Wesley Aptekar-Cassels
blog.wesleyac.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2017
Wesley Aptekar-Cassels writes about software engineering, SQLite, NixOS, running his own servers, and compensation transparency.
What HN saysHN commenters cite "Consider SQLite" as convincing them to use it in production, and link his post on how he runs servers.
50HN people shared it
15linked it in comments
61stories submitted
4.0Kstory points
4 months agolast shared
2017people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Consider SQLite12 people · 380 points · first shared 2021 · 266 comments on HN
- 2The Curse of NixOS5 people · 585 points · first shared 2022 · 353 comments on HN
- 3Why Talk about Compensation?4 people · 10 points · first shared 2020 · 1 comments on HN
- 4Reasons to avoid JavaScript CDNs (2021)4 people · 8 points · first shared 2021 · 1 comments on HN
- 5Notes on Parsing in Rust3 people · 4 points · first shared 2020 · discussion on HN
- 6How I run my servers3 people · 1 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 7Web3 is centralized2 people · 453 points · first shared 2022 · 482 comments on HN
- 8Things I Believe About Software Engineering2 people · 422 points · first shared 2020 · 225 comments on HN
- 9Timezone Bullshit2 people · 402 points · first shared 2021 · 319 comments on HN
- 10The two questions I ask every interviewer2 people · 309 points · first shared 2017 · 303 comments on HN
- 11Languages I want to write2 people · 190 points · first shared 2019 · 139 comments on HN
- 12Recursive Filesystem Entries2 people · 32 points · first shared 2017 · 4 comments on HN
- 13Subdomains as Identity2 people · 4 points · first shared 2022 · discussion on HN
- 14How traceroute works2 people · 4 points · first shared 2017 · 1 comments on HN
- 15There is no such thing as a static website2 people · 3 points · first shared 2022 · 2 comments on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
Glench · 2026-07-17
There’s also the article “Consider SQLite”: https://blog.wesleyac.com/posts/consider-sqlite
The above article was what convinced me to use SQLite in my new business. 5 years later, serving 120+ million requests per month and still working great. To be fair, most of those requests are served out of redis, but I’m still running off of cheap digital ocean droplets.
somishere · 2024-02-12
Not an expert, however (lol) - even if the recommendations here are solid - this doesn't feel like a particularly well-reasoned comparison.
IMHO maintaining a large number of files on disk (be it 16m or 1.5b) should be a non-starter (not to mention that zipping them to slightly reduce the count removes one of the benefits of having them in the first place). A database makes sense - as does SOC between generation and distribution if it brings benefit - but immediately writing off SQLite because of write performance[1]? Similarly the arguments against pmtiles feel outdated and ignorant of the developing nature of the protocol (appreciate it's a 2yo post!).
OSM deciding on a format here has potential to significantly shape things to come. Hopefully Paul has progressed his thinking a bit since this was written.
[1] https://blog.wesleyac.com/posts/consider-sqlite
javajosh · 2023-07-31
I think this is a good question and NOT monitoring services is something I need to fix. Consider https://blog.wesleyac.com/posts/how-i-run-my-servers. His unit files do not mention any monitoring. There are a variety of sysadmin things I'm bad at. For example, I do not know off the top of my head where to look for cron job failures or the IP addresses of malicious ssh login attempts, to take two examples. This concerns me because normally I'm very curious, and even a bit of a completist, but when it comes to sysadmin tasks I tend to "hope for the best".
rgoulter · 2023-03-31
c.f. Nix survey results from last year, which indicates many of the respondents use NixOS as their daily Linux distribution. (e.g. number of responses for just "uses gnome" and "uses plasma" are about half of the number of responses for "use NixOS daily").
https://discourse.nixos.org/t/2022-nix-survey-results/18983
Many of those who do use NixOS as a desktop Linux are enthusiastically happy about it.
Indeed, this user described the combination of nice features & rough edges as "cursed". (It's so good you won't want to use anything else, but it's too rough to recommend generally).
https://blog.wesleyac.com/posts/the-curse-of-nixos
tbran · 2022-04-25
Yes, works great for my sites (they are mostly read-heavy). I used to default to Postgresql, now I default to sqlite.
This [0] is a good article with some benchmarks, misconceptions about speed, and limitations.
[0]: https://blog.wesleyac.com/posts/consider-sqlite
wiseowise · 2024-09-28
https://blog.wesleyac.com/posts/robert-martin
Part about politics, race, gender. He is insane.
pxc · 2023-06-24
You mean like this? https://blog.wesleyac.com/posts/the-curse-of-nixos
You should still write your commentary on the idea, though!
okhuman · 2022-08-03
I dropped postgres for sqlite and never looked back - incredibly easy to manage and spin up applications like
https://github.com/authcompanion/authcompanion2
This post sold me on it https://blog.wesleyac.com/posts/consider-sqlite
mekster · 2022-04-20
I've stopped taking it seriously after seeing blogs like this.
https://blog.wesleyac.com/posts/the-curse-of-nixos
joshgrib · 2021-12-06
I was a fan for a while until I learned all this other stuff about him
https://blog.wesleyac.com/posts/robert-martin - this is a good article
> While Martin advocates for a small, dogmatic, and incorrect set of technical ideas for making code better, that's not why most people are upset with him — it's far more common for people to be upset about his views on race and gender, and particularly the way that someone in a position of power expressing those views hurts people in the communities that he's a part of
scriptnull · 2021-05-27
Time to pull up my RSS reader!
https://drewdevault.com/
http://jvns.ca/
https://www.benkuhn.net/
https://danluu.com/
https://scattered-thoughts.net/
http://antirez.com/
https://www.kalzumeus.com/
https://neilkakkar.com/
https://zachholman.com/
http://rachelbythebay.com/w/
https://endler.dev/
https://www.expatsoftware.com/articles/
https://www.the-paper-trail.org/
https://tonsky.me/
https://dave.cheney.net/
https://blog.wesleyac.com/
https://blog.samaltman.com/
AlexITC · 2023-08-06
Hi hn,
Since I shared the AudioCraft cool project with my family, they were keen to try it but there does not seem to be any live version from it, I decided to host my own for a while and detailed my steps in this guide.
There is a live MusicGen demo app for hn users to try, I don't know how long it will last online because the server doesn't seem to be capable of handling many concurrent requests: https://audiocraft.wiringbits.net/
In a preview hn discussion about AudioCraft I saw a few people that weren't sure how to execute it, this guide can hopefully help the community (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36972347).
The way to deploy this version is the old-school way, similar to a previous hn discussion (https://blog.wesleyac.com/posts/how-i-run-my-servers) that generated some interest.
Overall, this piece of technology is pretty interesting and fun, I hope the guide helps.
Thanks.
mdp2021 · 2022-04-25
I do not quite understand the premises:
> Given the complexity
Which complexity? It is the simplest possible widespread, reliable and effective solution. Which makes it a primary choice.
> it seems like there are use cases or needs here that I'm not seeing
On the contrary, the use cases for the traditional Relational DB engines are defined: when you need a concurrency manager better than filesystem access. (Or maybe some unimplemented SQL function; or special features.) Otherwise, SQLite would be the natural primary candidate, given the above.
Edit:
I concur about https://blog.wesleyac.com/posts/consider-sqlite being a close to essential read if one has the poster's doubt.
To its "So, what's the catch?" section, I would add: SQLite does not implement the whole of SQL (things that come to mind on the spot are variables; the possibility of recursion was implemented only recently, etc).
DyslexicAtheist · 2022-01-06
> I believe the idea of Web3/Crypto is that it's decentralized
Web3 is Centralized: https://blog.wesleyac.com/posts/web3-centralized - discussed here a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29766497
Even if it were decentralized, the moment a technology appears to be decentralized, we do everything in our power to add a centralized (management) layer on top (e.g. github). That layer is what the masses will flock to and eat the lunch of the original technology.
If you have a technology that is already centralized which you try to decentralize it will be nothing more than a niche existence (that might not be a bad thing. See centralized Twitter vs decentralized Mastodon as an example of this)
"Distribute", is more practical than "Decentralize" because it lets you articulate the players and don't have to worry about sybils.
The funniest thing right now is the noisy people into NFT "art" who get their work stolen and are appealing to authority in meatspace.
muterad_murilax · 2022-02-11
Also:
Part 2: https://blog.wesleyac.com/posts/snes-dev-2-background-graphics
Part 3: https://blog.wesleyac.com/posts/snes-dev-3-input
Part 4: https://blog.wesleyac.com/posts/snes-dev-4-nmi-and-vblank
Part 5: https://blog.wesleyac.com/posts/snes-dev-5-dma
Part 6: https://blog.wesleyac.com/posts/snes-dev-6-sprites