social.omar.website

@omar
Ah, so *that's* why single-file libraries suddenly got more appealing to be once I started thinking this way.

@omar I liked the post, though was less convinced about how his static site only depends on Python 2 - itself with many layers, dependencies, and which won't see further support.
(Minimal threat model I suppose, at least in this use case)

- PHP and MySQL: stack that has been stable for a long time, has lots of legacy software written in it, is 'part of the platform' to the point where you don't even need to stand it up on shared hosting

@omar I propose that if single file C libraries are cold blooded software, PHP and MySQL are fungal software.

I think Amit Patel (https://www.redblobgames.com) originally got me onto this way of thinking -- he would talk about how he'd learned to avoid build systems as much as possible when writing his interactive articles

because he'd revisit them 5/10/20 years later and find that anything with a build step was now impossible to edit (you can't run the node or Python script on your computer 10 years later, the package dependencies are broken/incompatible, ...)

Amit led me to a similar distinction around the edit cycle of a system: systems like facebook.com which are like engines being updated and maintained by engineers every day, vs. a redblobgames article that might get one edit in five years

(and how we often end up w/ tools that are brought forward by big companies and optimized for the former case: https://hopeinsource.com/emotional/#t=07:04)