Dont

End The
Week
With
Nothing
by Patrick McKenzie

Issue 47 April 2014

Curator
Lim Cheng Soon

Contributors
Rick Webb
Patrick McKenzie
Tom Martin
Csaba Okrona
Padraig Brady
Hadi Hariri
Julia Evans
Steve Pear
James Long
Leo Babauta

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Dont
End The
Week
With
Nothing
by Patrick McKenzie

Issue 47 April 2014

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Contents
FEATURES

04 The Economics of Star Trek

By Rick Webb

10 Dont End The Week With

Nothing
By Patrick

Mckenzie
Illustration by Lorenz Hideyoshi Ruwwe [hideyoshi.deviantart.com]

PROGRAMMING
16

SPECIAL

A Quick Look at the Redis Source Code

By Tom Martin

19

The Story of My Desk

By James Long

Git Tips From the Trenches

By Csaba Okrona

23

33

Common Shell Script Mistakes

How I Learned to Stop Procrastinating, &

Love Letting Go

39

By Leo Babauta

By Pdraig Brady

27

Refactoring to Functional Why Class?

By Hadi Hariri

29

Paths to Being a Kernel Hacker

By Julia Evans

31

The Complete Guide to Centering a Div

By Steve Pear

For links to Hacker News dicussions, visit hackermonthly.com/issue-47

FEATURES

The Economics of Star Trek

The Proto-Post Scarcity Economy
By Rick Webb

the
economics of Star
Trek, there have
been three broad approaches in the
past:
hen looking at

1. Trying to shoehorn Star Treks

economics into the model of
parecon. This is problematic
because of the obviously hierarchical society of Starfleet, with
Admirals, captains, commanders, chancellors, governors and
whatnot, and the clear existence
of a relatively strong Federation
president, who is democratically
elected. Plus we never once see
a labor meeting, and its pretty
obvious personal freedom and
enrichment are important to
society.

4 FEATURES

2. Calling the Federation Communist, based on comments

from Kirk in Star Trek IV on
not having any money in the
future and Picards speech about
the economics of the federation being significantly different
than 21st century economics
and people pursuing personal
enrichment rather than the
accumulation of wealth. The
problem with this definition
is its lazy; just because they
dont pursue the accumulation
of wealth does not mean the
Federation is communist. There
is absolutely, obviously, still private property in the Federation:
most obviously Joseph Siskos
restaurant in New Orleans and
Chateau Picard, evidencing that
not just small possessions are

allowed but that the land itself is

still privately owned. One could
argue that these arent really
Sisko and Picards to own, but
they are routinely referred to as
his restaurant and vineyard so
we gotta go with Occams Razor
here and assume they do, in fact,
own them.
3. A sort-of guessing game based
on the various mentions of
Federation Credits and trying
to glean the system from every
single mention of money or
payments within the series.
This is always a pain in the ass,
especially given the original
series sometimes did things that
were pretty out there according to later firmly established
canon, and later firmly rejected
by Roddenberry himself before

his death. Additionally, many of

the assumptions about Federation Credits seem iffy: are they
really currency? Do they have to
be? Are they scrip? Rations? We
simply dont know. And in any
case, trying to define the entire
economy of the Federation
and perhaps even learning
something from it should be
more than a matter of resolving obscure trivia references
(though of course its fun).
None of them seem correct.
None of them seem realistic. And
yes, lets go for realistic here, why
not?
Lets take a different approach
here.

What we know
Lets start with the facts.
The Federation is clearly not a
centrally planned economy, and
therefore obviously not communist.
Individual freedom of choice is very
obvious. Everyone chooses their
careers, and there are many mentions of this throughout the series
witness every single time someone waxes nostalgic about why they
chose to enter Starfleet. Witness
Bashir going on about why he
wanted to be a doctor instead of a
tennis player. Witness Wesley dropping out of Starfleet. Witness Vash
being an archeologist and Kasidy
Yates being a cargo ship captain.
Private ownership still exists the
biggest examples, to me, are Siskos
restaurant and Chateau Picard,
but many other examples abound
from all the trinkets everyone owns
in their quarters. Crushers family
owns a (haunted) cottage on some
old-Scottish settlement planet. The
Maquis routinely refer to our land,
which they presumably owned,

and while an individual tribe may

have collectively owned the land
through a corporation, like the
Alaska Native Land Claims Settlement Act, or through a co-op, they
clearly owned the land, just like
anyone else owned land, while the
Federation was the superseding
government that could give that
territory away to another sovereign
party, much like the ceding of the
Sudetenland or Guam. Any alternative situation (the government
owning the land and renting it to
the settlers?) is never alluded to and
in any case the words stated (our
land) clearly indicate private ownership is still very much part of the
cultural zeitgeist. Then we have J.
J. Abrams Star Trek and its pretty
unlikely that, what? The Federation
owned that shack Kirk grew up in,
that sweet Corvette or that roadhouse bar? Those items sure looked
privately owned. Some spaceships
were privately owned. Finally, lets
not forget Star Trek: Generations
when Kirk says in the Nexus This
is my house. I sold it years ago.
Next: The Federation is not true
post scarcity economy: famines routinely still exist, transportation lines
are vital in moving around goods
within the Federation. Transportation is a whole grey area in most
post-scarcity economic works, at
least the few Ive read. The Federation might have enough food, but
at any time some planet may well
be starving or in need of medicine
that needs to come from somewhere else.

It seems pretty clear cut that

jobs are optional. They explicitly
state on many occasions that the
Federation is based on a philosophy
of self-improvement and cultural
enrichment, and in any case we
sure do run into a lot of artists in
the Federation. I particularly love
those hippies in TOS. The Federation seems a bit like Williamsburg
a lot of artists who dont need to
work. Or maybe more like the UK
at the height of its social programs
supporting artists. Let a million J.
K. Rowlings bloom. Its a bit weird
to me that weve never seen people
who sit around and literally do
nothing, but then why would we?
And, of course, weve certainly seen
more than a few societies that are
all chilled out and not doing much
(Risa, etc.).
Next: The Federation doesnt use
money. This is basically absolute.
Kirk says it in Star Trek IV. Picard
says it several times. Quark mocks it
to Rom. Roddenberry put it down
as a hard and fast rule. No theory
of Star Trek economics can be real
while ignoring this fact. It has to
be addressed. It is the basis of all
confusion and, honestly, interest in
figuring it out at all.
Money still exists, so do banks.
Crusher buys fabric at Farpoint.
DS9 makes mention of the Bank of
Bolias, on a Federation planet. Nog
loans Jake latinum.
We also know there exists such a
thing as the Federation Credit. This
presumably causes some confusion
since they are routinely referred to
like money (Kirk mentions that the
Federation has invested 122,200
credits in Spock), and things are
purchased for credits (Uhura buys a
tribble, Quark occasionally accepts
them at his bar).

This would seem to be a giant

contradiction to the lack of existence of money. Well get to that in
a bit.
There is still a ruling class, or
classes it is not perfectly-egalitarian in a communist manner. We
have admirals and presidents and
governors and colony leaders. There
are enlisted personnel in Starfleet
and officers. Some are elected, some
are appointed. Some Federation
members were even hereditary
nobilities.
There is still commerce (and
even Vulcan commerce), trade,
trading vessels, and, we can
assume, corporations, in some form
(though this may not be 100%
definite Dytallix is mined for the
Federation. It isnt 100% clear it is
in the Federation).

Some thought exercises

Lets do a couple thought exercises.
First: if you eat a meal at Siskos
Creole Kitchen, do you pay? It
seems almost definite that you
dont pay. If you paid, with anything, including Federation Credits,
that would be money. You could
barter, but it seems if the entire
economy was a barter economy,
wed hear it. No, it seems almost
certain that you go to eat at Siskos,
you dont pay, and Joseph Sisko
doesnt pay for his supplies, and his
suppliers probably dont pay for
theirs.
Next: Can everyone have anything? Anything at all? Is the Federation a perfect post scarcity society?
The answer seems almost certainly
no. If you went to a replicator, or a
dealer, or the Utopia Planatia Fleet
Yards and asked for 10 million star
ships, the answer would be no.
More concretely, when the Borg
attacked, and during the Dominion

6 FEATURES

War, the Federation suffered from a

serious starship shortage.
Next: Imagine theres some level
of welfare benefits in every country, including America. Thats easy.
Thats true. Imagine that, as the
economy became more efficient
and wealthy, the society could
afford to give more money in welfare benefits, and chooses to do so.
Next, imagine that this kept happening until society could afford to
give the equivalent of something
like $10 million US dollars at current value to every man, woman
and child. And imagine that, over
the time that took to happen,
society got its shit together on
education, health, and the dignity
of labor. Imagine if that self-same
society frowned upon the conspicuous display of consumption and
there was a large amount of societal pressure, though not laws, on
people that evolved them into not
being obsessed with wealth. Is any
of that so crazy? Is it impossible?
I think that is basically whats
going on on Star Trek.

A Theory of Star Trek Economics

I believe the federation is a protopost scarcity society evolved from
democratic capitalism. It is, essentially, European socialist capitalism
vastly expanded to the point where
no one has to work unless they
want to.
It is massively productive and
efficient, allowing for the effective
decoupling of labor and salary for
the vast majority (but not all) of
economic activity. The amount of
welfare benefits available to all citizens is in excess of the needs of the
citizens. Therefore, money is irrelevant to the lives of the citizenry,
whether it exists or not. Resources
are still accounted for and allocated

in some manner, presumably by the

amount of energy required to produce them (say Joules). And they
are indeed credited to and debited
from each citizens account. However, the average citizen doesnt
even notice it, though the government does, and again, it is not
measured in currency units definitely not Federation Credits. There
is some level of scarcity the
Federation cannot manufacture
a million starships, for example.
This massive accounting is done by
the Federation government in the
background (witness the authority
of the Federation President over
planetary power supplies).
Because the welfare benefit is so
large, and social pressure is so strong
against conspicuous consumption,
the average citizen never pays any
attention to the amounts allocated
to them, because its perpetually
more than they need. But if they go
crazy and try and purchase, say, 10
planets or 100 starships, the system
simply says no.
Citizens have no financial need
to work, as their benefits are more
than enough to provide a comfortable life, and there is, clearly,
universal health care and education.
The Federation has clearly taken
the plunge to the other side of peoples fears about European socialist
capitalism: yes, some people might
not work. So What? Good for them.
We think most still will.

However, if they so choose they

can also get a job. Many people do
so for personal enrichment, societal pressure or through a desire
to promote social welfare. Are
those jobs paid? I would assume
that yes, those jobs are paid, in
the sense that your energy allocation is increased in the system,
though, again, your allocation is
large enough that you wouldnt
even really notice it. Why do I say
this? The big challenge here is how
does society get someone to do the
menial jobs that cannot be done in
an automated manner. Why would
anyone? There are really only two
options: there is some small, incremental increase in your hypothetical maximum consumption, thus
appealing to the subconscious in
some primal way, or massive societal pressure has ennobled those
jobs in a way that we dont these
days. I opt for the former since
it grounds everything in market
economics, albeit on a borderingon-infinitesimal manner, and that
stands to reason, since thats how
people talk in Star Trek. They talk
about individual fulfillment, buying,
selling, etc. No one was ever guilttripped into joining Starfleet, save
by maybe their family.
There is almost zero mention of
central planning. Its a capitalistic
society, its benefits are just through
the roof. Also, market economics
= crowdsourced. That is, its not
centrally planned. Its democratic.
Its the only mechanism we know
of to allocate resources that isnt
centrally planned. The alternative is that all allocations are done
algorithmically through a computer
and the economy is completely
decoupled from market forces, but
thats still basically central planning, and infinitely more complex

than assuming there is still some

semblance of market underpinning, much like we stayed on the
gold standard for far longer than we
needed to and we still have pennies
even though we dont need them.
Its a vestige of the past. Its the
constitutional monarchy.
Either way, presumably, you take
whatever job you want, and your
benefits allocations are adjusted
accordingly. But by and large you
just dont care, because the base
welfare allocation is more than
enough. Some people might care,
some people might still care about
wealth, such as Carter Winston.
More power to them. They can go
try and be rich in some non-Federation-issued currency. But most
people just dont care. After all, if
you were effectively wealthy why
would you take a job to become
wealthy? It pretty much becomes
the least likely reason to take a job.
So, behind the scenes there is a
massive internal accounting and calculation going on the economics
still happen. They just arent based
on a currency unit, and people
dont acquire things based upon a
currency value. People just acquire
things from replicators, from restaurants such as Siskos or coffee shops
like Cosimos, or, presumably, get
larger things from dealerships or
factories. This could still be called
buying, as a throwback.
Two points here: first, the
accounting is done in energy units,
so that there is no need for currency. And why not? Resource
allocation is mainly about energy
anyhow, doubly so if its only robots
building most things. And secondly,
if you never had money, never saw
it, and it didnt physically exist to
measure things, youd pretty much
tell people, like a certain 20th

century oceanographer, that you

dont have money in the 24th century, regardless of some automated
accounting. This jibes with Federation people knowing what money
is because other societies have
it but saying they dont use it.
Because they dont.
However, you could still buy and
sell things. You could take a thing
from a replicator and go to someone else and buy something else
with it. Why couldnt you? Its a
free society. Its essentially barter.
Kirk may well have sold his house
for a years supply of Romulan ale.
Or Federation Credits.
It is tempting to argue here that
the massive accounting system
uses a unit called the Federation
Credit, but I dont believe thats
the case. If it were, the credit would
be too much like money because
a) accounting is done in it, b) it is
issued by a governing body (like a
fiat currency) and c) it is fungible,
i.e. you can already buy things with
it and if you could buy things with
it AND a and b were true, it would
pretty much be a currency. This
would fly in the face of Roddenberrys absolute diktat that the Federation has no currency.
Im going to make a bold new
theory here. Federation Units are
Federation the same way that
American Cheese is American. It
is simply descriptive. Currency
was invented long before capitalism as a means to disintermediate
trades: you wanted my grain, I
didnt want your cows, I wanted
farmer Teds grapes. Rather than
make every trade a 3, 4 or 5 way
trade, we made a little certificate
we all agreed was worth something
to us and us only. This need would
still occasionally crop up in the
Federation, even without money.

I believe the Federation Unit is

a private currency, developed by
third parties to facilitate complex
trades or trades outside the Federation. I believe that the Federation
Unit is not actually underwritten or
issued by the Federation. I think it
is more akin to the Calgary Dollar
or the Chiemgauer. Or bitcoin. This
would solve so many problems. It
would make it unequivocally true
that the Federation doesnt use
money. It would give people a unit
to use as reference when they say
things are expensive. It would be a
thing citizens could acquire, if they
wanted to, through barter originally,
then allowing them to use them
to purchase things (like Tribbles
or Holosuites) from people who
elected to take them, since taking
them is optional (witness Quarks
vacillations on whether he accepts
them or not). It would make a nice
proxy for talking about investment
levels, such as when Kirk said how
much the Federation had invested
in Spock.
Foreign Reserves
Additionally, I believe that the Federation acts like any current sovereign nation state and holds foreign
reserves of currencies of other
nations. Its assumed that not all
foreign trade is done through barter.
The federation itself probably holds
foreign reserves in foreign currency
just as China holds US dollars and
England keeps a reserve of Euros.
Sisko at one point tells Quark he
could have charged rent for the
bar, but he chose not to. Presumably that would have been paid in
latinum. Presumably the Federation would have just held onto it
as foreign reserves. All evidence,
in fact, points to the fact that the
Federation operates as a nation and

8 FEATURES

uses foreign reserves exactly as we

do now. The Chinese government
holds US Dollars but you dont
hear a Chinese person say we use
dollars. This is a bit confusing by
the episode in which the Federation offers 1.5 million Federation
Credits for use of the Barzanian
wormhole, but it doesnt have to be
contradictory. Federation Credits
had value to the Barzanians, so the
Federation could simply procure
them from the issuer with its foreign reserves of other currencies at
market rate.
The Individual Can Have Money
An individual of the Federation
can procure latinum by barter for
goods, labor or, presumably Federation Credits, if they had them. I
assume that theres probably some
black market value for Federation
Credits just like any other currency,
sovereign issued or not (you can
buy a Lewes Pound on eBay right
now for $7.98). Perhaps its more
legitimate and the Units are traded
on a commodities exchange. It
really doesnt matter. As a Federation Citizen I can have gold pressed
latinum, Federation Credits, Frangs,
Darseks, Isiks, Leks, or Quatloos in
my wallet. I can have a wallet. I can
buy things with Self Sealing Stem
Bolts if I want. But none of that is
in conflict with the fact that the
Federation has no unit of currency,
has no money, and my society is
predominantly concerned with societal good and self-improvement.

Then theres the matter of

Quarks bar. Whats up with that?
He never seems to charge anyone
for drinks, but is obsessed with
money, and you can buy holosuites in latinum or Federation
Credits, and you can bet on the
Dabo table with Latinum. At first I
thought there was a whole complex thing where Quark doesnt
charge Starfleet personnel because
he made the mental calculation it
was cheaper to give them drinks
for free and keep accepting free
rent from Sisko, but then I realized
that doesnt really work because
he charges them for the Holosuites
and Dabo tables. Then I realized:
Quarks is like any other casino.
The drinks are free: they are a loss
leader against the higher profits of
the Dabo Table and Holosuites.

The Proto Post Scarcity Economy

The thing I love most about this
theory is that it seems plausible for
our future. Tom Paris said that a
new world economy takes shape in
the 22nd century. That might be a
smidge optimistic but we already
have a world economy, in one sense,
so the new one could be something
only incrementally different from
this one. Money went the way of
the dinosaur, he said, and Ft. Knox
was turned into a museum. Most of
us are already off the gold standard,
and its certainly not inconceivable
in another 180 years we dont use
paper money at all, and a single currency has dominated the planet
the Dollar is already close and it
slowly fades into the background.
From there, perhaps a cultural
shift takes place as we realize that
everyone in a job isnt the same as
a full economy, and we start to look
for models beyond capitalism that
arent all communist hoo-ha.

I sort of love that Star Trek forces

us to think about a society that has
no money but still operates with
individual freedom and without
central planning. I love that democracy is still in place. I love that
people can still buy and sell things.
Its real. Its a more realistic vision
of post-capitalism than I have seen
anywhere else. Scarcity still exists
to some extent, but society produces more than enough to satisfy
everyones basic needs. The frustrating thing is that we pretty much
do that now, we just dont allocate
properly. And allocating properly
cannot be done via central planning.
The only real out there requirement in all of this is a governmental
layer higher than the nation, and
indeed, higher than the planet.
This doesnt seem insane, I suppose, if we were to suddenly find
ourselves not alone in the universe.
And indeed we already have some
measure of international government now. Moreover, the Federation clearly adheres to the laws
made as close to home as possible
routine, since as far as we can tell
the Federation president really only
has authority over Starfleet, Foreign
Relations, power allocation, and
accounting. Virtually every other
law we encounter in the Federation
happens at the individual planet or
colony level.

Its interesting to me because

these are things were going to have
to reckon with, I believe, in my
lifetime. If robots do all the dirty
work, and the US is hugely rich,
does every single person really need
a job? Are we going to let all of that
money pile up in the 0.1% ruling
elite, or can it be distributed to
everyone? Does wealth being distributed to the people in an equal
manner mean communism absolutely? Of course it doesnt. The US
isnt communist. The UK isnt communist. Denmark isnt communist.
What happens when the surplus is
more than enough? n
Rick Webb is co-founder of The Barbarian
Group and served as its COO. Since then,
hes worked at Tumblr and Soundcloud. He
is currently a venture partner at Quotidian
Ventures, an early-stage fund operating in
New York City.
Reprinted with permission of the original author.
First appeared in hn.my/startrek (medium.com)
Illustration by Lorenz Hideyoshi Ruwwe.

Dont End The Week

With Nothing
By Patrick Mckenzie

10 FEATURES

I concentrate
more on the needs of
established software
businesses, but recently Ive been
asked for some advice by people
who are still in the trenches working at a traditional day job.
Theres absolutely nothing wrong
with day jobs. Most people have
them. Theyre an honest living.
Some people really enjoy the
particular one that they have. If
your day job is right for you, that
is wonderful and I will not secondguess your decision.
Many people nurse dreams of
entrepreneurship because their
day job is not quite right for them.
Heres my story.
I used to be a salaryman at a
Japanese mega corporation. The
social expectation is that the company insulates the employee from
all risk, and in turn, the employee
swears themselves body and soul to
the company.
I worked 70 to 90 hour weeks for
three years. This isnt particularly
out of the ordinary for white collar
employees in Japan. It didnt strike
me while I was a salaryman that I
was going to continue doing it until
retirement, largely because the
amount of work was killing me, and
I worked after those hours on my
own projects.
Somebody asked me recently
how I managed to stay motivated
to work for the 91st through 95th
hours every week. Answer: because
I wanted to end the week with
something.
sually

Applied Capitalism For Fun And

Profit
Im a capitalist. A friend of mine
is a devoted Marxist. I think we
mutually agree that, considering
any particular employee, it is in
that employees personal interest to
stop selling hours of labor and start
renting access to his accumulated
capital as soon as humanly possible.
I dont mean just monetary
capital having $100,000 in your
401k is awesome but thats not the
type which is really interesting to
me, simply because rates of return
on that sort of capital are so low.
There are many types of capital
that are no less real just because
you cant conveniently reduce them
to a number.
Human capital: the skills youve
built up over time and the value
youre able to create as a result of
them.
Social capital: the ability to call
on someone who trusts you and
have them do something in your
interest, like e.g. recommend you to
a job.
Reputational capital: the way
your name rings out in rooms you
arent even in, simply when your
topic of expertise comes up. (Hopefully in a good way!)
A lot of day jobs structurally
inhibit capital formation. If I were
a Marxist Id say And this is an
intended consequence of Capitals
desire to keep Labor subservient
to it, but I honestly think its true
even without anybody needing to
twirl their mustache.
Theres a great line from Jack
Welch to the effect of You work
for a week, collect your paycheck
on Friday, and then you and the
company are even. Corporate
America has embraced it with
a vengeance. Im too young to

remember an America where company loyalty wasnt a punch line.

If company loyalty were a bankable proposition (and it might
still be at some places I know a
smaller company or two where we
treat our employees like family
means exactly what it says on the
tin), youd get a wee bit of capital
every week you worked. Thats one
more week towards your boss good
impression of you. One more week
towards your pension. One more
week towards that gold watch.
Japanese salarymen still have that
sort of arrangement.
At some point at my exemployer, I realized that I couldnt
possibly work at a salaryman job
until retirement, because it was
going to be the death of me. (I
wont belabor that period of my
life because it was pretty rough, but
suffice it to say if you pull 6 months
of 90 hour weeks, towards the end
of it the periodic blackouts start to
get a little distressing.)
Once I came to the conclusion
that Id probably quit, and therefore
discounted the till-your-death-dous-part slow accumulation of firmspecific capital, I realized something
which is fundamentally true of a lot
of day jobs. Nothing I did at the job
mattered, in the long run.
Sure, in the short run, I was
writing XML files and Java classes
which, knock on wood, successfully
let my employers ship an examination management system to their
client (a major university). I was
a really effective Turing machine
which accepted emails and tickets
as input and delivered (occasionally) working code and Excel files
as output. But no matter how much
I spun, nothing about my situation ever changed. I worked my
week, got to the end of it, and had

11

nothing to show. The next week

there would be more emails and
more tickets, exactly like the week
before. The week after that would
be more of the same. And absolutely nothing about my life would
change. Id end the week with
nothing.
Dont end the week with nothing. Prefer to work on things you
can show. Prefer to work where
people can see you. Prefer to work
on things you can own.

Prefer Working On Things You

Can Show
One of the reasons developers
have embraced OSS so much is
because it gives you portable capital
between companies: if your work
is sitting on GitHub, even if you
leave one job, you can take it with
you to your next job. Previously
this happened pretty widely but
generally under the table. (Is there
any programmer who does not have
a snippets folder or their own private library for scratching that one
particular itch?) One of the great
wrinkles that OSS throws into this
is that OSS is public by default, and
thats game changing.
Why? Because when your work
is in public, you can show it to
people. Thats often the best way to
demonstrate that youre capable of
doing work like it.
Telling people you can do great
work is easy: any idiot can do it,
and many idiots do. Having people
tell people you do great work is an
improvement. It suffers because
measuring individual productivity on a team effort is famously
difficult, and people often have no
particular reason to trust the representations of the people doing the
endorsements.

12 FEATURES

(Quick: if you had credible evidence that a mid-level engineering

manager at a company youve never
heard of in Nagoya thought I was
a really effective employee, would
that make you markedly more
likely to hire me? Right, without
the context of knowing him, that
recommendation is almost useless.)
Work you can show off, though,
is prima facie evidence of your
skills. After your portfolio includes
it, your ability to sell your skills gets
markedly better. Given that most
peoples net worth is almost 100%
invested in their personal capital
(i.e. if youre a young engineer the
net present value of all future salary
absolutely swamps everything in
your bank account), this is a fairly
radical improvement in your present situation for not a very radical
change in how you go about things.
Thus my first piece of advice:
if you have the choice between
multiple jobs, all else being equal,
pick the one where you are able to
show what youve worked on. This
could mean working on a language
stack where work byproducts are
customarily OSSed (e.g. Rails)
versus one which isnt (e.g. C#).
This could mean working on particular projects within the organization which like external visibility
(e.g. Android) rather than projects
which dont (e.g. AdWords plumbing presumably Google will pay
you a lot of money to do that, but
consider it compensation for not
being able to talk about it). This
could mean working in industries
which default to being open rather
than those which default to being
closed.
OSS isnt nearly the only way
to be able to show what youve
worked on. In the creative industries, where the end product is

customer-visible, people keep very

close eye on whose name ends up
in the credits. Academics spend lots
of time worrying about citation
counts and directed graphs.
More prosaically, establish an
expectation early that youre simply
going to talk about what youre
doing. I think at Fog Creek / Stack
Exchange they call this producing
artifacts conference presentations, blog posts, OSSed software,
and the like, centered around the
work. Even at very open companies
there exists a lot of secret sauce,
but most of the valuable work of
the company is not particularly
sensitive, and much of it has widely
generalizable lessons. Write about
those lessons as you learn them. If
at all possible, publish what you
write. Even if it is published to an
audience of no one, you will be able
to point people back to it later.
Some of my most effective
writing in terms of career growth
was back in 2006 through 2008,
when I was struggling through not
understanding anything I was doing,
and where I quite literally
had less readers than my younger
brothers blog on writing superhero
novels. Why was toiling in Internetobscurity still valuable? Because
I was able to point to particular
experiments that I started in 2008,
and then point to the follow-ups
in 2009 and 2010, which showed
those experiments were really successful. The failures and false starts
arent extremely interesting to most
people, but having some successes
under your belt credibly demonstrates that youre capable of either
reproducing them in the future or
experimenting your way to new
successes in your new environment.

If you cannot build things you

can show at work, you should
build things you can show outside of work. Companies in our
industry are gradually becoming
more reasonable about IP assignment clauses theres less of the
we own everything you think of
at any point in your employment
nonsense these days. Even at my
very straight-laced Japanese megacorp, they were willing to write an
exception into the employment
contract for a) OSS work that I
did outside of company hours and
b) Bingo Card Creator. I offered
them this in exchange: If you let
me continue working on these, Im
going to learn lots of skills which I
can put to the use of the company.
Normally you invest lots of money
sending engineers to conferences
and professional training. This is
even better for you: Ill learn more
with no operating expenditure and
no decrease in billing efficiency.
Thats an offer you can make to
substantially any employer.
I prefer being upfront with
people rather than doing the It is
easier to ask for forgiveness than
ask for permission route a lot of
folks suggest. Sure, you can just roll
the dice and pretend your employer
is unlikely to notice your side
project. Unfortunately, the odds
of them noticing your side project
go up sharply if the side project is
ever successful, and then your lack
of forthrightness about it give you
unbounded liability extending far
into the future. Just ask. The worst
they can say is no.
You might consider asking in the
context of a more general compensation discussion than just Hey
boss, can I work on OSS? That
way, if they say No side projects,
youll say OK, in lieu of the side

projects, Ill need more money. Its

easier to be sticklers for the stock
agreements when theres absolutely
no cost to the company to insist
on the usual boilerplate, but minor
concessions on the boilerplate are
often easier than concessions on
things which actually appear on the
companys books.

Prefer To Work Where People

Can See You
I used to phrase this as work in
public, but when people think
about folks who work in public,
they think of rock stars and figure
Well, Ill never be a rock star.
Vanishingly few people in our
industry have the profile of rock
stars. They can still have substantial profile among the audience of
people professionally relevant to
them. That might be as tightly
scoped as people with hiring
authority for front-end developers
in my metro area, which might be
a set of, what, a couple of dozen
folks?
How do you develop that profile?
Id suggest, all things being equal,
working at places and on projects
which have above-average visibility.
Many engineering projects are
deep in the bowels of late-stage
industrial capitalism. Then theres
writing the Facebook mobile app.
I have no clue what engineers
actually worked on the Facebook
mobile app, but Im betting that if I
were a Silicon Valley hiring manager in iOS or Android development Id a) know their names and
b) have them at or near the top of
my personal poach list.
Side note: A poach list is my
informal name for people who, if
I had infinite money and they had
no other commitments, Id hire
to work on a particular project. I

have several mental poach lists

the best people I know on Rails
programming, on A/B testing, on
writing email, etc. When people ask
me for advice on what to do about
those topics, I often say You know
who is really great at this? <%=
poach_list.pop() %> You cannot
possibly waste your time taking
them out to coffee. Brokering
coffee dates cannot possibly work
out poorly for the people who go to
them. (My interest? Helping people
out is fun, and funny enough
people often seem to remember
when you get them a job or a key
employee.)
You dont have to optimize for
sexy projects. You know, sexy
projects: I dont know how to
describe them but I know it when I
see it. Most engineering work isnt
intrinsically sexy. I would, however,
optimize for impact and visibility.
Dont try to make a career out of
optimizing the SQL queries to display a preference page on a line of
business app at a company that no
one has ever heard of. That is not
the straightforward path to having
other people learn you are capable
of doing meaningful work. Instead,
work at higher profile companies/
organizations AmaGooFaceSoft,
startups or small companies with
anomalously high profile (locally,
nationally, whatever), or in positions where by your nature youre
exposed to lots of people.
I have a few friends who are
developer evangelists, which is a
funny job created at API companies where your brief is basically
Go demo our product to a group
of developers. Now, do that again,
every day, for the next several
years. Sentiment on the actual job
is decidedly mixed.

13

An observation: every developer evangelist I know goes into

a much better job right after they
quit being an evangelist. This is
not true of other engineering jobs
with checkered reputations, like e.g.
The Build Guy. Why do developer
evangelists get upgrades but The
Build Guy(s) do not? My bet is
because evangelists literally spent
years meeting thousands of people
and showing them Hey, Im going
to live code in front of you while
also making my employers fat
stacks of money. You run a company and could use both engineers
and money. You should probably
remember my name, you know, just
in case. The Build Guy(s) suffers in
under-appreciated solitude, except
when maven bottoms out or RubyGems goes down and it is somehow
The Build Guys fault.
If you cannot gain exposure at
your day job, try to get some exposure outside of it. Network actively.
Go to local meetups of technical folks, but also go to the (often
separate) events where the business
side of your industry talks shops.
Speak at conferences. Take the
things you have created (see above)
and actively show them to people
to solicit feedback. You dont have
to have an audience of thousands
for an audience to be worthwhile
for landing a new job, having an
audience of one hiring manager is
a darn sight better than having no
audience at all. Blog and collect an
email list. Its old and hackneyed
advice but it freaking works, particularly when you can compound
improvements over years.

14 FEATURES

Amy Hoy has a great metaphor for this: stacking the bricks.
[hn.my/bricks] Seen from the
outside, you might say That person
with an impressive career? Its like
they have a sheer wall made out of
awesome. I could not hope to ever
have a wall like that. Seen from
the inside, it looks like one day of
delivering a single good conference
talk, a few weeks spent writing an
OSS library, another day writing
the definitive blog post on getting
multiple Ruby versions playing
together, a few months shipping a
product used by many people, an
hour recording a podcast. Brick by
brick, stone by stone, the wall gets
higher.

Prefer To Work On Things You

Can Keep
The employer/employee relationship is generally You give us an
hour and, in return, we give you
some consideration for that hour.
As an employee, you very rarely get
to keep hours, bank them against
the future, or have them redound to
your benefit years later.
Im not generally a fan of the Silicon Valley model, but Ill say this in
their defense: widespread employee
ownership of the enterprise is one
of the single best innovations in the
history of capitalism. Non-managerial employees own plus or minus
20% of Twitter, Facebook, etc.
They own plus or minus rounding
error of almost all other publicly
traded companies, with very rare
exceptions.
I think thats an improvement
on the no shared stake model of
employment, but I dont think it is
the last word in it. For one thing, it
over-concentrates employee wealth
with one company. As an employee,
your short-term cash flow

generation is tied to the continued

health of your employer. If a large
portion of your net worth is tied to
their stock, youre magnifying the
impact of a secular or firm-specific
shock should one occur. (This is,
relatedly, why Im not a fan of
buying the stock of an employer in
a company-sponsored DRIP or IRA.
Youve got plenty of exposure to
their future already without buying
more of it with your own money.)
The explicit understanding
among professional investors is that
90% of all shares of early-stage startups are worthless. It seems more
than a little self-serving for professional investors to tell employees
While our general partners would
laugh us out of the room if we
suggested betting the entire fund
on a single investment, even if we
thought it was a sure thing, you are
going the be the lucky ones and you
should certainly have 99% of your
net worth tied up in the illiquid
shares of one particular company.
So if not hard assets directly
awarded by employers, then what?
Well, obviously, sock away money
like every financial advisor ever will
tell you to. (Heres everything you
need to know: buy broad market
index funds in your tax-advantaged
accounts. If that sounds too complicated, get a Vanguard target retirement fund where the number most
closely matches the approximate
time youll retire.)
Theres another, harder option
with higher returns: the side project. You can buy them with sweat
equity, one bead at a time. They
provide you with many benefits,
including the direct financial benefits (if you sell things to people
for money, you get money, which
can be useful), the compounded
benefits of investing the financial

benefits (my first $2,000 from

Bingo Card Creator turned into
Chipotle stock at an average price
of $50 a share dont buy stocks,
buy index funds, but that decision
worked out pretty decently for me).
Theres also intangible but
no less real benefits to having
an artifact which is yours. This
is one reason why, while I love
OSS, I would suggest people not
immediately throw their OSS on
GitHub. That makes it very easy
for developers to consume your
code, but it does not make it easy
for you to show the impact of that
code to other people, particularly to
non-technical stakeholders. To the
extent that peoples lives are meaningfully improved by your code,
the credit (and observable citations) often goes to GitHub rather
than going to you. If youre going
to spend weeks or months of time
writing meaningful OSS libraries,
make a stand-alone web presence
for them.
Example: my A/Bingo was once
probably the best option for Rails
A/B testing, by dint of being the
only serious option for Rails A/B
testing. It is a little old in the tooth
now, but being The A/B Testing
Guy got me several consulting gigs.
The effort to make documentation, a quick start guide, a logo, and
a branded web presence beats the
heck out of having a junior engineer
at a potential client just git clone
my GitHub URL and never have
my work exposed to a decision
maker there at all.

If you want to learn more about

the actual mechanics of building a side project, my blog covers
it in a lot of detail. For a much
briefer overview of it, I really
recommend Jason Cohens presentation at MicroConf 2013
[hn.my/microconf]. His formula is
Predictable acquisition of recurring
revenue with an annual pre-pay
option with a product which solves
a demonstrable, enduring pain
point for a business. That idea is
developed at the above link for an
hour, and a lot of the advice given
is specific and wildly actionable. I
highly recommend it.

Consumption Is Sometimes
Valuable, But Creation Moves
You Forward
Ill close with my usual advice to
peers: reading this was valuable
(knock on wood). Watching Jasons
video is valuable. Rolling up your
sleeves and actually shipping something is much, much more valuable.
If you take no other advice from
me ever, ship something. Youll
learn more shipping a failure than
youll learn from reading about a
thousand successes. And you stand
an excellent chance of shipping a
success people greatly overestimate how difficult this is.
Just dont end the week with
nothing. n
Patrick McKenzie is a small software
developer. He made Bingo Card Creator
and Appointment Reminder. He blogs
at kalzumeus.com/blog and teaches
people how to sell more software at
training.kalzumeus.com
Reprinted with permission of the original author.
First appeared in hn.my/week (kalzumeus.com)
Illustration by Joel Benjamin.

15

PROGRAMMING

A Quick Look at the Redis

Source Code
By Tom Martin

predominantly Java and

Scala for the last 7 years, my C skills are
pretty rusty. In fact theyre practically nonexistent. Apart from the occasional hack Ive not had
the occasion to write much C since University. There is
a widely held opinion that reading other peoples code
is an excellent way to learn, particularly if those people
are experts or if the codebase is held in high regard in
terms of its quality. Ive decided to take a look at one
such codebase.
Redis [redis.io] is an open source data structure
server written in ANSI C. Data structure server is
another way of saying really, really neat key-value
store. Not only can you store simple values like strings
against keys but also hashes (or maps, or dicts even),
lists, sets and sorted sets. We use Redis a lot at Top10
[top10.com], mostly for indexing hotels in (near) real
time depending on their availability and price for the
dates the user is searching on. Ive also discovered that
it has a pretty easily understandable code base, even
for a C newbie like myself. The code is cleanly written,
relatively small (around 45,000 lines of code), mostly
single threaded, and with few dependencies. The
dependencies are all included with the source making
building it as simple as cloning the repo and typing
make.
I decided to dive straight in to the code by adding
a new command to Redis. Something simple that will
give me an idea of how Redis handles a command and
dispatches a response. A command rand that accepts
a single integer argument max and returns a random
integer between 0 and max (exclusively). Not an ideal
aving been writing

16 PROGRAMMING

use of a key value store but implementing it should

be instructive. I certainly wont be submitting a pull
request!
Disclaimer as mentioned before Im by no means an
expert in C so take all the code and interpretation of
code here on those terms. Also Im linking to the unstable
branch of Redis on github so the links may be just that
unstable. Youll probably get more out of this post if you
clone the Redis source yourself and follow along in your
favorite editor, particularly if you compile and run the
code changes found here.
The command table is found near the very top
of src/redis.c. It is an array of instances of the
redisCommand struct. redisCommand is defined in src/
redis.h but theres a very handy block comment
explaining each of its fields above the declaration of
redisCommandTable. Here is the definition of the get
command:
{"get",getCommand,2,"r",0,NULL,1,1,1,0,0},

The first field get is the name of the command.

The second is a pointer to the function that implements the command (you can see the implementation
in t_string.c).
The third field is the commands arity (number of
arguments it accepts). Specifying this means the command lookup and execution code can pre-validate a
request before passing control by calling the function
pointer. This reduces the error handling code necessary in each of the command functions. The argument
count appears to include the name of the command

itself so the get command accepts two arguments: its

name and the name of the key whose value should be
fetched.
The fourth field, set to r, is specifying that the command is read only and doesnt modify any keys value
or state. There are a whole bunch of one-letter flags
that you can specify in this string that are explained in
detail in the nearby block comment. The field following this string should always be set to zero, and will be
computed later. Its simply a bitmask representation of
the information implied by the string.
The sixth field is NULL because it is only necessary
when you need complex logic to tell Redis which arguments of the command are actually keys. A key implies
a reference to a value stored in Redis as opposed to
simple value parameters such as our max argument.
This allows Redis to extract the values of the keys (and
check that they exist) before calling the command
implementation. If this field were used it would be a
pointer to a function that would return an integer array
of argument indexes (zunionInterGetKeys in db.c is
an example of this). In the case of the get command
though (and most other commands) this information
can be conveyed with the next 3 integer fields. There
is only one argument to getCommand and it is a key.
Therefore the first argument that is a key is at index
1, the last argument that is a key is at index 1, and the
step increment to find all the keys is; 1,1,1.
The last two fields of a redisCommand represent metrics about the command, are set by Redis and should
always be initialized to 0.
Lets add our rand command to the bottom of the
table:
{"rand",randCommand,2,"rRl",0,NULL,0,0,0,0,0}

The command is called rand, randCommand is the

pointer to the implementation (not implemented
yet) and it takes 2 arguments (the name and max).
As for the flags its read only (r), returns random,
non-deterministic output (R) and can be called while
Redis is still loading the database (l). There are no key
arguments.
The next step is to add the randCommand function
prototype to src/redis.h. A Redis command implementation takes one argument, a redisClient struct
that represents the command arguments but can also
be used to send the response to the actual client:

This prototype ought to be placed in src/redis.h

near the all the other command prototypes. Grepping
for this line:
/* Commands prototypes */

will help you find where.

Lets add an empty implementation to src/redis.c:
void randCommand(redisClient *c) {
}

I added mine near to the infoCommand definition.

Now lets run make
> make

and run the server weve built (hint: if you usually have
an instance of Redis running locally now would be a
good time to stop it):
> src/redis-server

And lets run a Redis client in another terminal and

try out our command:
> redis-cli

First lets try out the error handling:

redis 127.0.0.1:6379> rand
(error) ERR wrong number of arguments for 'rand'
command

Good to see the arity checking working. Lets

specify an argument this time:
redis 127.0.0.1:6379> rand 1

and Redis hangs. I suppose that should have been

expected given that were not responding with anything from the randCommand function. Lets ctrl-c the
server and get back to the source.
We want to respond with a number so I dug around
looking for an example of how to do that and found
the zcardCommand in src/t_zset.c. This command
uses addReplyLongLong to reply to the client with a
response that is a 64-bit integer (a long long). Lets try
that:
void randCommand(redisClient *c) {
addReplyLongLong(c,3);
}

void randCommand(redisClient *c);

17

Now when we make again and run the command:

redis 127.0.0.1:6379> rand 1
(integer) 3
redis 127.0.0.1:6379> rand 2
(integer) 3
redis 127.0.0.1:6379> rand 3
(integer) 3

OK, so its not very random but its a start. Lets

parse our max argument from the command now and
return a random value limited by max:
void randCommand(redisClient *c) {
long max;
if (getLongFromObjectOrReply(c,c>argv[1],&max,NULL) != REDIS_OK)
return;
addReplyLongLong(c,random() % max);
}

Whilst Redis uses primitive types and C strings

throughout the codebase, it also has its own internal
object system for representing strings, longs and more
complex types in a more generic fashion. An example
of Rediss use of these objects is the representation
of each commands arguments. Each command argument is stored as a Redis object in the argv array on the
redisClient instance c. To get a Redis object as a long
I found an example in the getrangeCommand function
in src/t_string.c that uses the getLongFromObjectOrReply function from src/object.c.
getLongFromObjectOrReply takes a redisClient
instance, checks that the object in its second parameter
is an object that represents a long, places the value of
that long at the pointer specified by its third parameter
and returns REDIS_OK. If the argument is not a long (or
overflows) it will return REDIS_ERR. The beauty of this
method is that if we receive REDIS_ERR we can just
return from our randCommand function as any necessary
error response will have already been sent to the client.
Lets try out our command again:
redis 127.0.0.1:6379> rand 10
(integer) 9
redis 127.0.0.1:6379> rand notanumber
(error) ERR value is not an integer or out of
range
redis 127.0.0.1:6379> rand 10

18 PROGRAMMING

(integer) 3
redis 127.0.0.1:6379>
(integer) 1
redis 127.0.0.1:6379>
(integer) 43
redis 127.0.0.1:6379>
(integer) 55
redis 127.0.0.1:6379>
(integer) 86

rand 10
rand 100
rand 100
rand 100

Looks pretty good! rand is an entirely pointless

command but I learned quite a bit about Redis from
implementing it and I hope you did too by following
along. n
Tom is a developer from London. He mostly writes Scala code for
Space Ape Games. [spaceapegames.com]
Reprinted with permission of the original author.
First appeared in hn.my/redissource (heychinaski.com)

Git Tips From the Trenches

By Csaba Okrona

years with git everyone has their

own bag o tricks a collection of bash
aliases, one liners and habits that make his
daily work easier.
Ive gathered a handful of these with varying complexity hoping that it can give a boost to you. I will
not cover git or VCS basics at all; Im assuming youre
already a git-addict.
So fire up your favorite text editor and bear with me.

Find something in your entire git history

Check which branches are merged

$ git rev-list --all | xargs git grep '<YOUR

REGEX>'
$ git rev-list --all | xargs git grep -F '<YOUR
STRING>' # if you don't want to use regex

fter a few

After a while if you branch a lot youll see your git

branch -a output is polluted like hell (if you havent
cleaned up). Its all the more true if youre in a team.
So, from time to time youll do the Big Spring Cleaning
only to find it hard to remember which branch you can
delete and which you shouldnt. Well, just check out
your mainline branch (usually master) and:
$ git checkout master
$ git branch --merged

to see all the branches that have already been merged

to the current branch (master in this case).
You can do the opposite of course:

Sometimes you find yourself in the situation that

youre looking for a specific line of code that you dont
find with plain old grep maybe someone deleted or
changed it with a commit. You remember some parts
of it but have no idea where and when you committed
it. Fortunately git has your back on this. Lets fetch all
commits ever and then use gits internal grep subcommand to look for your string:

Fetch a file from another branch without changing your current branch
Local cherry-picking. Gotta love it. Imagine youre
experimenting on your current branch and you suddenly realize you need a file from the oh-so-distant
branch. What do you do? Yeah, you can stash, git
checkout, etc., but theres an easier way to merge a
single file in your current branch from another:
$ git checkout <OTHER_BRANCH> -- path/to/file

$ git branch --no-merged

How about deleting those obsolete branches right

away?
$ git branch --merged | xargs git branch -d

Alternative: use GitHubs Pull request UI if youve

been a good sport and always used pull requests.

19

See which branches had the latest commits

Could also be useful for a spring cleaning checking
how old those yet unmerged branches are. Lets find
out which branch hadnt been committed to in the
last decade. Git has a nice subcommand, for-each-ref
which can print information for each ref (duh) the
thing is that you can both customize the output format
and sort!
$ git for-each-ref --sort=-committerdate --format='%(refname:short)
%(committerdate:short)'

It will output branches and tags, too.

This deserves an alias, dont you think?
$ git config --global alias.springcleaning "for-each-ref --sort=-committerdate --format='%(refname:short)
%(committerdate:short)'"

Making typos?
Git can autocorrect you.
$ git config --global help.autocorrect 1
$ git dffi
WARNING: You called a Git command named 'dffi',
which does not exist.
Continuing under the assumption that you meant
'diff' in 0.1 seconds automatically...

Autocomplete, anyone?
If you download this file [hn.my/gitcomplete] and
modify your .bash_profile by adding:
source ~/.git-completion.bash

But the filter is not defined yet, so chop-chop:

$ git config filter.stripWhitespace.clean
strip_whitespace

(Actually there are two types of filters: clean and

smudge. Clean runs right before pushing, smudge is
run right after pulling)
We still have to define what strip_whitespace is, so
create a script on your PATH and of course make it
executable:
#!/usr/bin/env ruby
STDIN.readlines.each do |line|
puts line.rstrip
end

You could also do this as a pre-commit hook, of

course.

Recovering lost data

The rule of thumb is that if you lost data but committed/pushed it somewhere, youre probably able to
recover it. There are basically two ways:
reflog
Any change you make that affects a branch is recorded
in the reflog. See:
$ git log -g
commit be5de4244c1ef863e454e3fb7765c7e0559a6938
Reflog: HEAD@{0} (Csaba Okrona <[email protected]>)
Reflog message: checkout: moving from master to
master
Author: Robin Ward <[email protected]>
Date:
Fri Nov 8 15:05:14 2013 -0500

Git will now autocomplete your partial command if

you press TAB. Neat.

FIX: Pinned posts were not displaying at the

top of categories.

Hate remnant whitespace?

If you see your lost commit(s) there, just do a

simple:

Let git strip it for you. Use the mighty .gitattributes

file in the root of your project and say in it:
* filter=stripWhitespace

Or say you dont want this for all files (*), only scala
sources:
*.scala filter=stripWhitespace

20 PROGRAMMING

$ git branch my_lost_data [SHA-1]

Where SHA-1 is the hash after the commit part.

Now merge your lost data into your current branch:
$ git merge my_lost_data

git-fsck
$ git fsck --full

This gives you all the objects that arent referenced

by any other object (orphans). You can fetch the
SHA-1 hash and do the same dance as above.

A nicer, one-line log

Get a color-coded, one-line-per-commit log showing
branches and tags:
$ git log --oneline --decorate
355459b Fix more typos in server locale
b95e74b Merge pull request #1627 from awesomerobot/master
40aa62f adding highlight & fade to linked topic
15c29fd (tag: v0.9.7.3, tag: latest-release)
Version bump to v0.9.7.3
c753a3c We shouldn't be matching on the `created_at` field. Causes tests to randomly fail.
dbd2332 Public user profile page shows if the
user is suspended and why.

Highlight word changes in diff

Bored of the full-line highlights? This only highlights
the changed words, nicely inline. Try:
$ git diff --word-diff

A shorter, pro git status

Or do it automatically for any branch youd like:

$ git config branch.master.rebase true

Or for all branches:

$ git config --global branch.autosetuprebase
always

Find out which branch has a specific change

$ git branch --contains [SHA-1]

If you want to include remote tracking branches, add

-a.

Check which changes from a branch are already

upstream
$ git cherry -v master

Show the last commit with matching message

$ git show :/regex

Write notes for commits

$ git notes add

You can share them by pushing for more see

hn.my/gitnotes

More cautious git blame

Showing only the important things.

Before you play the blame game, make sure you check
youre right with:

$ git status -sb

## master...origin/master
?? _posts/2014-02-01-git-tips-the-trenches.md
?? images/git-beginner-share.png
?? images/git-beginner.jpg

$ git blame -w
$ git blame -M
$ git blame -C
files n

Bored of setting up tracking branches by hand?

Make git do this by default:
$ git config --global push.default tracking

This sets up the link to the remote if it exists with

the same branch name when you push.

Pull with rebase, not merge

# ignores white space

# ignores moving text
# ignores moving text into other

Csaba loves building things and is always seeking new challenges

and smart people. This thriving led him to Prezi where hes doing
backend and frontend web development. As a process freak he is
really keen on development methodologies and is a huge fan of
Kanban. Prior to joining Prezi, Csaba practiced full-stack development and IT management as the CTO of rukeres in Budapest.
Reprinted with permission of the original author.
First appeared in hn.my/trench (ochronus.com)

To avoid those nasty merge commits all around.

$ git pull --rebase

21

Common Shell Script

Mistakes
By Pdraig Brady

ve written a few shell scripts [pixelbeat.org/

scripts] in my time and have read many more, and
I see the same issues cropping up again and again
(unfortunately even in my own scripts sometimes).
While there are lots of shell programming pitfalls,
at least the interpreter will tell you immediately about
them. The mistakes I describe below, generally mean
that your script will run fine now, but if the data
changes or you move your script to another system,
then you may have problems.
I think part of the reason shell scripts tend to have
lots of issues is that commonly one doesnt learn shell
scripting like traditional programming languages.
Instead, scripts tend to evolve from existing interactive command line use, or are based on existing scripts
which themselves have propagated the limitations of
ancient shell script interpreters.
Its definitely worth spending the relatively small
amount of time required to learn the shell script
language correctly, if one uses Linux/BSD/Mac OS X
desktops or servers, where it is commonly used.

Inappropriate use
Shell is the main domain specific language designed to
manipulate the UNIX abstractions for data and logic,
i.e., files and processes. So in addition to being useful at
the command line, its use permeates any UNIX system.
Correspondingly, please be wary of writing scripts that
deviate from these abstractions and have significant
data manipulation in the shell process itself. While flexible, shell is not designed as a general purpose language
and becomes unwieldy when not leveraging the various

22 PROGRAMMING

UNIX tools effectively. A good knowledge of the various UNIX tools goes hand in hand with effective shell
programming.

Stylistic issues
First Ill mention some ways to clean up shell scripts
without changing their functionality. Note: I use
a shortcut form of the conditional operator below
(and in my shell scripts), when doing simple conditional operations, as its much more concise. So I use
[ "$var" = "find" ] && echo "found" instead of the
equivalent:
if [ "$var" = "find" ]; then
echo "found"
fi

[ x"$var" = x"find" ] && echo found

The use of x"$var" was required in case var is "" or
-hyphen. Thinking about this for a moment should
indicate that the shell can handle both of these cases
unambiguously, and if it doesnt, its a bug. This bug
was probably fixed about 20 years ago, so stop propagating this nonsense, please! Shell doesnt have the
cleanest syntax to start with, so polluting it with stuff
like this is horrible.
[ ! -z "$var" ] && echo "var not empty"
This is a double negative, and is very prevalent in shell
scripts for some reason.
Just test the string directly like [ "$var" ] && echo
"var not empty"

[ "$var" ] || var="value"
Setting a variable if its not previously set is a common
idiom and can be more succinctly expressed as:
: ${var="value"}.

Note: if you want to set a variable if its empty or

unset, use : ${var:="value"}.
These are portable to the vast majority of shells.
redundant use of $?
For example:
pidof program
if [ $? = 1 ]; then
echo "program not found"
fi

Note: this is not just stylistic. Consider what happens

if pidof returns 2.
Instead just test the exit status of the process directly
as in these examples:
if ! pidof program; then
echo "program not found"
fi
if grep -qF "string" file; then
echo 'file contains "string"'
fi

Needless shell logic

Well expand on this below, but we should do as little
in shell as possible, over its domain of connecting process to files. For example the following common shell
idiom of testing for files and directories can often be
pushed into the programs themselves. Instead of:
[ ! -d "$dir" ] && mkdir "$dir"
[ -f "$file" ] && rm "$file"

Do:
mkdir -p "$dir" #also creates a hierarchy for
you
rm -f "$file" #also never prompts

Note also Googles shell style guide , which as per

other Google style guides has very sensible advice.
[hn.my/shellstyle]

Robustness
Globbing
In the example below to count the lines in each file,
there is a common mistake.
for file in `ls *`; do
wc -l $file
done

Perhaps the idiom above stems from a common

system where the shell does not do globbing, but in
any case its neither scalable nor robust. Its not robust
because it doesnt handle spaces in file names as word
splitting is done. Also it redundantly starts an ls process
to list the files. On some systems this form can overflow static command line buffers when there are many
files. Shell script is a language designed to operate on
files, so it has this functionality built in!
for file in *; do
wc -l "$file"
done

Notice how we just use the * directly, which

prevents the redundant ls process from starting and
doesnt do word splitting on file names containing
spaces. This is still slow, since we use shell looping and
start a wc process per file, so well come back to this
example in the performance section below.
Stopping automatically on error
Often dont want a script to proceed if some commands fail. But checking the status of each command
can become very messy and error-prone. Instead,
execute set -e at the top of the script, which usually
just works as expected, terminating the script when
any command fails (that is not already part of a conditional, etc.).
Cleaning up temp files
One should always try to avoid temp files for performance/maintainability reasons, and instead use pipes if
at all possible to pass data between processes. Temporary files can be slow as theyre usually written to disk.
Plus, you must clean them up when your script exits,
possibly in unexpected ways. The general method for
cleaning up temp files if you really do need them is to
use traps as follows:

23

#!/bin/sh
tf=/tmp/tf.$$
cleanup() {
rm -f $tf
}
trap "cleanup" EXIT
touch $tf
echo "$tf created"
sleep 10 #Can Ctrl-C and temp file will still be
removed
#temp file auto removed on exit

Echoing errors
If you just echo "Error occurred" then you will not
be able to pipe or redirect any normal output from
your script independently. Its much more standard
and maintainable to output errors to stderr like echo
"Error occurred" >&2. Note: you can echo multiple
lines together as in the following example:
echo "\
Usage: $(basename $0) option1
more info
even more" >&2

Portability
There are two aspects to portability for shell scripts.
Theres the shell language itself, and there are the various tools being called by the script. Well just consider
the former here. To support really old implementations of shell script, one can test with the heirloom,
for example. But for a contemporary list of portable
shell capabilities, see the The Open Group spec, which
describes the POSIX standard. Check out the Autoconf
info on shell portability, which lists details you need to
consider when writing very portable shell scripts, and
the ubuntu dash conversion info.
Its much better to test scripts directly in a POSIX
compliant shell if possible. The bash --posix option
doesnt suffice, because it still accepts some bashisms. However, the dash shell, the default interpreter
of shell scripts on ubuntu, is very good in this regard.
One should be testing with this shell anyway due to
the popularity of ubuntu, and dash is easy to install on
Fedora.

24 PROGRAMMING

Bashisms
bash is the most common interactive shell used on
UNIX systems, and consequently, syntax specific to
bash is often used in shell scripts. Ive never needed
to resort to bash-specific constructs in my scripts. If
you find yourself doing complex string manipulations
or loops in bash, then you should probably consider
existing UNIX tools instead, or a more general scripting language like python.
[ "$var" == "find" ] && echo "found"
Shell script cant assign variable values in conditional
constructs, so the double equals is redundant. Moreover it gives a syntax error on older busybox (ash) and
dash at least, so avoid it.
echo {not,portable}
Brace expansion is not portable. Its most useful at the
interactive prompt, and can easily be worked around in
scripts.
Signal specifications
Be wary when specifying signals to the trap builtin,
as mentioned above. I was even caught by this in my
timeout script. That script handles the CHLD signal,
which, for bash at least, can be specified as sigchld,
SIGCHLD, chld, 17 or CHLD, only the last of
which is portable.
echo $(seq 15) $((0x10))
The command above containing both $(command
substitution) and an $((arithmetic expression)) is portable. Traditionally one did command substitution using
backquotes like seq 15. Thats awkward to nest, however, and its not very readable in the presence of other
quoting. $((arithmetic expressions)) can also be handy
for quick calculations, rather than spawning off bc or
expr. Bash supports the non-portable form of $[1+1]
for arithmetic expressions, which you should avoid.

echo --help
Ive used echo in all the examples above for convenience, but one should be wary about using it, especially if you pass variable parameters. echo implementations vary on how they handle escaped characters
and options, so one really should use printf instead, as
it has a more standard implementation across systems.

Performance
Well expand here on our globbing example to illustrate some performance characteristics of the shell
script interpreter. Comparing the bash and dash
interpreters for this example where a process is
spawned for each of 30,000 files, shows that dash can
fork the wc processes nearly twice as fast as bash.
$ time dash -c 'for i in *; do wc -l "$i">/dev/
null; done'
real
0m14.440s
user
0m3.753s
sys
0m10.329s
$ time bash -c 'for i in *; do wc -l "$i">/dev/
null; done'
real
0m24.251s
user
0m8.660s
sys
0m14.871s

Comparing the base looping speed by not invoking

the wc processes shows that dashs looping is nearly 6
times faster!
$ time bash -c 'for i in *; do echo "$i">/dev/
null; done'
real
0m1.715s
user
0m1.459s
sys
0m0.252s

$ time find -type f -print0 | wc -l --files0from=- | tail -n1

30000 total
real
0m0.299s
user
0m0.072s
sys
0m0.221s

The above script is by far the most efficient solution. It illustrates the point that one should do as
little aspossible in shell script and aim to use it just to
connect the existing logic available in the rich set of
utilities on a UNIX system.
Disk seeks
It is worth giving special attention to this, since disk
seeks are so expensive, and since shell script is designed
to deal with files which commonly reside on disks. If
you check for the presence of 2 files with [ -e FOO -o
-e BAR ], then the check isnt short circuited and 2
disk seeks are performed. The bash -format of [ -e FOO
|| -e BAR ] does short circuit the second test; however, its better to use the [ -e FOO ] || [ -e BAR ]
conditional format, which is both portable and efficient.
Traditionally this last example would have used 2 processes, one for each of the [. But modern shells implement [ internally, so there is no such overhead. n
Pdraig Brady is a long time open source contributor and is a
maintainer of the GNU coreutils project. He currently works for
Red Hat on the OpenStack project.
Reprinted with permission of the original author.
First appeared in hn.my/shellmistake (pixelbeat.org)

$ time dash -c 'for i in *; do echo "$i">/dev/

null; done'
real
0m0.375s
user
0m0.169s
sys
0m0.203s

The looping is still relatively slow in either shell as

demonstrated previously, so for scalability we should
use more functional techniques so iteration is performed in compiled processes.

25

Refactoring to Functional
Why Class?
By Hadi Hariri

In College
Teacher: We are surrounded by
objects in the real world. These can
be cars, houses, etc. Thats why its
very easy to associate real world
objects with classes in Object Oriented Programming.

2 weeks later
Jake: Im having a bit of hard time
with these objects. Can you give me
some guidance?
Teacher: Sure. Theres actually a
couple of more or less formal processes to help you, but to sum it up,
look for nouns. And verbs are like
methods that can be performed on
the class. The behavior, so to speak.
Jake: Well, that seems reasonable.
Thanks!
Jake graduates.

Jakes on the job

Phil: Hey, Jake. Ive been looking
at this class of yours. Its a little bit
too big.
Jake: Sorry. And whats the issue
with that?

26 PROGRAMMING

Phil: Well, the thing is, its got too

many responsibilities. It does too
much.

Mary: OK. Fair enough. But the

Customer class isnt really a class
anymore. Its more of a DTO.

Jake: And?

Jake: DTO?

Phil: Well, think about it. If it does

too much, it means that it touches
many parts of the system. So the
probability of having to touch the
class when changing code is higher,
which means more probability of
breaking things. Plus, 1000 lines of
code in a single class is harder to
understand than 30 lines.

Mary: Yes, a Data Transfer Object.

Its like a class but without
behavior.

Jake: Yeah. Makes sense.

Jake: OK.

Phil: Break these up into smaller

classes. That way each class does
only one thing and one thing alone.

A year later
Mary: Jake, Im just reviewing this
class of yours, theres not much
behavior in it.
Jake: Yeah, well, I wasnt sure if
that behavior belonged in the Customer class or to the Accounts class,
so I placed it in this other class
called CustomerService.

Jake: So like a structure? A record?

Mary: Yes. Kind of. So just make
sure your classes have behavior.
Otherwise, theyre not really classes.
Theyre DTOs.

2 years later
Mathew: Jake, looking at this class.
Its tightly coupled to a specific
implementation.
Jake: Huh?
Mathew: Well, youre creating an
instance of Repository inside the
Controller. How you going to test
it?
Jake: Hmm. Fire up a demo
database?

Mathew: No. What you need to do

is first off, program to an interface
not a class. That way you dont
depend on a specific implementation. Then, you need to use Dependency Injection to pass in a specific
implementation, so that when you
want to change the implementation
you can.
Jake: Makes sense.
Mathew: And in production, you
can use an IoC Container to wire
up all instances of the different
classes.

3 years later

Over a beer
Jake: You know, Pete, Ive been
thinking. They teach us that we
need to think in terms of objects
and identify these with nouns
among other techniques. We then
need to make sure that we name
them correctly, that theyre small,
that they only have a single responsibility and that they cant have too
many dependencies injected into
them. And now theyre telling us
that we should try and not maintain
state because its bad for concurrency. Im beginning to wonder,
why the hell have classes at all?

Francis: Jake. Youre passing in too

many dependencies into this class.

Pete: Dont be silly, Jake. Where

else are you going to put functions
if you dont have classes?

Jake: Yeah, but the IoC Container

handles that.

Pete: Another beer?

Francis: Yes, I know. But just

because it does, it doesnt make
it right. Your class is still tightly
coupled to too many other classes
(even though the implementations
can vary). Try and keep it to 1 to 3
maximum.
Jake: OK. Makes sense. Thanks.

4 years later
Anna: Jake. This class, why did you
name it Utils?

Until next time. n

Hadi Hariri is a Software Developer, currently working at JetBrains. His passions
include Web Development and Software
Architecture. He has written a few books
and have been speaking at conferences
for over a decade, on things hes passionate about.
Reprinted with permission of the original author.
First appeared in hn.my/whyclass (hadihariri.com)

Jake: Well, I didnt really know

where to place that stuff cause I
dont know where it really belongs.
Anna: OK. Its just that we already
have a class for that. Its called
RandomStuff.

27

Paths to Being a
Kernel Hacker
By Julia Evans

for advice
about how to get started with
kernel programming, and was
basically told:
once tried asking

1. If you dont need to understand

the kernel for your work, why
would you try?
2. You should subscribe to the
Linux kernel mailing list
[lkml.org] and just try really
hard to understand.
3. If youre not writing code thats
meant to be in the main Linux
kernel, youre wasting your time.
This was really, really, really not
helpful to me. So here are a few
possible strategies for learning
about how operating systems and
the Linux kernel work on your own
terms, while having fun. I still only
know a few things, but I know more
than I did before :)
For most of these paths, youll
need to understand some C, and
a bit of assembly (at least enough
to copy and paste). I had written
a few small C programs, and took
a course in assembly that I had
almost entirely forgotten.

28 PROGRAMMING

Path 1: Write your own OS

This might seem to be a pretty
frightening path. But actually
its not! I started with rustboot
[hn.my/rustboot], which, crucially,
already worked and did things.
Then I could do simple things like
making the screen blue instead
of red, printing characters to the
screen, and move on to trying to get
keyboard interrupts to work.
MikeOS [hn.my/os] also looks
like another fun thing to start with.
Remember that your operating
system doesnt have to be big and
professional if you make it turn
the screen purple instead of red and
then maybe make it print a limerick, youve already won.
Youll definitely want to use an
emulator like qemu [qemu.org] to
run your OS in. The OSDev wiki
[wiki.osdev.org] is also a useful
place they have FAQs for a lot of
the problems youll run into along
the way.

Path 2: Write some kernel

modules!
If youre already running Linux,
writing a kernel module that
doesnt do anything is pretty easy.
Heres the source for a module
[hn.my/hello] that prints Hello,
hacker school! to the kernel log.
Its 18 lines of code. Basically you
just register an init and a cleanup
function and youre done. I dont
really understand what the __init
AND __exit macros do, but I can
use them!
Writing a kernel module that
does do something is harder. I
did this by deciding on a thing
to do (for example, print a message for every packet that comes
through the kernel), and then
read some Kernel Newbies
[kernelnewbies.org], googled a lot,
and copied and pasted a lot of code
to figure out how to do it. There
are a couple of examples of kernel
modules I wrote in this kernelmodule-fun repository. [github.com
/jvns/kernel-module-fun]

Path 3: Do a Linux kernel internship!

The Linux kernel participates in the GNOME Outreach Program for Women. [hn.my/outreach] This is
amazing and fantastic and delightful. What it means
is that if youre a woman and want to spend 3 months
working on the kernel, you can get involved in kernel
development without any prior experience, and get
paid a bit ($5000).
Its worth applying if youre at all interested you
get to format a patch for the kernel, and its fun. Sarah
Sharp, a Linux kernel developer, coordinates this
program and she is pretty inspiring. You should read
her blog post about how 137 patches got accepted
into the kernel during the first round. [hn.my/137]
These patches could be yours! Look at the application
instructions! [kernelnewbies.org/OPWApply]
If youre not a woman, Google Summer of Code is
similar.

Path 4: Read some kernel code

This sounds like terrible advice Want to understand
how the kernel works? Read the source, silly!
But its actually kind of fun! You wont understand
everything. I felt kind of dumb for not understanding
things, but then every single person I talked to was like
yeah, its the Linux kernel, of course!
My friend Dave recently pointed me to LXR
[lxr.linux.no], where you can read the kernel source
and it provides lots of helpful cross-referencing links.
For example, if you wanted to understand the chmod
system call, you can go look at the chmod_common
definition in the Linux kernel! livegrep.com is also really
nice for this.

Heres the source for chmod_common, with some comments from me:
static int chmod_common(struct path *path,
umode_t mode)
{
struct inode *inode = path->dentry->d_inode;
struct iattr newattrs;
int error;
// No idea what this does
error = mnt_want_write(path->mnt);
if (error)
return error;
// Mutexes! Prevent race conditions! =D
mutex_lock(&inode->i_mutex);
// Check for permission to use chmod
error = security_path_chmod(path, mode);
if (error)
goto out_unlock;
// I guess this changes the mode!
newattrs.ia_mode = (mode & S_IALLUGO) |
(inode->i_mode & ~S_IALLUGO);
newattrs.ia_valid = ATTR_MODE | ATTR_CTIME;
error = notify_change(path->dentry, &newattrs);
out_unlock:
mutex_unlock(&inode->i_mutex);
// We're done, so the mutex is over!
mnt_drop_write(path->mnt); // ???
return error;
}

I find this is a fun time and helps demystify the

kernel for me. Most of the code I read I find pretty
opaque, but some of it (like this chmod code) is a little
bit understandable. n
Julia Evans likes programming, playing with data, and finding
out why things that seem scary actually arent. It turns out that
the Linux kernel is a fun time!
Reprinted with permission of the original author.
First appeared in hn.my/kernelhacker (jvns.ca)

29

The Complete Guide to

Centering a Div
By Steve Pear

inevitably finds that centering

a div isnt as obvious as
youd expect. Centering whats
inside a div is easy enough by giving
the text-align property a value of
center, but then things tend to get a
bit sticky. When you get to centering a div vertically, you can end up
in a world of CSS hurt.
The aim of this article is to show
how, with a few CSS tricks, any div
can be centered; horizontally, vertically or both. And within the page
or a div.
very new developer

Centering a div in a page, basic

This method works with just about
every browser, ever.
CSS
.center-div
{
margin: 0 auto;
width: 100px;
}

The value auto in the margin

property sets the left and right margins to the available space within
the page. The thing to remember
is your centered div must have a
width property.

30 PROGRAMMING

Centering a div within a div,

old-school

Centering a div within a div with

inline-block

This works with almost every

browser.

With this method the inner div

doesnt require a set width. It works
with all reasonably modern browsers, including IE 8.

CSS
.outer-div
{
padding: 30px;
}
.inner-div
{
margin: 0 auto;
width: 100px;
}

HTML
<div class="outer-div">
<div class="inner-div">
</div>
</div>

The margin auto trick strikes

again. The inner div must have a
width property.

CSS
.outer-div
{
padding: 30px;
text-align: center;
}
.inner-div
{
display: inline-block;
padding: 50px;
}

HTML
<div class="outer-div">
<div class="inner-div">
</div>
</div>

The text-align property only

works on inline elements. The
inline-block value displays the inner
div as an inline element as well as a
block, so the text-align property in
the outer div centers the inner div.

Centering a div within a div,

horizontally and vertically
This uses the margin auto trick to
center a div both horizontally and
vertically. It works with all modern
browsers.
CSS
.outer-div
{
padding: 30px;
}
.inner-div
{
margin: auto;
width: 100px;
height: 100px;
}

HTML
<div class="outer-div">
<div class="inner-div">
</div>
</div>

The inner div must have a width

and height property. This doesnt
work if the outer div has a fixed
height.

Centering a div at the bottom of

a page
This uses margin auto and an
absolute-positioned outer div. It
works with all modern browsers.
CSS
.outer-div
{
position: absolute;
bottom: 70px;
width: 100%;
}
.inner-div
{
margin: 0 auto;
width: 100px;
height: 100px;
background-color: #ccc;
}

HTML
<div class="outer-div">
<div class="inner-div">
</div>
</div>

The inner div must have a width

property. The gap from the very
bottom of the page is set in the
outer divs bottom property.

Centering a div in a page, horizontally and vertically

This uses margin auto again and
an absolute-positioned outer div. It
works with all modern browsers.
CSS
.center-div
{
position: absolute;
margin: auto;
top: 0;
right: 0;
bottom: 0;
left: 0;
width: 100px;
height: 100px;
background-color: #ccc;
}

The div must have a width and

height property. n
Steve Pear is the proprietor and lead developer at Tipue, a small web development
studio based in North London.
Reprinted with permission of the original author.
First appeared in hn.my/centerdiv (tipue.com)

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SPECIAL

The Story of My Desk

By James Long

ve been searching for the

perfect desk for the past few
years. It took a while to even
figure out what that is. I tried a few
standing setups, but found that Id
rather opt in to standing and only
do it a few hours a day at most. My
desk needed to be sturdy, beautiful,
and just the right size.
The stingy and stubborn side of
me kicked in whenever I shopped
around. The desks that came close
to what I wanted were over $400.
Eventually, I decided to just build
my own. The problem was that I
had no idea how to build it. This is
a story about tackling the unknown
and persisting until its done.
That was almost two years ago,
and as of this summer, I finally
finished my desk. Its exactly what I
want and much cheaper too.
Although I started playing
around two years ago, the above
desk took just 2 months to make
with about one night a week.
The wood cost about $150, and I
spent about the same on tools but
I am already using them on other
projects. Sure, you could go out and
spend $75 dollars on something
that mostly works, but I wanted
a desk that Ill have for years and
years and also looks beautiful.

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The final product

Its 5' long, 25" deep, and 32"

tall. It came out a little taller than
expected because I put feet screws
in the bottom of the legs so that I
could make the table even. Those
screws added almost an inch. I just
have to raise my chair a little bit
though.
My innovation was a ledge in the
back to hold all of your cords. Note
in the above picture that there is
only a single cord behind the desk:
the power strip. Everything else is
hidden.

You can do this too, with a little

patience. I knew nothing about
woodworking when I started. I wish
I could write a full tutorial, but I
dont have time. Here are a few
tips:

Oak is a good hard wood for

desks. Get the lumber yard to
plane the boards for you, trust
me. Its extremely important that
all edges are completely flat and
edges are 90.

My first prototype wooden desk. Learned how to glue boards

together and drill dowel holes. Without aprons, it wobbled.

but the glue really is most of the join strength). For

the base, you need something, and the cheapest and
easiest is probably the Kreg jig. I resisted it because
its a newer thing and I wanted to see how the old
ways worked. Now I know.

At first I thought I could make a desk top and just

put 4 legs on it. You cant. You need aprons to
make the desk really sturdy. These are just long oak
boards that connect the 4x4 legs together, establishing the base. The top sits on top and is connected
to the aprons with Rockler table top fasteners (you
need to cut a shallow ridge on the inside of the
aprons).

Stains and finishes are complicated. I used a General

Finish stain and Waterlox as a sealer. 2 coats of stain
and 4 coats of Waterlox (its a tung oil so it needs
several).

I also made a major mistake by staining the desk

when it was hot and humid outside, and became
gummy and was hard to wipe. It also took forever for
the Waterlox oil to dry (about a week).

All the cords sit hidden on this ledge, making the desk look
nice and clean

It was surprisingly hard to find untreated 4x4s for

the legs (I thought Lowes and such places had
untreated, but they dont). Even at the specialty
lumber yard, I could only find cedar, so my desk legs
are cedar. Turns out cedar is really light though, so
thats nice!

Youll need lots of clamps. Pipe clamps are best for

joining long boards together, like the desk top.

I used dowels to strengthen joints, but I think it was

more work than necessary. Dowel holes need to
100% aligned, so I had to use a doweling jig and it
was just annoying. For the desk top, you can probably just use wood glue and join them (sounds crazy,

YouTube and Google are your friends. I did extensive

research for each step of the process. There are some
great YouTube videos that show how experienced
woodworkers achieve results. The Patrick Hosey Workshop: Farmhouse Table was one of my favorite videos
which doesnt explain much but shows a lot of details.

33

My boards werent planed, and theres no replacement for a

joiner and planer. A friend has a local shop and helped me get
them planed and straight.

The two end pieces joined. The pipe clamps are bending but
I fixed that after I took the picture.

The boards were connected with dowels (using a doweling

jig to drill the holes) and a bunch of wood glue, and clamped
with pipe clamps.

Joining the two end pieces. You can see the dowel holes.

34 SPECIAL

Ridges cut into the aprons for the table top fasteners. I used a
circular saw so it was difficult.

First coat of stain. The color is red mahogany. I cant believe I did this
when it was humid outside, as it became kind of gummy.
Second coat of stain.
I used a milder brown
color for this coat.
I used dowels and wood glue to join the aprons
with the legs

The final base. The left apron is on the inside

because it will have a ledge to hold all the cords
in the back.

I actually built 2 tables

before this. I built the first one
2 years ago and it was just a
butcherblock top with a steel
base I constructed by drilling
holes and bolting it together.
It was horribly wobbly. Last
winter I finally committed to
building a wooden desk.

I built a desk out

of cheap wood as a
prototype to learn
the basics. Finally,
I mustered up the
courage to buy nice
wood and cut into it.
The rest of the story
is told in the pictures. Its been a great process
to start from scratch, and force
myself to learn something new.
For me, its a reminder that
you can achieve something if
you persist. Its too easy to give
up with the excuse I dont
know how to do this, but you
can learn.

35

The final color (before finishing). Its slightly splotchy

because I did this when it was humid.

The back ledge will hold all the cords and other untidy stuff
out of sight.

The final top, after a few coats of Waterlox finish.

The desk in action.

James Long works for Mozilla as an apps engineer, helping

develop the web as a platform. He loves diving into complicated
problems and figuring out solutions, whether its programming,
design, or making the best espresso. He also likes teaching
people to code.
Reprinted with permission of the original author.
First appeared in hn.my/deskstory (jlongster.com)

The final base, stained and finished the same as the top.

36 SPECIAL

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37

How I Learned to Stop

Procrastinating, & Love Letting Go
By Leo Babauta

People have a hard time letting go

of their suffering. Out of a fear of the
unknown, they prefer suffering that
Thich Nhat Hanh
is familiar.

he end of procrastination
is the art of letting go.
Ive been a lifelong
procrastinator, at least until recent
years. I would put things off until
deadline, because I knew I could
come through. I came through on
tests after cramming last minute,
I turned articles in at the deadline
after waiting until the last hour, I
got things done.
Until I didnt. It turns out
procrastinating caused me to miss
deadlines, over and over. It stressed
me out. My work was less-thandesirable when I did it last minute.
Slowly, I started to realize that procrastination wasnt doing me any
favors. In fact, it was causing me a
lot of grief.
But I couldnt quit. I tried a lot of
things. I tried time boxing and goal
setting and accountability and the
Pomodoro Technique and Getting
Things Done. All are great methods,
but they only last so long. Nothing
really worked over the long term.
Thats because I wasnt getting to
the root problem.

38 SPECIAL

I hadnt figured out the skill

that would save me from the
procrastination.
Until I learned about letting go.
Letting go first came to me when
I was quitting smoking. I had to let
go of the need to smoke, the use
of my crutch of cigarettes to deal
with stress and problems.
Then I learned I needed to let go
of other false needs that were causing me problems: sugar, junk food,
meat, shopping, beer, possessions.
Im not saying I can never do these
things again once I let go of these
needs, but I let go of the idea that
theyre really necessary. I let go of
an unhealthy attachment to them.
Then I learned that distractions and the false need to check
my email and news and other
things online were causing me
problems. They were causing my
procrastination.
So I learned to let go of those too.
Heres the process I used to let go
of the distractions and false needs
that cause procrastination:

I paid attention to the pain

they cause me, later, instead
of only the temporary comfort/
pleasure they gave me right away.

I thought about the person

I want to be, the life I want
to live. I set my intentions to do the
good work I think I should do.

I watched my urges to check

things, to go to the comfort
of distractions. I saw that I wanted
to escape discomfort of something
hard, and go to the comfort of
something familiar and easy.

I realized I didnt need

that comfort. I could be in
discomfort and nothing bad would
happen. In fact, the best things
happen when Im in discomfort.
And then I smile, and breathe,
and let go.
And one step at a time, become
the person I want to be. n
You can only lose what you cling
to. ~Buddha

Leo Babauta is the creator and writer at

Zen Habits. He is a former journalist and
freelance writer of 18 years, a husband
and father of six children, and lives on
the island of Guam where he leads a very
simple life.
Reprinted with permission of the original author.
First appeared in hn.my/letgo (zenhabits.net)

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