Top all-time · #17817
William Manley
Personal blog · blog.williammanley.netprogrammingsystems
William Manley writes Will’s Blog, a personal blog at blog.williammanley.net about programming and systems. Since 2020, 4 different Hacker News readers have linked it 11 times, most often “Pip and cargo are not the same”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-03-24, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (1) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Linked for a post about winding down the author's Debian involvement (2019). The comment discusses the author's hobby-project approach and suggests Nix needs profiling and optimisation work rather than new projects.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 1 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Pip and cargo are not the same2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-02-23
- Improve integration test sandboxing with systemd socket passing2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-06-25
What Hacker News says?
I’d love to see something like that applied to a project like Debian. The tools already exist. The cost of switching is too great, and you’d need everyone to learn your new system before you’d see the benefit. I wrote a bit about this here: https://blog.williammanley.net/2020/05/25/unlock-software-fr... I understand that nix have made some progress in this direction, but I don’t know any more than that.
Comment linking /2020/05/25/unlock-software-freedom-one-by-using-better-tools.html
on “Ask HN: What is the best code base you ever worked on?”Submitted Primer: Facebook's Htmx from 2010 as a story · 8 points
HN discussionYes please. I've often thought the same. Mentioned this comment here: https://blog.williammanley.net/2021/03/31/seen-on-hn-invert-... You’d need to implement a new protocol between terminal and shell. Maybe the shell would be in charge - allocating PTYs and multiplexing the output back to the terminal. Or maybe the terminal would be in charge where it would allocate PTYs for children and send them to the shell using…
Comment linking /2021/03/31/seen-on-hn-invert-shell-and-terminal.html
on “Terminal escape sequences in Git commit email field”Submitted Pip and cargo are not the same as a story · 4 points
HN discussionDisappointed to read that this is an April fools. I honestly believe that practical application of software freedom is held back by tooling, and that through the use of their monorepo and build system Google can actually benefit more than normal users from software freedom. https://blog.williammanley.net/2020/05/25/unlock-software-fr...
Comment linking /2020/05/25/unlock-software-freedom-one-by-using-better-tools.html
on “Debian Git Monorepo”Submitted Pip and cargo are not the same as a story · 3 points
HN discussionNIH hobby projects with good ideas that are doomed to go to waste rub me the wrong way. They are only a temporary reprieve from the burnout felt by for those that author them, anyways. Here's the thing, Nix is to slow (even ignoring `nix-env`'s terrible search functionality which should just be removed). What that requires is some good old boring profiling and optimization work. If he were to contribute that to a di…
Comment linking /2020/05/25/unlock-software-freedom-one-by-using-better-tools.html
on “Winding down my Debian involvement (2019)”Submitted Unlock software freedom one by using better tools as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI wrote a little bit about this a couple of years ago: https://blog.williammanley.net/2020/05/25/unlock-software-fr... gittup[1] implements part of this idea, but without the distributed bit. bazel[2] implements the distributed bit (minus trust), but not the distro bit. What's really lacking is momentum around the idea to get a sufficient number of people behind it. [1]: https://github.com/gittup/gittup [2]: https:/…
Comment linking /2020/05/25/unlock-software-freedom-one-by-using-better-tools.html
on “Ccache – a fast C/C++ compiler cache”Submitted Improve integration test sandboxing with systemd socket passing as a story · 1 points
HN discussion> It's a weird example, because it moves listener creation elsewhere, which is not always possible (e.g. consider if the goroutine would be spawning an external program instead of setting up the listener of its own). Just addressing the case of spawning an external program: if you have control of the external program you’re spawning it can be better to pass the listening socket in using the systemd $LISTEN_PID proto…
Comment linking /2014/01/26/Improve-integration-test-sandboxing-with-systemd-socket-passing.html
on “Time is not a synchronization primitive”
