blog: add some older articles from my medium blog
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title: My Experience with Atom as A Vim User
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date: 2014-11-18
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from: medium
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---
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My Experience with Atom as A Vim User
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=====================================
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Historically, I am a Vim user. People know me as a very very heavy vim
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user. I have spent almost the last two years customizing [my .vimrc
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file](https://github.com/Xe/dotfiles/blob/master/.vimrc) and I have parts
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of it mapped to the ways I think. Recently I have acquired both a Mac Pro
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and a Surface Pro 3, and my vim configuration didn't work on them. For a
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while I had used Docker and the image I made of my preferred dev
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environment to shim and hack around this.
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Then I took a fresh look at [Atom](https://atom.io/){.markup--anchor
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.markup--p-anchor}, Github's text editor that claims to be a replacment
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for Sublime. Since then I have moved to using Atom as my main text
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editor for programming in OSX and Windows, but still using my fine-tuned
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vim setup in Linux. I like how I have Atom set up. It uses a lot of (but
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not all sadly) the features I have come to love in my vim setup.
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I also like that I can have the same setup on both my Mac and in
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Windows. I have the same
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[vim-mode](https://github.com/atom/vim-mode) bindings on both my machines
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(I only customize so far as to add :w and :q bindings), and easily jump
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from one to the other with Synergy and have little to no issues with
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editor differences. I typically end up taking my surface out with me to
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a lot of places and will code some new ideas on the bus or in the food
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court of the mall.
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Atom gets a lot of things right with the plugins I have. I have
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Autocomplete+ and a plugin for it that uses GoCode for autocompletion as
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I type like I have with vim-go and YouCompleteMe in Vim. Its native
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pacakge support and extensibility is bar none the easiest way to be able
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to add things to the editor I have ever seen.
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But there are problems with Atom that are mostly based on my usage of
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text editors and my understanding of programming with Javascript,
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Coffeescript, HTML and CSS. Atom is a mostly Coffeescript editor, it
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does mean that at runtime I can customize almost any aspect of the
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editor, but I would have to learn one if not 5 more languages to be able
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to describe the layouts or interfaces I would like to add to this
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editor. It also being a hybrid between a web application and a normal
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desktop application means that I am afraid to add things I normally
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would such as raw socket support for being able to collaborate on a
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single document, PiratePad style. Additionally, the Vim emulation mode
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in Atom doesn't support ex-style :-commands nor \<Leader\>, meaning that
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a fair bit of my editing is toned down and done more manually to make up
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for this.
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I wish I could just use vim natively with my preferred setup on Windows,
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OSX and Linux, but for now Atom is the lesser of all the evils.
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---
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Update: I am now atom-free on my surface pro 3
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---
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title: Web Application Development with Beego
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date: 2014-11-28
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---
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Web Application Development with Beego
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======================================
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Beego is a fantastic web application framework from the Go China
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community. It currently powers some of the biggest websites in China,
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and thus the world.
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Let's get started. For now I am going to assume you are running OSX or
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Linux. Getting Beego set up on Windows with the sqlite driver is
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nontrivial at best due to Windows being terrible.
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### Installing Beego
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The Beego developers have made a tool called bee for easier managing of
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Beego projects. To install it, run:
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```
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go get github.com/beego/bee
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go get github.com/astaxie/beego
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```
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The `bee` tool will be present in `$GOPATH/bin`. Please make sure this
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folder is in your `$PATH` or things will not work.
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### Creating a Project
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Navigate to a directory in your `$GOPATH` and run the command `bee new
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quickstart`:
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The `bee` tool created all the scaffolding we needed for our example
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program. Change into that directory and run `bee run`. Your
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application will be served on port 8080.
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Now let's take a look at the parts of Beego that are in use. Beego is a
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typical MVC style framework so there are 3 basic places you may need to
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edit code:
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The Models are Beego's powerful database-backed models (we'll get into
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those in a little bit), the Views are normal Go
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[html/template](https://godoc.org/html/template)s, and
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the Controllers are the Go code that controls the Views based on the Models.
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New Beego projects use Beego's default HTTP router, which is similar to
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Sinatra or Tornado. The default router is very simple. It will only
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route `/` to the MainController that was generated for you:
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The main file will shadow-include the router package which will seed the
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Beego router with your paths and site content. The MainController will
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embed beego.Controller so it acquires all instance methods that a Beego
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controller needs. Beego's controllers offer many methods that could be
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used based on different HTTP verbs, but this simple example only
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overrides the GET verb to serve the site. The data that will be passed
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to the template is a `map[string]interface{}` as c.Data. The last line
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tells Beego what template to render for the page, in this case
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"index.tpl". If you don't set the template it will default to
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"controller/method\_name.tpl" where method\_name is the method that was
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called on the controller. In this example it would be
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"maincontroller/get.tpl"
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---
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title: Dependency Hell
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date: 2014-11-20
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---
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Dependency Hell
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===============
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A lot of the problem that I have run into when doing development with
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nearly any stack I have used is dependency management. This relatively
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simple-looking problem just becomes such an evil, evil thing to tackle.
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There are several schools of thought to this. The first is that
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dependencies need to be frozen the second you ever see them and are only
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upgraded once in a blue moon when upstream introduces a feature you need
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or has a CVE released. The second is to have competent maintainers
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upstream that follow things like semantic versioning.
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### Ruby
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Let's take a look at how the Ruby community solves this problem.
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One job I had made us need to install **five** versions of the Ruby
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interpreter in order to be compatible with all the different projects
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they wrote. To manage the five versions of the Ruby interpreter, they
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suggested using a widely known tool called
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[rbenv](https://github.com/sstephenson/rbenv).
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This isn't actually the full list of rubies that job required. I have
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decided not to reveal that out of interest of privacy as well as the
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fact that even Gentoo did not ship a version of gcc old enough to build
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the oldest ruby.
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After all this, of course, all the dependencies are locked using the gem
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tool and another helper called bundler. It's just a mess.
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There are also language design features of ruby that really do not help
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with this all that just make simple things like "will this code run or
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not" be determined at runtime. To be fair, Python is the same way, as is
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nearly every other scripting language. In the case of Lua this is
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*beyond vital* because of the fact that Lua is designed to be embedded
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into pretty much anything, with arbitrary globals being set willy-nilly.
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Consequently this is why you can't make an autocomplete for lua without
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executing the code in its preferred environment (unless you really just
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guess based on the requires and other files present in the directory).
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### Python
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The Python community has largely copied the ruby pattern for this, but
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they advocate creating local, project-specific prefixes with all of the
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packages/eggs you installed and a list of them instead of compiling an
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entire Python interpreter per project. With the Python 2-\>3 change a
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lot of things did break. This is okay. There was a major version bump.
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Of course compiled modules would need to be redone after a change like
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that. I think the way that Python handles Unicode in version 3 is ideal
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and should be an example for other languages.
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Virtualenv and pip is not as bad as using bundler and gem for Ruby.
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Virtualenv very clearly makes changes to your environment variables that
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are easy to compare and inspect. This is in contrast to the ruby tools
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that encourage global modifications of your shell and supercede the
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packaged versions of the language interpreter.
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The sad part is that I see [this pattern of senseless locking of
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versions continuing
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elsewhere](https://github.com/tools/godep) instead of proper
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maintenance of libraries and projects.
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### Insanity
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To make matters worse, people suggest you actually embed all the source
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code for every dependency inside the repository. Meaning your commit
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graphs and code line counts are skewed based on the contents of your
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upstream packages instead of just the code you wrote. Admittedly,
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locking dependencies like this does mean that fantastic language level
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tools such as [go
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get](https://golang.org/cmd/go/#hdr-Download_and_install_packages_and_dependencies)
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work again, but overall it is just not worth the pain
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of having to manually merge in patches from upstream (but if you do
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think it is worth the pain contact me, I'm open for contract work)
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making sure to change the file paths to match your changes.
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### The Solution
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I believe the solution to all this and something that needs to be a
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wider community effort for users of all programming languages is the use
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of a technique called [semantic
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versioning](http://semver.org/). In
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some lanaguages like Go where the [import paths are based on repository
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paths](https://golang.org/doc/code.html#PackagePaths), this may mean that
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a new major version has a different repository. This is okay. Backward
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compatability is good. After you make a stable (1.0 or whathaveyou)
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release, nothing should be ever taken away or changed in the public API.
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If there needs to be a change in how something in the public API works,
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you must keep backwards compatabilty. As soon as you take away or modify
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something in the public API, you have just made a significant enough
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change worthy of a major release.
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We need to make semver a de-facto standard in the community instead of
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freezing things and making security patches hard to distribute.
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Also, use the standard library more. It's there for a reason. It doesn't
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change much so the maintainers are assumed to be sane if you trust the
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stability of the language.
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This is just my \$0.02.
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---
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title: Instant Development Environments in Docker
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date: 2014-10-24
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---
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Instant Development Environments in Docker
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==========================================
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I have been using a few shell scripts for turbocharging development
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using Docker and today I have released the first version of a simple
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tool I call "[dev](https://github.com/Xe/dev)". Usage is very very simple.
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```
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$ dev up
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Starting up container for spike
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spike-dev (43c5c1) running!
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To use this container please attach to it with:
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$ docker attach spike-dev
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$ docker attach spike-dev
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docker:dev:spike ~
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-->
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```
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I have made a simple [asciinema
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recording](https://asciinema.org/a/13158) describing the process of setting up and tearing down
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these containers. The development environments have the code you are
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working on mounted to \~/dev in the container.
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The containers are defined by a simple manifest file in yaml:
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```
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base: xena/base
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repopath: github.com/Xe/test
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golang: false
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ssh: true
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user: xena
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projname: test
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```
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Right now dev is a very immature tool and currently Works For Me ™. If
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you have any issues with it or questions about it, please open an issue
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on its [GitHub issue
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tracker](https://github.com/Xe/dev/issues/new).
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Thanks for taking a look at it and please let me know if it works for
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you too!
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---
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title: MPD Via Docker
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date: 2014-10-20
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---
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MPD Via Docker
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==============
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Today I got mpd set up inside docker to replace running it locally.
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Being the perfectionist I am, I also got a simple web UI for mpd
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([ympd](http://www.ympd.org/)) set up.
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You can find the source repos here:
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- [<https://github.com/Xe/docker-ympd>\
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The ympd web frontend]
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- [<https://github.com/Xe/docker-mpd-kabaka>\
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A good friend's patchset to mpd in the form of a docker
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container]
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- [<https://github.com/Xe/docker-ncmpcpp>\
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ncmpcpp for controlling mpd from the command line]
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Readmes will be in each repository shortly.
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---
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title: Old Articles Recovered
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date: 2019-01-17
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---
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# Old Articles Recovered
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I found an old backup that contained a few articles from my old [Medium](https://medium.com/@theprincessxena) blog. I have converted them to markdown and added them to the blog archives:
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- 2014-11-28 - [Web Application Development with Beego](https://christine.website/blog/beego-2014-11-28)
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- 2014-11-20 - [Dependency Hell](https://christine.website/blog/dependency-hell-2014-11-20)
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- 2014-11-18 - [My Experience with Atom as A Vim User](https://christine.website/blog/atom-as-vim-2014-11-18)
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- 2014-10-24 - [Instant Development Environments in Docker](https://christine.website/blog/dev-2014-10-24)
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- 2014-10-20 - [MPD Via Docker](https://christine.website/blog/mpd-docker-2014-10-20)
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I hope these are at all useful.
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