2011-10-31

Repost: Cloud computing is to computing, what the Internet is to telecommunications.


(originally posted 2011-03-03)

Twenty years ago, if I wanted a reasonably fast data connection between a computer in Seattle and one in San Francisco, I had to call The Phone Company. Contracts would be negotiated and signed, Purchase Orders would be sent, Expensive Machines would be shipped, Work Orders would be generated and executed on, and well-trained well-paid Union Men would provision and test the link, which would be from a specific geographic point, to another specific geographic point. And I would be presented with a monthly Expensive Bill.

Ten years ago, that started to change, dramatically. All that complex hardware, cabling, installation, and cost-recovery got abstracted away by TCP/IP. Today, to get a much faster and much more flexible connection, I just click on a hyperlink, and or start a VPN, and I have a connection that lats a few seconds to a few hours, for just as long as I need it, and then the underlying real hardware forgets completely about me and my data, and gives some other random person the link they need.

Ten years ago, if I need to run "back office" software for an company, or if I wanted to run a web site, I would again have to do the whole Contracts, Purchase Order, Expensive Machine, Work Order and so forth. And again, there would be a big monthly bill, plus a big capex spend too.

About 5 years ago, that started to change, dramatically. All that "stuff" got abstracted away. With the type of a command, or the click of a UI button, machine instances spin up to do my work, and when I am done with them, the underlying real hardware forgets completely about me and my workload, and gives some other random person the work they need.

Cloud computing is to computing, what the Internet is to telecommunications.

Repost: I forget not everyone understands Open Source


(originally posted 2011-03-13)

When you surrounded by something, that something eventually becomes obvious, then it becomes assumed knowledge, and then finally it becomes invisible.

I have been involved in Open Source since the late 1980s, and it is sometimes hard for me to remember that is what is obvious and assumed by someone in my position, is not obvious to everyone.

Early this week, I received an email from a group who are literally half a world away from me, physically and culturally. They use Eucalyptus, and had a question about it. Specifically, they wanted to know if they could modify it, if they could add modules and features that they needed.

Like I said, what seems obvious to me, is not obvious to everyone.

I wrote back to them, and explained that Eucalyptus is "Free Libre Open-Source". Most of it is licensed under the GPL Gnu Public License. That means that they can download it for free, can try it for free, run it on as many machines, with as many users, for as long as they want, for free. And yes, they can also look at the source code, modify and patch it, add more code, and write new modules for it, without having to get permission from anyone.

Closing The Eucalyptoid, and saving some posts

For a while, I was writing blog posts for Eucalyptus Systems.  Since I have moved on from them (and I wish them well, they are a great company with a great product), I've closed the personal/role blog I used for those posts.  But two of those posts, I want to keep around, and so will repost them here.

2011-10-28

I think that this is the last straw, and I'm now really completely done with Perl as anymore more than a write-once short-script language.

CPAN and /usr/bin/cpan as installed by native package management apparently do not work out of the box on stock MacOS, on stock Solaris, on stock Illumos, on stock Ubuntu, on stock Debian, on stock Fedora, on stock RHEL, or on stock CentOS.

Perl is now worse than the various implementations of the JVM at assuming that an entire box is going to be turned into a "Perl machine" and that the admin of that machine has any interest in keeping track of all the ways that Perl is special, and in all the ways that Perl wants to make that machine "special".



I mostly gave up on Perl about 3 years ago, and about once a year I go back and give it other try, and each time the experience is worse.

2011-10-27

Some good advice

A few days ago I was interviewed by a Georgia Tech student about my job and career, and what advice I may have for students of computer science and programming.
  • Take on as little student loan debt as possible. And if someone will not pay you to get a post-grad degree, don't waste the debt and the time. Keep out of debt. You never want to feel stuck somewhere so to make rent and pay bills.
  • Learn to write. You learn to write by writing. Take writing classes, read about good writing, and practice writing. It doesn't matter what kind of job you get or life path you take, you need to know how to write.
  • Get involved in some open source projects, and make real contributions to them. The Google Summer of Code is a good thing to get involved in. A portfolio of demonstrated contributions to open source projects is more impressive than a GPA on a new resume.
  • Get involved. Find your local makerspaces, hackerspaces, and barcamps. Volunteer and participate. Go to Ignite. Speak at Ignite.
  • Always be fluent in at least two programming languages, and practice learning new ones. Languages and frameworks come and go, learning new ones is forever.
  • When getting a job, beware of the non-compete and copyright assignment clauses in the employment contract. Push back on them. If they are non-negotiable, too onerous, are enforceable, beware and be careful of taking that job. Keep your list of "personal and outside projects" ready to attach as an appendix.