Website Refresh

I’m now using Hugo to render my website. I’ve been using it in other places like the home page of Insstant and I like it a lot. The first thing that stood out to me when I tried it was the speed. It is insanely fast.

I’ve ported the content over from my previous website. I’m working on porting over my old blog posts. Most of them make me cringe hard. I’m tempted to just hit delete, but I’ll keep them. It shows how I was then and how much I’ve grown. Hopefully I’ll look back at these new posts in a decade and cringe just as hard.

I was using Hyde as that is Python based, but the project seems abandoned by the creator now. The last update was a year and a half ago, with issues and pull requests piling up.

I find this life cycle software projects to be fascinating. It is most visible with open source software, but it is true of every single project. It takes a life of its own as people come and go and interest waxes and wanes and the landscape changes around it. The status of a project with a single maintainer or one very strong lead then becomes a window into their life.

Over 25 years later, Linus Torvalds is still merging away! What a beast. It shows that his life isn’t at odds with the demands of the project but is in fact quite the opposite. He doesn’t have to will himself into doing things. I doubt that anyone can will themselves into doing something for 25 years. I’m sure the insane success of Linux helped whenever he felt that the haters were grinding him down.

Fifteen years ago, when commercial interest in Linux began to increase but the kernel community was still very small, the process started to become unmanageable, Torvalds said. The community decided to switch to the Bitkeeper revision control system, which was a lifesaver for Torvalds “because the process before that was such a disaster,” he said.

“That was probably the only time in the history of Linux where I was like, “this is not working,” Torvalds said. “In retrospect that might have been the moment where I just gave up.”

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“I really like what I’m doing. I like waking up and having a job that is technically interesting and challenging without being too stressful so I can do it for long stretches; something where I feel I am making a real difference and doing something meaningful not just for me.”

“I occasionally have taken breaks from my job. The 2-3 weeks I worked on Git to get that started for example. But every time I take a longer break, I get bored. When I go diving for a week, I look forward to getting back. I never had the feeling that I need to take a longer break.”

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People change. Projects change. Priorities change. Sometimes they change together in sync. They definitely shape each other, for better or for worse.