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InfluxDB
Power Real-Time Data Analytics at Scale. Get real-time insights from all types of time series data with InfluxDB. Ingest, query, and analyze billions of data points in real-time with unbounded cardinality.
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pharo
Pharo is a dynamic reflective pure object-oriented language supporting live programming inspired by Smalltalk.
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nix-direnv
A fast, persistent use_nix/use_flake implementation for direnv [maintainer=@Mic92 / @bbenne10]
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SaaSHub
SaaSHub - Software Alternatives and Reviews. SaaSHub helps you find the best software and product alternatives
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Cxx-Buck2-vcpkg-Examples
A C++ example repository using Buck 2 with vcpkg (the C++ package manager) and scripts to generate a compile-commands.json.
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Cxx-Buck2-Conan-Examples
A C++ example repository using Buck 2 with Conan (the C++ package manager) and scripts to generate a compile-commands.json.
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OCaml-Buck-2-Examples
This contains documentation and examples on how to use Buck 2 to build OCaml projects.
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logseq
A local-first, non-linear, outliner notebook for organizing and sharing your personal knowledge base. Use it to organize your todo list, to write your journals, or to record your unique life.
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SaaSHub
SaaSHub - Software Alternatives and Reviews. SaaSHub helps you find the best software and product alternatives
https://github.com/facebook/buck2/tree/main/examples/with_pr...
More "real world" examples are dtolnay's CXX for Rust and C++ interop:
I would say the compiler explorer[0] fits the definition perfectly. It may seem like a straightforward piece of software, but it has immensely changed the way people discuss and share knowledge around compilers and performance optimization.
I regularly feel the impact on the quality of forum discussions. There's a lot less speculation about if "call X gets inlined", or "Y gets vectorized". Bold claims can be supported or disproven quickly by sharing a link.
And then you have tools like llvm-mca[1] or uiCA[2], if you don't mind going into the weeds.
[0] https://godbolt.org/
[1] https://llvm.org/docs/CommandGuide/llvm-mca.html
[2] https://uica.uops.info/
Smalltalk and as a particular case Pharo is an example of this for me. (https://pharo.org/). When I was in uni a paper that I always came back to was Licklider's 1960s paper on human-computer symbiosis (https://worrydream.com/refs/Licklider_1960_-_Man-Computer_Sy...)
"[...]to enable men and computers to cooperate in making decisions and controlling complex situations without inflexible dependence on predetermined programs."
Experimenting with Smalltalk (and also with Clojure and Emacs) was one of the things to me that genuinely felt like that vision of programs as living, interactive, organic things rather than the formulaic, static and low level programming that I was used to learning.
I don't think there's a right way to do it, you are correct in that learning NixOS is pretty tedious.
Re: flakes, my personal opinion is to use flakes. While Flakes are imperfect, they still provide a lot of functionality that Nix doesn't otherwise have. In my mind, it's like Nix's equivalent of "Go modules" or something like that. I do feel like people who do not like flakes make many valid points (the boilerplate, the fact that the top-level flake expression is a subset of Nix for some reason, etc.) but the argument isn't that those problems shouldn't be solved, it's that flakes are a sub-optimal design. Since they're so proliferated throughout the ecosystem though, it is quite unlikely that Nix or any prominent fork will outright drop flakes support any time in the near future. For better or worse, Flakes are part of the Nix ecosystem for the foreseeable future. In my opinion, one may as well take advantage of that.
If you haven't already, I'd get your feet wet with installing Nix on a non-NixOS machine first, and please feel free to ask questions about Nix in the NixOS Discourse "Help" section.
I have some recommendations:
1. https://github.com/nix-community/nix-direnv - Since Nix derivations usually wrap around other build systems, the entire derivation is recomputed when any file in it changes; using direnv, you can just get your normal dev tools upon cd'ing into your project directories. This gives you a lot of the benefits of Nix during local development, but with your normal stack, and without needing to globally install anything.
2. If you are trying to build something, chances are you can find inspiration in Nixpkgs. Are you curious how you might package a Bevy game? No problem: literally search "bevy" on the Nixpkgs GitHub repo and see what comes up. I found a derivation that does: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/pkgs/games/jump...
3. If you use flakes, you should keep the flake "schema" handy. There are a lot of different kinds of flake outputs and there are different ways to specify the same thing, which is somewhat needlessly confusing; keeping the flake schema handy will make it easier to understand what Nix is looking for in a flake, which might make it easier to see what's going on (especially if it's obfuscated.) The most important takeaway here: A command like `nix run flake#attr` will try multiple different attributes. https://nixos.wiki/wiki/flakes#Flake_schema
4. Likewise, I really recommend reading up on what NixOS modules are. NixOS modules are the basis for configurations on NixOS, and having a clear understanding of what is even going on with them is a good idea. For example, you should understand the difference between the Nix language's `import` directive, and using the NixOS modules `imports` attribute to import other NixOS modules. Understanding how the configuration merge works saves a lot of headache, makes it easier to understand how people's configurations works, and also makes it easier to modularize your own NixOS configurations, too. https://nixos.wiki/wiki/NixOS_modules
Unfortunately though, there's just no way to make it "click", and I can't guarantee that it's worth all of the effort. For me, I felt it was, but yes, there's no one correct way to do it.
But please feel free to ask questions if anything seems confusing.
I don't think there's a right way to do it, you are correct in that learning NixOS is pretty tedious.
Re: flakes, my personal opinion is to use flakes. While Flakes are imperfect, they still provide a lot of functionality that Nix doesn't otherwise have. In my mind, it's like Nix's equivalent of "Go modules" or something like that. I do feel like people who do not like flakes make many valid points (the boilerplate, the fact that the top-level flake expression is a subset of Nix for some reason, etc.) but the argument isn't that those problems shouldn't be solved, it's that flakes are a sub-optimal design. Since they're so proliferated throughout the ecosystem though, it is quite unlikely that Nix or any prominent fork will outright drop flakes support any time in the near future. For better or worse, Flakes are part of the Nix ecosystem for the foreseeable future. In my opinion, one may as well take advantage of that.
If you haven't already, I'd get your feet wet with installing Nix on a non-NixOS machine first, and please feel free to ask questions about Nix in the NixOS Discourse "Help" section.
I have some recommendations:
1. https://github.com/nix-community/nix-direnv - Since Nix derivations usually wrap around other build systems, the entire derivation is recomputed when any file in it changes; using direnv, you can just get your normal dev tools upon cd'ing into your project directories. This gives you a lot of the benefits of Nix during local development, but with your normal stack, and without needing to globally install anything.
2. If you are trying to build something, chances are you can find inspiration in Nixpkgs. Are you curious how you might package a Bevy game? No problem: literally search "bevy" on the Nixpkgs GitHub repo and see what comes up. I found a derivation that does: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/pkgs/games/jump...
3. If you use flakes, you should keep the flake "schema" handy. There are a lot of different kinds of flake outputs and there are different ways to specify the same thing, which is somewhat needlessly confusing; keeping the flake schema handy will make it easier to understand what Nix is looking for in a flake, which might make it easier to see what's going on (especially if it's obfuscated.) The most important takeaway here: A command like `nix run flake#attr` will try multiple different attributes. https://nixos.wiki/wiki/flakes#Flake_schema
4. Likewise, I really recommend reading up on what NixOS modules are. NixOS modules are the basis for configurations on NixOS, and having a clear understanding of what is even going on with them is a good idea. For example, you should understand the difference between the Nix language's `import` directive, and using the NixOS modules `imports` attribute to import other NixOS modules. Understanding how the configuration merge works saves a lot of headache, makes it easier to understand how people's configurations works, and also makes it easier to modularize your own NixOS configurations, too. https://nixos.wiki/wiki/NixOS_modules
Unfortunately though, there's just no way to make it "click", and I can't guarantee that it's worth all of the effort. For me, I felt it was, but yes, there's no one correct way to do it.
But please feel free to ask questions if anything seems confusing.
Yeah, one of the best programmers I've ever worked with would launch Epsilon (a commercial emacs style editor for various OSs) each morning and then do _all_ of his work from it.
The closest I come to that is messing emacs keyboard shortcuts when I'm not using a Mac.
I really wish that there were more programs which completely re-examined all aspects of various tasks _and_ incorporated scripting in a fashion which allows folks to take advantage of it.
Some of the apps I would consider if putting together such a list:
- LyX --- billed as a "What You See is What You Mean" Document Processor, v2.4 is looking to be quite promising...
- TeXshop/TeXstudio --- the former in particular is _very_ nice for folks who aren't able to devote the effort to learning emacs
- pyspread --- have a spreadsheet where every cell can contain a Python program or SVG graphic is _way_ cool --- I just wish it was as flexible as Lotus Improv/Quantrix Financial Modeler
- Solvespace --- I wish I could do better with 3D --- usually I fall back to OpenSCAD, esp. now that there's a Python-enabled version: https://pythonscad.org/ though I often use: https://github.com/derkork/openscad-graph-editor
- TikzEdt/IPE --- I really wish there was a nice graphical front-end for METAPOST/METAFONT (or that the graphical front-end for Asymptote was more flexible)
On the gripping hand, one has to give props to the Krita folks for making scripting a first-class citizen: https://scripting.krita.org/lessons/introduction
I felt that way about node and yet node lead to an explosion of poorly written and designed packages and constant notifications about needing to upgrade project X because it depended on Y which depends on Z and Z has some DoS issue if you pass the wrong regex to it.
I don't feel confident that rust won't go the same way when I tried to update the rust docs (https://github.com/rust-lang/docs.rs)
cargo build
I really like the buku terminal bookmark manager. https://github.com/jarun/buku I like that I can just `man buku` when I don't understand something and I can actually find the answer I'm looking for.
lazygit (https://github.com/jesseduffield/lazygit) is enlightenmentware for me. It helps me navigate Git commands I forget all the time, like using the reflog to undo things, custom patches, or rebase --onto.
It makes working with Git a lot more fun, and I giggle like a little child whenever one of the weirder things work out again.
https://github.com/dtolnay/cxx
and my own ones (sorry to again link these, but I do not know of any others):
I have a couple of these to add as well:
VCVRack - simply one of the most mind-expanding things a synthesizer-nerd can play with. (https://vcvrack.com/)
ZynthianOS - another example of a simple software solution to a problem nobody realized existed, opening the door to an absolutely astonishing array of Audio processing tools (https://zynthian.org/)
I have a couple of these to add as well:
VCVRack - simply one of the most mind-expanding things a synthesizer-nerd can play with. (https://vcvrack.com/)
ZynthianOS - another example of a simple software solution to a problem nobody realized existed, opening the door to an absolutely astonishing array of Audio processing tools (https://zynthian.org/)
I'm sure Magit is lovely. But I can't resist sharing the story of my bad experience with it over a decade ago (which has left me scared away).
It was maybe early 2012, and I was excited to try Magit. I got it set up, and called 'M-x magit-init' from a source file I was editing. My understanding was that this would create a new git repo in that source file's directory, ending up with something like "/home/beautron/myproject/.git".
But something else happened. The git repo was put here instead: "/home/beautron/myproject/~/myproject/.git". Note the peculiar "~" directory, created inside the project directory.
Huh. Weird. Well, let's get rid of this mess and try again. I went to the project directory in my bash shell, typed "rm -r ~", and hit enter. Somewhere between my mind firing the signal to hit enter, and enter actually being hit, I realized with horror what this command would do. But it was too late to cancel the brain signal.
I didn't lose everything, because I had not typed something worse like "rm -rf ~", and somewhere in my home directory tree was a read-only file. So the command only deleted so far as that file, and then paused to ask for confirmation.
I estimated I lost about half of everything (the first half of the alphabet was gone from my home directory). The most frustrating thing was not even being sure what all I had lost. On the plus side, this experience improved my regimen around backups.
As I was trying to salvage the wreck of my system, I had a separate laptop out on the side, where I was trying to get some help, or maybe just some sympathy, from the #archlinux irc channel on freenode. But the two people who responded to me on the channel were very snarky to me. I felt they thought I was clearly an idiot for having run that command.
The irc people refused to believe that Magit created the "~" directory. They were convinced I had done that myself, with some other series of stupid commands. (If you had to guess the source of weird "~", who would you choose: the established Magit project, or the guy who just deleted half his home directory?)
But a short time later I was vindicated! From Magit's github issue 383, Feb 29, 2012:
> So if you're editing "~/Temp/foobar/boo.txt" and call "M-x magit-init" which defaults to "~/Temp/foobar", instead of creating a git repo in "/Users/jimeh/Temp/foobar" it creates it in "/Users/jimeh/Temp/foobar/~/Temp/foobar".
Source: https://github.com/magit/magit/issues/383
It was a long night (and I had to leave on a trip the next morning). Now it's fun memory, perhaps with a number of lessons in it.
In my case Cycle JS (https://cycle.js.org) was very enlightenment and pedagogic. It make me realize that software is always and only a matter of data transformation. And those pure data transformations can be keep separated and decoupled from "side effects".
Rust, the language itself depends on 220 packages: https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/blob/e8753914580fb42554a79...
If you trust nobody, it is hard to use anything.
But about your second note, (environment, mismatched dependencies), I would argue that Rust provides the best tooling to solve or identify issues on that area.
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