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Drew DeVault
sircmpwn.github.io · Personal blog · on HN since 2016
Drew DeVault, a free software developer, writes about C, Python, Wayland, open source tooling and criticisms of big tech companies.
What HN saysHN commenters mostly cite his posts as references: the Python 3 critique, the Nvidia rant, and his case against Slack for open source projects.
20HN people shared it
4linked it in comments
17stories submitted
625story points
8 years agolast shared
2016people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Grokking Python 3’s str2 people · 213 points · first shared 2017 · 144 comments on HN
- 2Google embraces, extends, extinguishes2 people · 22 points · first shared 2018 · 4 comments on HN
- 3Please don’t use Slack for FOSS projects2 people · 21 points · first shared 2016 · 1 comments on HN
- 4Nvidia sucks and I'm sick of it2 people · 16 points · first shared 2017 · 3 comments on HN
- 5How to write an IRC bot1 people · 215 points · first shared 2018 · 96 comments on HN
- 6Fork is not my favourite syscall1 people · 112 points · first shared 2018 · 89 comments on HN
- 7Introducing scdoc, a man page generator1 people · 4 points · first shared 2018 · discussion on HN
- 8Redirecting stderr of a running process1 people · 4 points · first shared 2018 · discussion on HN
- 9Electron considered harmful (2016)1 people · 3 points · first shared 2017 · 1 comments on HN
- 10Actually, you CAN do it1 people · 3 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 11The future of Wayland, and sway’s role in it1 people · 3 points · first shared 2017 · discussion on HN
- 12In Memoriam – Mozilla1 people · 3 points · first shared 2016 · discussion on HN
- 13A history of emergent intelligence1 people · 2 points · first shared 2018 · discussion on HN
- 14Achtung Decentralize, decentralize, decentralize1 people · 2 points · first shared 2018 · discussion on HN
- 15Getting on without Google (2016)1 people · 1 points · first shared 2018 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
randcraw · 2017-03-16
In case drewdevault.com has been blacklisted by your web proxy (as it is for mine), here's an alternate source:
https://sircmpwn.github.io/2017/03/15/How-I-learned-to-stop-worrying-a…
spangry · 2017-02-24
You might find this worth a read: http://sircmpwn.github.io/2017/01/13/The-problem-with-Python-3.html
lower · 2017-10-29
For reference: http://sircmpwn.github.io/2017/10/26/Fuck-you-nvidia.html
neya · 2017-07-27
I was recently pissed off at seeing how many open source projects use Slack despite so many issues with it.[1]
Like others have mentioned, I tried several chat clients (open source and non-open source) and realized none of them fit the bill/don't have the customizability that I wanted.
So, as stupid/crazy as this sounds, I sat down over a weekend, wrote a simple chat app on Phoenix/Elixir, hosted it on Google Cloud AppEngine, and Bingo! We were done.
I know many people will advise against this, but:
1) I'm not into devops, so this setup works really well for me since AppEngine is precisely meant for this.
2) AppEngine allows you to setup firewall rules within their interface, so I restricted access to the outside world and whitelisted only my company's IP. So, I don't really need to worry about security much.
3) Because, this is a custom solution, I was able to integrate stuff such as time tracking, verifying that confidential docs aren't shared between teams, etc.
Also, our own custom branding, client support integration within the chat (you can answer to support tickets right from within the interface).
4) I enjoyed the experience thoroughly and it integrates with my entire Saas I've developed[2] very, very nicely.
Ironically the Phoenix open source project (and similar others) themselves use Slack (why god, why?) and it's really terrible because Slack doesn't allow you to search for more than 10,000 messages. That's the last thing you want in an open source…