Gunnar Wolf - Nice grey life - page 22

– Me llamo Gunnar, y soy programador. – ¡Hola, Gunnar! – Tengo que contarles hoy respecto a mi abuso de las abstracciones y de la automatización. Por aprovechar lasfacilidades de un /framework/ completo y poderoso, me he ido olvidando de las interacciones reales. Me engolosiné con un ORM que me presenta los datos como objetos, y me olvido de la realidad de su representación entidad-referencial. Mis métodos son todos cortitos y asumo que el ciclo de atención a solicitudes es corto, olvidando que dejo referencias en memoria. Hago llamadas a procedimientos remotos en proveedores SaaS y no considero que pueden...

As far as how to install and maintain Drupal, it would seem there is no need to dig any further. Installing Drupal in any hosting provider is just a matter of decompressing a tarball, and Drush large-scale automation gives the seasoned sysadmin a wealth of administrative aides. However, when considering integration with the system as a whole, there is ample room for improvement. Drupal cannot exist outside of a given environment. Say, the PHP version used, the way it is integrated into its host operating system, the modules for connecting to the database — And the database engine itself. Ideally,...

Artículos y columnas publicados en 2015

180 degrees — people say their life has changed by 180° whenever something alters their priorities, their viewpoints, their targets in life. In our case, it’s been 180 days. 183 by today, really. The six most amazing months in my life. We are still the same people, with similar viewpoints and targets. Our priorities have clearly shifted. But our understanding of the world, and our sources of enjoyment, and our outlook for the future… Are worlds apart. Not 180°, think more of a quantic transposition.

<Sigh/> For the second time since I joined Debian, I missed DebConf. This time, mostly for two completely happy reasons (which have, of course, grown up quite significatively): But adding to that very important factor, early-to-mid August is possibly the worst date for me to attend DebConf — As that’s when we start classes at UNAM, and I really don’t want to delegate introducing my class to somebody else (besides it being or not possible). Life has been quite busy here. Besides starting my seventh semester as a teacher (finally being able to present my book on operating systems to...

Basically everybody who knows me is aware that, basically for the last two years, I have been writing a book on Operating Systems for use in my class — and, of course, in any similar class. Well, long story short, as of today: What’s that in my car trunk? Lets have a closer look. Finally, Facultad de Ingeniería finished printing the book! So… Well, some minor data points: The book is (and has been for some time already!) available online as a free download. If you want to derive from it or enhance future editions in any way, just clone...

A couple of months ago, I was invited to give the starting course for the Masters degree in Free Software in the Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar university. UASB is a multinational university, with campuses in (at least) Ecuador, Chile, Bolivia and Colombia; I was doubtful at first regarding the seriousness of this proposal and the viability of the program, but time made my doubts disappear. Bolivia is going through an interesting process, as they have one of the strongest worded government mandates for migration to free software for the public administration in the next couple of years; this migration has...

I know very little about hardware. I think I have a good understanding on many aspects of what happens inside a computer, but my knowledge is clearly firmer on what happens once an operating system is already running. And even then, my understanding of the lower parts of reality is shaky at most — At least according to my self-evaluation, of course, comparing to people I’m honored to call “my peers”. During the last ~18 months, my knowledge of this part of reality, while still far from complete, has increased quite a bit — Maybe mostly showing that I’m basically...