2024

Book Review: Learning eBPF

The extended Berkeley Packet Filter, or eBPF for short, is a plugin architecture for the Linux kernel. Using eBPF, it is possible to load (short) programs into the kernel at runtime, and have them be executed by the kernel. As the name suggests, the technology started out as a method to build custom filters for network packets, but it has since been extended and become much more general.

Ants and Chips

Imagine a bunch of wood chips randomly distributed on a surface. Now add an ant, randomly walking around amongst the chips. Whenever it bumps into a chip, the ant picks up the chip; if it bumps into another chip, it drops the one it is carrying and keeps walking.

How will such a system evolve over time?

Go is Weird

Go is weird. For all its intended (and frequently achieved) simplicity and straightforwardness, I keep being surprised by its rough edges and seemingly arbitrary corner cases. Here is one.

Who is Responsible for Writing Go Interfaces, Anyway?

For every function, data type, or other such code artifact, there are two bits of code: the part that defines and implements it, and the one that uses it.

As I have been thinking (here and here) about the proper use and understanding of Go’s interface construct, the question came up, who is actually responsible for writing the interface: the person who defines the data type, or the person who uses it?

Indispensable Project Management Artifacts and Activities

I was recently reminded of the minimal set of project management artifacts and activities that are, in one way or another, simply indispensable.

None of this is news: all of this has been well established for at least 25 years (a quarter-century!), so I was surprised that apparently it is still not common knowledge or practice — at least not as common as one would wish for.