interns have no place in interviewing, but if the former
+than he was picking on HR.
+
+Extrapolating that, it is common to find people who don't value HR's work, and
+only see them as inferiors doing unpleasant work, and who aren't capable enough
+(or *smart* enough) to learn programming.
+
+This is equivalent to people who work primarily on backend, and see others working on
+frontend struggling and say: "isn't it just building views and showing them on
+the browser? How could it possibly be that hard? I bet I could do it better,
+with 20% of code". As you already know, the answer to it is "well, why don't you
+go do it, then?".
+
+This sense of superiority ignores the fact that HR have actual professionals
+doing actual hard work, not unlike programmers. If HR is inferior and so easy,
+why not automate everything away and get rid of a whole department?
+
+I don't attribute this world view to Slava, this is only an extrapolation of a
+snippet of the article.
+
+### Draconian mistreating of candidates
+
+If I found out that people employed theatrics in my interview so that I could
+feel I've "earned the privilege to work at your company", I would quit.
+
+If your moral compass is so broken that you are comfortable mistreating me while
+I'm a candidate, I immediately assume you will also mistreat me as an employee,
+and that the company is not a good place to work, as
+[evil begets stupidity][evil-begets-stupidity]:
+
+> But the other reason programmers are fussy, I think, is that evil begets
+> stupidity. An organization that wins by exercising power starts to lose the
+> ability to win by doing better work. And it's not fun for a smart person to
+> work in a place where the best ideas aren't the ones that win. I think the
+> reason Google embraced "Don't be evil" so eagerly was not so much to impress
+> the outside world as to inoculate themselves against arrogance.
+
+Paul Graham goes beyond "don't be evil" with a better motto:
+"[be good][pg-be-good]".
+
+Abusing the asymmetric nature of an interview to increase the chance that the
+candidate will accept the offer is, well, abusive. I doubt a solid team can
+actually be built on such poor foundations, surrounded by such evil measures.
+
+And if you really want to give engineers "the measure of whoever they're going
+to be working with", there are plenty of reasonable ways of doing it that don't
+include performing fake interviews.
+
+[pg-be-good]: http://www.paulgraham.com/good.html
+[evil-begets-stupidity]: http://www.paulgraham.com/apple.html
+
+### Personality tests
+
+Personality tests around the world need to be a) translated, b) adapted and c)
+validated. Even though a given test may be applicable and useful in a country,
+this doesn't imply it will work for other countries.
+
+Not only tests usually come with translation guidelines, but also its
+applicability needs to be validated again after the translation and adaptation
+is done to see if the test still measures what it is supposed to.
+
+That is also true within the same language. If a test is shown to work in
+England, it may not work in New Zealand, in spite of both speaking english. The
+cultural context difference is influent to the point of invalidating a test and
+making it be no longer valid.
+
+Irregardless of the validity of the proposed "big five" personality test,
+saying "just use attributes x, y and z this test and you'll be fine" is a rough
+simplification, much like saying "just use Raft for distributed systems, after
+all it has been proven to work" shows he throws all of that background away.
+
+So much as applying personality tests themselves is not a trivial task, and
+psychologists do need special training to become able to effectively apply one.
+
+### More cargo culting
+
+He calls the ill-defined "industry standard" to be cargo-culting, but his
+proposal isn't sound enough to not become one.
+
+Even if the ideas were good, they aren't solid enough, or based on solid
+enough things to make them stand out by themselves. Why is it that talent,
+judgment and personality are required to determine the fitness of a good
+candidate? Why not 2, 5, or 20 things? Why those specific 3? Why is talent
+defined like that? Is it just because he found talent to be like that?
+
+Isn't that definitionally also
+[cargo-culting][cargo-culting][^cargo-culting-archive]? Isn't he just repeating
+whatever he found to work form him, without understanding why?
+
+What Feynman proposes is actually the opposite:
+
+> In summary, the idea is to try to give **all** of the information to help others
+> to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads
+> to judgment in one particular direction or another.
+
+What Slava did was just another form of cargo culting, but this was one that he
+believed to work.
+
+[cargo-culting]: http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm
+[^cargo-culting-archive]: [Archived version](https://web.archive.org/web/20201003090303/http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm).
+
+## What to do
+
+I will not give you a list of things that "worked for me, thus they are
+correct". I won't either critique the current "industry standard", nor what I've
+learned from interviewing engineers.
+
+Instead, I'd like to invite you to learn from history, and from what other
+professionals have to teach us.
+
+Programming isn't an odd profession, where everything about it is different from
+anything else. It is just another episode in the "technology" series, which has
+seasons since before recorded history. It may be an episode where things move a
+bit faster, but it is fundamentally the same.
+
+So here is the key idea: what people did *before* software engineering?
+
+What hiring is like for engineers in other areas? Don't civil, electrical and
+other types of engineering exist for much, much longer than software engineering
+does? What have those centuries of accumulated experience thought the world
+about technical hiring?
+
+What studies were performed on the different success rate of interviewing
+strategies? What have they done right and what have they done wrong?
+
+What is the purpose of HR? Why do they even exist? Do we need them, and if so,
+what for? What is the value they bring, since everybody insist on building an HR
+department in their companies? Is the existence of HR another form of cargo
+culting?
+
+What is industrial and organizational psychology? What is that field of study?
+What do they specialize in? What have they learned since the discipline
+appeared? What have they done right and wrong over history? Is is the current
+academic consensus on that area? What is a hot debate topic in academia on that
+area? What is the current bleeding edge of research? What can they teach us
+about hiring? What can they teach us about technical hiring?
+
+## Conclusion
+
+If all I've said makes me a "no hire" in the proposed framework, I'm really
+glad.
+
+This says less about my programming skills, and more about the employer's world
+view, and I hope not to be fooled into applying for a company that adopts this
+one.
+
+Claiming to be selecting "extraordinary engineers" isn't an excuse to reinvent
+the wheel, poorly.
diff --git a/src/content/blog/2020/11/07/diy-bugs.adoc b/src/content/blog/2020/11/07/diy-bugs.adoc
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b1dd117
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/content/blog/2020/11/07/diy-bugs.adoc
@@ -0,0 +1,108 @@
+---
+
+title: DIY an offline bug tracker with text files, Git and email
+
+date: 2020-11-07
+
+updated_at: 2021-08-14
+
+layout: post
+
+lang: en
+
+ref: diy-an-offline-bug-tracker-with-text-files-git-and-email
+
+---
+
+When [push comes to shove][youtube-dl-takedown-notice], the operational aspects
+of governance of a software project matter a lot. And everybody likes to chime
+in with their alternative of how to avoid single points of failure in project
+governance, just like I'm doing right now.
+
+The most valuable assets of a project are:
+
+1. source code
+2. discussions
+3. documentation
+4. builds
+5. tasks and bugs
+
+For **source code**, Git and other DVCS solve that already: everybody gets a
+full copy of the entire source code.
+
+If your code forge is compromised, moving it to a new one takes a couple of
+minutes, if there isn't a secondary remote serving as mirror already. In this
+case, no action is required.
+
+If you're having your **discussions** by email,
+"[taking this archive somewhere else and carrying on is effortless][sourcehut-ml]".
+
+Besides, make sure to backup archives of past discussions so that the history is
+also preserved when this migration happens.
+
+The **documentation** should
+[live inside the repository itself][writethedocs-in-repo][^writethedocs-in-repo],
+so that not only it gets first class treatment, but also gets distributed to
+everybody too. Migrating the code to a new forge already migrates the
+documentation with it.
+
+[^writethedocs-in-repo]: Described as "the ultimate marriage of the two". Starts
+    at time 31:50.
+
+As long as you keep the **builds** vendor neutral, the migration should only
+involve adapting how you call your `tests.sh` from the format of
+`provider-1.yml` uses to the format that `provider-2.yml` accepts.
+It isn't valuable to carry the build history with the project, as this data
+quickly decays in value as weeks and months go by, but for simple text logs
+[using Git notes] may be just enough, and they would be replicated with the rest
+of the repository.
+
+[using Git notes]: {% link _tils/2020-11-30-storing-ci-data-on-git-notes.md %}
+
+But for **tasks and bugs** many rely on a vendor-specific service, where you
+register and manage those issues via a web browser. Some provide an
+[interface for interacting via email][todos-srht-email] or an API for
+[bridging local bugs with vendor-specific services][git-bug-bridges]. But
+they're all layers around the service, that disguises it as being a central
+point of failure, which when compromised would lead to data loss. When push comes
+to shove, you'd loose data.
+
+[youtube-dl-takedown-notice]: https://github.com/github/dmca/blob/master/2020/10/2020-10-23-RIAA.md
+[sourcehut-ml]: https://sourcehut.org/blog/2020-10-29-how-mailing-lists-prevent-censorship/
+[writethedocs-in-repo]: https://podcast.writethedocs.org/2017/01/25/episode-3-trends/
+[todos-srht-email]: https://man.sr.ht/todo.sr.ht/#email-access
+[git-bug-bridges]: https://github.com/MichaelMure/git-bug#bridges
+
+## Alternative: text files, Git and email
+
+Why not do the same as documentation, and move tasks and bugs into the
+repository itself?
+
+It requires no extra tool to be installed, and fits right in the already
+existing workflow for source code and documentation.
+
+I like to keep a [`TODOs.md`] file at the repository top-level, with
+two relevant sections: "tasks" and "bugs". Then when building the documentation
+I'll just [generate an HTML file from it], and [publish] it alongside the static
+website. All that is done on the main branch.
+
+Any issues discussions are done in the mailing list, and a reference to a
+discussion could be added to the ticket itself later on. External contributors
+can file tickets by sending a patch.
+
+The good thing about this solution is that it works for 99% of projects out
+there.
+
+For the other 1%, having Fossil's "[tickets][fossil-tickets]" could be an
+alternative, but you may not want to migrate your project to Fossil to get those
+niceties.
+
+Even though I keep a `TODOs.md` file on the main branch, you can have a `tasks`
+ branch with a `task-n.md` file for each task, or any other way you like.
+
+These tools are familiar enough that you can adjust it to fit your workflow.
+
+[`TODOs.md`]: https://euandre.org/git/remembering/tree/TODOs.md?id=3f727802cb73ab7aa139ca52e729fd106ea916d0
+[generate an HTML file from it]: https://euandre.org/git/remembering/tree/aux/workflow/TODOs.sh?id=3f727802cb73ab7aa139ca52e729fd106ea916d0
+[publish]: https://euandreh.xyz/remembering/TODOs.html
+[fossil-tickets]: https://fossil-scm.org/home/doc/trunk/www/bugtheory.wiki
diff --git a/src/content/blog/2020/11/08/paradigm-shift-review.adoc b/src/content/blog/2020/11/08/paradigm-shift-review.adoc
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c98c131
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/content/blog/2020/11/08/paradigm-shift-review.adoc
@@ -0,0 +1,164 @@
+---
+
+title: The Next Paradigm Shift in Programming - video review
+
+date: 2020-11-08
+
+layout: post
+
+lang: en
+
+ref: the-next-paradigm-shift-in-programming-video-review
+
+eu_categories: video review
+
+---
+
+This is a review with comments of
+"[The Next Paradigm Shift in Programming][video-link]", by Richard Feldman.
+
+This video was *strongly* suggested to me by a colleague. I wanted to discuss it
+with her, and when drafting my response I figured I could publish it publicly
+instead.
+
+Before anything else, let me just be clear: I really like the talk, and I think
+Richard is a great public speaker. I've watched several of his talks over the
+years, and I feel I've followed his career at a distance, with much respect.
+This isn't a piece criticizing him personally, and I agree with almost
+everything he said. These are just some comments but also nitpicks on a few
+topics I think he missed, or that I view differently.
+
+[video-link]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YbK8o9rZfI
+
+## Structured programming
+
+The historical overview at the beginning is very good. In fact, the very video I
+watched previously was about structured programming!
+
+Kevlin Henney on
+"[The Forgotten Art of Structured Programming][structured-programming]" does a
+deep-dive on the topic of structured programming, and how on his view it is
+still hidden in our code, when we do a `continue` or a `break` in some ways.
+Even though it is less common to see an explicit `goto` in code these days, many
+of the original arguments of Dijkstra against explicit `goto`s is applicable to
+other constructs, too.
+
+This is a very mature view, and I like how he goes beyond the
+"don't use `goto`s" heuristic and proposes and a much more nuanced understanding
+of what "structured programming" means.
+
+In a few minutes, Richard is able to condense most of the significant bits of
+Kevlin's talk in a didactical way. Good job.
+
+[structured-programming]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFv8Wm2HdNM
+
+## OOP like a distributed system
+
+Richard extrapolates Alan Kay's original vision of OOP, and he concludes that
+it is more like a distributed system that how people think about OOP these days.
+But he then states that this is a rather bad idea, and we shouldn't pursue it,
+given that distributed systems are known to be hard.
+
+However, his extrapolation isn't really impossible, bad or an absurd. In fact,
+it has been followed through by Erlang. Joe Armstrong used to say that
+"[Erlang might the only OOP language][erlang-oop]", since it actually adopted
+this paradigm.
+
+But Erlang is a functional language. So this "OOP as a distributed system" view
+is more about designing systems in the large than programs in the small.
+
+There is a switch of levels in this comparison I'm making, as can be done with
+any language or paradigm: you can have a functional-like system that is built
+with an OOP language (like a compiler, that given the same input will produce
+the same output), or an OOP-like system that is built with a functional language
+(Rich Hickey calls it
+"[OOP in the large][langsys]"[^the-language-of-the-system]).
+
+So this jump from in-process paradigm to distributed paradigm is rather a big
+one, and I don't think you he can argue that OOP has anything to say about
+software distribution across nodes. You can still have Erlang actors that run
+independently and send messages to each other without a network between them.
+Any OTP application deployed on a single node effectively works like that.
+
+I think he went a bit too far with this extrapolation. Even though I agree it is
+a logical a fair one, it isn't evidently bad as he painted. I would be fine
+working with a single-node OTP application and seeing someone call it "a *real*
+OOP program".
+
+[erlang-oop]: https://www.infoq.com/interviews/johnson-armstrong-oop/
+[langsys]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROor6_NGIWU
+[^the-language-of-the-system]: From 24:05 to 27:45.
+
+## First class immutability
+
+I agree with his view of languages moving towards the functional paradigm.
+But I think you can narrow down the "first-class immutability" feature he points
+out as present on modern functional programming languages to "first-class
+immutable data structures".
+
+I wouldn't categorize a language as "supporting functional programming style"
+without a library for functional data structures it. By discipline you can avoid
+side-effects, write pure functions as much as possible, and pass functions as
+arguments around is almost every language these days, but if when changing an
+element of a vector mutates things in-place, that is still not functional
+programming.
+
+To avoid that, you end-up needing to make clones of objects to pass to a
+function, using freezes or other workarounds. All those cases are when the
+underlying mix of OOP and functional programming fail.
+
+There are some languages with third-party libraries that provide functional data
+structures, like [immer][immer] for C++, or [ImmutableJS][immutablejs] for
+JavaScript.
+
+But functional programming is more easily achievable in languages that have them
+built-in, like Erlang, Elm and Clojure.
+
+[immer]: https://sinusoid.es/immer/
+[immutablejs]: https://immutable-js.github.io/immutable-js/
+
+## Managed side-effects
+
+His proposal of adopting managed side-effects as a first-class language concept
+is really intriguing.
+
+This is something you can achieve with a library, like [Redux][redux] for JavaScript or
+[re-frame][re-frame] for Clojure.
+
+I haven't worked with a language with managed side-effects at scale, and I don't
+feel this is a problem with Clojure or Erlang. But is this me finding a flaw in
+his argument or not acknowledging a benefit unknown to me? This is a provocative
+question I ask myself.
+
+Also all FP languages with managed side-effects I know are statically-typed, and
+all dynamically-typed FP languages I know don't have managed side-effects baked in.
+
+[redux]: https://redux.js.org/
+[re-frame]: https://github.com/Day8/re-frame
+
+## What about declarative programming?
+
+In "[Out of the Tar Pit][tar-pit]", B. Moseley and P. Marks go beyond his view
+of functional programming as the basis, and name a possible "functional
+relational programming" as an even better solution. They explicitly call out
+some flaws in most of the modern functional programming languages, and instead
+pick declarative programming as an even better starting paradigm.
+
+If the next paradigm shift is towards functional programming, will the following
+shift be towards declarative programming?
+
+[tar-pit]: http://curtclifton.net/papers/MoseleyMarks06a.pdf
+
+## Conclusion
+
+Beyond all Richard said, I also hear often bring up functional programming when
+talking about utilizing all cores of a computer, and how FP can help with that.
+
+Rich Hickey makes a great case for single-process FP on his famous talk
+"[Simple Made Easy][simple-made-easy]".
+
+[simple-made-easy]: https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy/
+
+<!-- I find this conclusion too short, and it doesn't revisits the main points -->
+<!-- presented on the body of the article. I won't rewrite it now, but it would be an -->
+<!-- improvement to extend it to do so. -->
diff --git a/src/content/blog/2020/11/12/database-parsers-trees.adoc b/src/content/blog/2020/11/12/database-parsers-trees.adoc
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1870fad
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/content/blog/2020/11/12/database-parsers-trees.adoc
@@ -0,0 +1,233 @@
+= Durable persistent trees and parser combinators - building a database
+
+date: 2020-11-12
+
+updated_at: 2021-02-09
+
+layout: post
+
+lang: en
+
+ref: durable-persistent-trees-and-parser-combinators-building-a-database
+
+eu_categories: mediator
+
+---
+
+I've received with certain frequency messages from people wanting to know if
+I've made any progress on the database project
+[I've written about]({% link _articles/2020-08-31-the-database-i-wish-i-had.md %}).
+
+There are a few areas where I've made progress, and here's a public post on it.
+
+== Proof-of-concept: DAG log
+
+The main thing I wanted to validate with a concrete implementation was the
+concept of modeling a DAG on a sequence of datoms.
+
+The notion of a *datom* is a rip-off from Datomic, which models data with time
+aware *facts*, which come from RDF. RDF's fact is a triple of
+subject-predicate-object, and Datomic's datoms add a time component to it:
+subject-predicate-object-time, A.K.A. entity-attribute-value-transaction:
+
+```clojure
+[[person :likes "pizza" 0 true]
+ [person :likes "bread" 1 true]
+ [person :likes "pizza" 1 false]]
+```
+
+The above datoms say:
+- at time 0, `person` like pizza;
+- at time 1, `person` stopped liking pizza, and started to like bread.
+
+Datomic ensures total consistency of this ever growing log by having a single
+writer, the transactor, that will enforce it when writing.
+
+In order to support disconnected clients, I needed a way to allow multiple
+writers, and I chose to do it by making the log not a list, but a
+directed acyclic graph (DAG):
+
+```clojure
+[[person :likes  "pizza"  0 true]
+ [0      :parent :db/root 0 true]
+ [person :likes  "bread"  1 true]
+ [person :likes  "pizza"  1 false]
+ [1      :parent 0        1 true]]
+```
+
+The extra datoms above add more information to build the directionality to the
+log, and instead of a single consistent log, the DAG could have multiple leaves
+that coexist, much like how different Git branches can have different "latest"
+commits.
+
+In order to validate this idea, I started with a Clojure implementation. The
+goal was not to write the actual final code, but to make a proof-of-concept that
+would allow me to test and stretch the idea itself.
+
+This code [already exists][clj-poc], but is yet fairly incomplete:
+
+- the building of the index isn't done yet (with some
+  [commented code][clj-poc-index] on the next step to be implemented)
+- the indexing is extremely inefficient, with [more][clj-poc-o2-0]
+  [than][clj-poc-o2-1] [one][clj-poc-o2-2] occurrence of `O²` functions;
+- no query support yet.
+
+[clj-poc]: https://euandre.org/git/mediator/tree/src/core/clojure/src/mediator.clj?id=db4a727bc24b54b50158827b34502de21dbf8948#n1
+[clj-poc-index]: https://euandre.org/git/mediator/tree/src/core/clojure/src/mediator.clj?id=db4a727bc24b54b50158827b34502de21dbf8948#n295
+[clj-poc-o2-0]: https://euandre.org/git/mediator/tree/src/core/clojure/src/mediator.clj?id=db4a727bc24b54b50158827b34502de21dbf8948#n130
+[clj-poc-o2-1]: https://euandre.org/git/mediator/tree/src/core/clojure/src/mediator.clj?id=db4a727bc24b54b50158827b34502de21dbf8948#n146
+[clj-poc-o2-2]: https://euandre.org/git/mediator/tree/src/core/clojure/src/mediator.clj?id=db4a727bc24b54b50158827b34502de21dbf8948#n253
+
+== Top-down *and* bottom-up
+
+However, as time passed and I started looking at what the final implementation
+would look like, I started to consider keeping the PoC around.
+
+The top-down approach (Clojure PoC) was in fact helping guide me with the
+bottom-up, and I now have "promoted" the Clojure PoC into a "reference
+implementation". It should now be a finished implementation that says what the
+expected behaviour is, and the actual code should match the behaviour.
+
+The good thing about a reference implementation is that it has no performance of
+resources boundary, so if it ends up being 1000x slower and using 500× more
+memory, it should be find. The code can be also 10x or 100x simpler, too.
+
+== Top-down: durable persistent trees
+
+In promoting the PoC into a reference implementation, this top-down approach now
+needs to go beyond doing everything in memory, and the index data structure now
+needs to be disk-based.
+
+Roughly speaking, most storage engines out there are based either on B-Trees or
+LSM Trees, or some variations of those.
+
+But when building an immutable database, update-in-place B-Trees aren't an
+option, as it doesn't accommodate keeping historical views of the tree. LSM Trees
+may seem a better alternative, but duplication on the files with compaction are
+also ways to delete old data which is indeed useful for a historical view.
+
+I think the thing I'm after is a mix of a Copy-on-Write B-Tree, which would keep
+historical versions with the write IO cost amortization of memtables of LSM
+Trees. I don't know of any B-Tree variant out there that resembles this, so I'll
+call it "Flushing Copy-on-Write B-Tree".
+
+I haven't written any code for this yet, so all I have is a high-level view of
+what it will look like:
+
+1. like Copy-on-Write B-Trees, changing a leaf involves creating a new leaf and
+  building a new path from root to the leaf. The upside is that writes a lock
+  free, and no coordination is needed between readers and writers, ever;
+
+2. the downside is that a single leaf update means at least `H` new nodes that
+  will have to be flushed to disk, where `H` is the height of the tree. To avoid
+  that, the writer creates these nodes exclusively on the in-memory memtable, to
+  avoid flushing to disk on every leaf update;
+
+3. a background job will consolidate the memtable data every time it hits X MB,
+  and persist it to disk, amortizing the cost of the Copy-on-Write B-Tree;
+
+4. readers than will have the extra job of getting the latest relevant
+  disk-resident value and merge it with the memtable data.
+
+The key difference to existing Copy-on-Write B-Trees is that the new trees
+are only periodically written to disk, and the intermediate values are kept in
+memory. Since no node is ever updated, the page utilization is maximum as it
+doesn't need to keep space for future inserts and updates.
+
+And the key difference to existing LSM Trees is that no compaction is run:
+intermediate values are still relevant as the database grows. So this leaves out
+tombstones and value duplication done for write performance.
+
+One can delete intermediate index values to reclaim space, but no data is lost
+on the process, only old B-Tree values. And if the database ever comes back to
+that point (like when doing a historical query), the B-Tree will have to be
+rebuilt from a previous value. After all, the database *is* a set of datoms, and
+everything else is just derived data.
+
+Right now I'm still reading about other data structures that storage engines
+use, and I'll start implementing the "Flushing Copy-on-Write B-Tree" as I learn
+more[^learn-more-db] and mature it more.
+
+[^learn-more-db]: If you are interested in learning more about this too, the
+    very best two resources on this subject are Andy Pavlo's
+    "[Intro to Database Systems](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSE8ODhjZXjbohkNBWQs_otTrBTrjyohi)"
+    course and Alex Petrov's "[Database Internals](https://www.databass.dev/)" book.
+
+== Bottom-up: parser combinators and FFI
+
+I chose Rust as it has the best WebAssembly tooling support.
+
+My goal is not to build a Rust database, but a database that happens to be in
+Rust. In order to reach client platforms, the primary API is the FFI one.
+
+I'm not very happy with current tools for exposing Rust code via FFI to the
+external world: they either mix C with C++, which I don't want to do, or provide
+no access to the intermediate representation of the FFI, which would be useful
+for generating binding for any language that speaks FFI.
+
+I like better the path that the author of [cbindgen][cbindgen-crate]
+crate [proposes][rust-ffi]: emitting an data representation of the Rust C API
+(the author calls is a `ffi.json` file), and than building transformers from the
+data representation to the target language. This way you could generate a C API
+*and* the node-ffi bindings for JavaScript automatically from the Rust code.
+
+So the first thing to be done before moving on is an FFI exporter that doesn't
+mix C and C++, and generates said `ffi.json`, and than build a few transformers
+that take this `ffi.json` and generate the language bindings, be it C, C++,
+JavaScript, TypeScript, Kotlin, Swift, Dart, *etc*[^ffi-langs].
+
+[^ffi-langs]: Those are, specifically, the languages I'm more interested on. My
+    goal is supporting client applications, and those languages are the most
+    relevant for doing so: C for GTK, C++ for Qt, JavaScript and TypeScript for
+    Node.js and browser, Kotlin for Android and Swing, Swift for iOS, and Dart
+    for Flutter.
+
+I think the best way to get there is by taking the existing code for cbindgen,
+which uses the [syn][syn-crate] crate to parse the Rust code[^rust-syn], and
+adapt it to emit the metadata.
+
+[^rust-syn]: The fact that syn is an external crate to the Rust compiler points
+    to a big warning: procedural macros are not first class in Rust. They are
+    just like Babel plugins in JavaScript land, with the extra shortcoming that
+    there is no specification for the Rust syntax, unlike JavaScript.
+
+    As flawed as this may be, it seems to be generally acceptable and adopted,
+    which works against building a solid ecosystem for Rust.
+
+    The alternative that rust-ffi implements relies on internals of the Rust
+    compiler, which isn't actually worst, just less common and less accepted.
+
+I've started a fork of cbindgen: ~~x-bindgen~~[^x-bindgen]. Right now it is
+just a copy of cbindgen verbatim, and I plan to remove all C and C++ emitting
+code from it, and add a IR emitting code instead.
+
+[^x-bindgen]: *EDIT*: now archived, the experimentation was fun. I've started to move more towards C, so this effort became deprecated.
+
+When starting working on x-bindgen, I realized I didn't know what to look for in
+a header file, as I haven't written any C code in many years. So as I was
+writing [libedn][libedn-repo], I didn't know how to build a good C API to
+expose. So I tried porting the code to C, and right now I'm working on building
+a *good* C API for a JSON parser using parser combinators:
+~~ParsecC~~ [^parsecc].
+
+[^parsecc]: *EDIT*: now also archived.
+
+After "finishing" ParsecC I'll have a good notion of what a good C API is, and
+I'll have a better direction towards how to expose code from libedn to other
+languages, and work on x-bindgen then.
+
+What both libedn and ParsecC are missing right now are proper error reporting,
+and property-based testing for libedn.
+
+[cbindgen-crate]: https://github.com/eqrion/cbindgen
+[syn-crate]: https://github.com/dtolnay/syn
+[rust-ffi]: https://blog.eqrion.net/future-directions-for-cbindgen/
+[libedn-repo]: https://euandre.org/git/libedn/
+
+== Conclusion
+
+I've learned a lot already, and I feel the journey I'm on is worth going
+through.
+
+If any of those topics interest you, message me to discuss more or contribute!
+Patches welcome!
diff --git a/src/content/blog/2020/11/14/local-first-review.adoc b/src/content/blog/2020/11/14/local-first-review.adoc
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+= Local-First Software: You Own Your Data, in spite of the Cloud - article review
+
+date: 2020-11-14
+
+layout: post
+
+lang: en
+
+ref: local-first-software-you-own-your-data-in-spite-of-the-cloud-article-review
+
+eu_categories: presentation,article review
+
+---
+
+*This article is derived from a [presentation][presentation] given at a Papers
+We Love meetup on the same subject.*
+
+This is a review of the article
+"[Local-First Software: You Own Your Data, in spite of the Cloud][article-pdf]",
+by M. Kleppmann, A. Wiggins, P. Van Hardenberg and M. F. McGranaghan.
+
+== Offline-first, local-first
+
+The "local-first" term they use isn't new, and I have used it myself in the past
+to refer to this types of application, where the data lives primarily on the
+client, and there are conflict resolution algorithms that reconcile data created
+on different instances.
+
+Sometimes I see confusion with this idea and "client-side", "offline-friendly",
+"syncable", etc. I have myself used this terms, also.
+
+There exists, however, already the "offline-first" term, which conveys almost
+all of that meaning. In my view, "local-first" doesn't extend "offline-first" in
+any aspect, rather it gives a well-defined meaning to it instead. I could say
+that "local-first" is just "offline-first", but with 7 well-defined ideals
+instead of community best practices.
+
+It is a step forward, and given the number of times I've seen the paper shared
+around I think there's a chance people will prefer saying "local-first" in
+*lieu* of "offline-first" from now on.
+
+[presentation]: {% link _slides/2020-11-14-on-local-first-beyond-the-crdt-silver-bullet.slides %}
+[article-pdf]: https://martin.kleppmann.com/papers/local-first.pdf
+
+== Software licenses
+
+On a footnote of the 7th ideal ("You Retain Ultimate Ownership and Control"),
+the authors say:
+
+> In our opinion, maintaining control and ownership of data does not mean that
+> the software must necessarily be open source. (...) as long as it does not
+> artificially restrict what users can do with their files.
+
+They give examples of artificial restrictions, like this artificial restriction
+I've come up with:
+
+```bash
+#!/bin/sh
+
+TODAY=$(date +%s)
+LICENSE_EXPIRATION=$(date -d 2020-11-15 +%s)
+
+if [ $TODAY -ge $LICENSE_EXPIRATION ]; then
+  echo 'License expired!'
+  exit 1
+fi
+
+echo $((2 + 2))
+```
+
+Now when using this very useful program:
+
+```bash
+# today
+$ ./useful-adder.sh
+4
+# tomorrow
+$ ./useful-adder.sh
+License expired!
+```
+
+This is obviously an intentional restriction, and it goes against the 5th ideal
+("The Long Now"). This software would only be useful as long as the embedded
+license expiration allowed. Sure you could change the clock on the computer, but
+there are many other ways that this type of intentional restriction is in
+conflict with that ideal.
+
+However, what about unintentional restrictions? What if a software had an equal
+or similar restriction, and stopped working after days pass? Or what if the
+programmer added a constant to make the development simpler, and this led to
+unintentionally restricting the user?
+
+```bash
+# today
+$ useful-program
+# ...useful output...
+
+# tomorrow, with more data
+$ useful-program
+ERROR: Panic! Stack overflow!
+```
+
+Just as easily as I can come up with ways to intentionally restrict users, I can
+do the same for unintentionally restrictions. A program can stop working for a
+variety of reasons.
+
+If it stops working due do, say, data growth, what are the options? Reverting to
+an earlier backup, and making it read-only? That isn't really a "Long Now", but
+rather a "Long Now as long as the software keeps working as expected".
+
+The point is: if the software isn't free, "The Long Now" isn't achievable
+without a lot of wishful thinking. Maybe the authors were trying to be more
+friendly towards business who don't like free software, but in doing so they've proposed
+a contradiction by reconciling "The Long Now" with proprietary software.
+
+It isn't the same as saying that any free software achieves that ideal,
+either. The license can still be free, but the source code can become
+unavailable due to cloud rot. Or maybe the build is undocumented, or the build
+tools had specific configuration that one has to guess. A piece of free
+software can still fail to achieve "The Long Now". Being free doesn't guarantee
+it, just makes it possible.
+
+A colleague has challenged my view, arguing that the software doesn't really
+need to be free, as long as there is an specification of the file format. This
+way if the software stops working, the format can still be processed by other
+programs. But this doesn't apply in practice: if you have a document that you
+write to, and software stops working, you still want to write to the document.
+An external tool that navigates the content and shows it to you won't allow you
+to keep writing, and when it does that tool is now starting to re-implement the
+software.
+
+An open specification could serve as a blueprint to other implementations,
+making the data format more friendly to reverse-engineering. But the
+re-implementation still has to exist, at which point the original software failed
+to achieve "The Long Now".
+
+It is less bad, but still not quite there yet.
+
+== Denial of existing solutions
+
+When describing "Existing Data Storage and Sharing Models", on a
+footnote[^devil] the authors say:
+
+[^devil]: This is the second aspect that I'm picking on the article from a
+    footnote. I guess the devil really is on the details.
+
+> In principle it is possible to collaborate without a repository service,
+> e.g. by sending patch files by email, but the majority of Git users rely
+> on GitHub.
+
+The authors go to a great length to talk about usability of cloud apps, and even
+point to research they've done on it, but they've missed learning more from
+local-first solutions that already exist.
+
+Say the automerge CRDT proves to be even more useful than what everybody
+imagined. Say someone builds a local-first repository service using it. How will
+it change anything of the Git/GitHub model? What is different about it that
+prevents people in the future writing a paper saying:
+
+> In principle it is possible to collaborate without a repository service,
+> e.g. by using automerge and platform X,
+> but the majority of Git users rely on GitHub.
+
+How is this any better?
+
+If it is already [possible][git-local-first] to have a local-first development
+workflow, why don't people use it? Is it just fashion, or there's a fundamental
+problem with it? If so, what is it, and how to avoid it?
+
+If sending patches by emails is perfectly possible but out of fashion, why even
+talk about Git/GitHub? Isn't this a problem that people are putting themselves
+in? How can CRDTs possibly prevent people from doing that?
+
+My impression is that the authors envision a better future, where development is
+fully decentralized unlike today, and somehow CRDTs will make that happen. If
+more people think this way, "CRDT" is next in line to the buzzword list that
+solves everything, like "containers", "blockchain" or "machine learning".
+
+Rather than picturing an imaginary service that could be described like
+"GitHub+CRDTs" and people would adopt it, I'd rather better understand why
+people don't do it already, since Git is built to work like that.
+
+[git-local-first]: https://drewdevault.com/2018/07/23/Git-is-already-distributed.html
+
+== Ditching of web applications
+
+The authors put web application in a worse position for building local-first
+application, claiming that:
+
+> (...) the architecture of web apps remains fundamentally server-centric.
+> Offline support is an afterthought in most web apps, and the result is
+> accordingly fragile.
+
+Well, I disagree.
+
+The problem isn't inherit to the web platform, but instead how people use it.
+
+I have myself built offline-first applications, leveraging IndexedDB, App Cache,
+*etc*. I wanted to build an offline-first application on the web, and so I did.
+
+In fact, many people choose [PouchDB][pouchdb] *because* of that, since it is a
+good tool for offline-first web applications. The problem isn't really the
+technology, but how much people want their application to be local-first.
+
+Contrast it with Android [Instant Apps][instant-apps], where applications are
+sent to the phone in small parts. Since this requires an internet connection to
+move from a part of the app bundle to another, a subset of the app isn't
+local-first, despite being an app.
+
+The point isn't the technology, but how people are using it. Local-first web
+applications are perfectly possible, just like non-local-first native
+applications are possible.
+
+[pouchdb]: https://pouchdb.com/
+[instant-apps]: https://developer.android.com/topic/google-play-instant
+
+== Costs are underrated
+
+I think the costs of "old-fashioned apps" over "cloud apps" are underrated,
+mainly regarding storage, and that this costs can vary a lot by application.
+
+Say a person writes online articles for their personal website, and puts
+everything into Git. Since there isn't supposed to be any collaboration, all
+of the relevant ideals of local-first are achieved.
+
+Now another person creates videos instead of articles. They could try keeping
+everything local, but after some time the storage usage fills the entire disk.
+This person's local-first setup would be much more complex, and would cost much
+more on maintenance, backup and storage.
+
+Even though both have similar needs, a local-first video repository is much more
+demanding. So the local-first thinking here isn't "just keep everything local",
+but "how much time and money am I willing to spend to keep everything local".
+
+The convenience of "cloud apps" becomes so attractive that many don't even have
+a local copy of their videos, and rely exclusively on service providers to
+maintain, backup and store their content.
+
+The dial measuring "cloud apps" and "old-fashioned apps" needs to be specific to
+use-cases.
+
+== Real-time collaboration is optional
+
+If I were the one making the list of ideals, I wouldn't focus so much on
+real-time collaboration.
+
+Even though seamless collaboration is desired, it being real-time depends on the
+network being available for that. But ideal 3 states that
+"The Network is Optional", so real-time collaboration is also optional.
+
+The fundamentals of a local-first system should enable real-time collaboration
+when network is available, but shouldn't focus on it.
+
+On many places when discussing applications being offline, it is common for me
+to find people saying that their application works
+"even on a plane, subway or elevator". That is a reflection of when said
+developers have to deal with networks being unavailable.
+
+But this leaves out a big chunk of the world where internet connection is
+intermittent, or only works every other day or only once a week, or stops
+working when it rains, *etc*. For this audience, living without network
+connectivity isn't such a discrete moment in time, but part of every day life. I
+like the fact that the authors acknowledge that.
+
+When discussing "working offline", I'd rather keep this type of person in mind,
+then the subset of people who are offline when on the elevator will naturally be
+included.
+
+== On CRDTs and developer experience
+
+When discussing developer experience, the authors bring up some questions to be
+answered further, like:
+
+> For an app developer, how does the use of a CRDT-based data layer compare to
+> existing storage layers like a SQL database, a filesystem, or CoreData? Is a
+> distributed system harder to write software for?
+
+That is an easy one: yes.
+
+A distributed system *is* harder to write software for, being a distributed
+system.
+
+Adding a large layer of data structures and algorithms will make it more complex
+to write software for, naturally. And if trying to make this layer transparent
+to the programmer, so they can pretend that layer doesn't exist is a bad idea,
+as RPC frameworks have tried, and failed.
+
+See "[A Note on Distributed Computing][note-dist-comp]" for a critique on RPC
+frameworks trying to make the network invisible, which I think also applies in
+equivalence for making the CRDTs layer invisible.
+
+[rmi-wiki]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_remote_method_invocation
+[note-dist-comp]: https://web.archive.org/web/20130116163535/http://labs.oracle.com/techrep/1994/smli_tr-94-29.pdf
+
+## Conclusion
+
+I liked a lot the article, as it took the "offline-first" philosophy and ran
+with it.
+
+But I think the authors' view of adding CRDTs and things becoming local-first is
+a bit too magical.
+
+This particular area is one that I have large interest on, and I wish to see
+more being done on the "local-first" space.