Web Review, Week 2025-01
Happy new year everyone! It’s now 2025, we’ll see what it brings.
Unsurprisingly this week we got a couple of nice “2024 retrospective” articles in this edition, I expect more to show up in the coming weeks. Anyway, let’s go for my web review for the week 2025-01.
Open Source on its own is no alternative to Big Tech - Bert Hubert’s writings
Tags: tech, foss, business
Or why making a dent in the enterprise software space is hard for FOSS… The good news is, it’d require setting up whole ecosystems of services.
https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/open-source-by-itself-is-no-alternative-for-big-tech/
The web is too big, or scaling down
Tags: tech, web, browser, complexity
The Web standards are indeed too complex. That severely limits the possibility of browser engine incumbents. I agree there’s a deeper lesson here about the scale of technologies.
https://scottrichmond.me/the-web-is-too-big/
Elon Musk and the right’s war on Wikipedia
Tags: tech, foss, knowledge, wikipedia, politics
Very good background information on the latest attempt at discrediting Wikipedia.
https://www.citationneeded.news/elon-musk-and-the-rights-war-on-wikipedia/
Does current AI represent a dead end?
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, complexity, emergence, reliability
This highlights quite well the limits of the models used in LLMs.
https://www.bcs.org/articles-opinion-and-research/does-current-ai-represent-a-dead-end/
Performance of LLMs on Advent of code 2024
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, copilot
The results are unsurprising. They definitely confirm what we expected. The models are good at predicting the past, they’re not so great at solving problems.
https://www.jerpint.io/blog/advent-of-code-llms/
Things we learned about LLMs in 2024
Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, economics, ecology, criticism
Good perspective on how the generative AI space evolved in 2024. There are good news and more concerning ones in there. We’ll see what 2025 brings.
https://simonwillison.net/2024/Dec/31/llms-in-2024/
Databases in 2024: A Year in Review
Tags: tech, databases, business
Good overview on how the databases landscape evolved the past year.
https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pavlo/blog/2025/01/2024-databases-retrospective.html
Keeping secrets secret with git-crypt
Tags: tech, version-control, git, secrets, tools
Looks like a nice tool for a simple management of your project specific secrets.
https://blog.ktz.me/keeping-secrets-secret-with-git-crypt/
How does your URL parser handle Unicode? – Daniel Lemire’s blog
Tags: tech, web, standard, parsing
Parsers are required to normalize URLs but often they just don’t. To be kept in mind in your code.
https://lemire.me/blog/2025/01/02/how-does-your-url-parser-handle-unicode/
Rules for Writing Software Tutorials
Tags: tech, documentation, writing, tutorial
Need to write a tutorial? Here is a good set of rules to follow. Don’t be fooled, it sounds simple but it is hard work.
https://refactoringenglish.com/chapters/rules-for-software-tutorials/
Mistakes engineers make in large established codebases | sean goedecke
Tags: tech, legacy, engineering
Good advice to work with large legacy code bases. You better know it very well before you make large changes to it.
https://www.seangoedecke.com/large-established-codebases/
That’s not an abstraction, that’s just a layer of indirection
Tags: tech, design, complexity, simplicity, performance
Or why you shouldn’t insert an abstraction just for the sake of it. Also clearly not all abstractions are created equal.
https://fhur.me/posts/2024/thats-not-an-abstraction
Software Design is Knowledge Building
Tags: tech, software, design, knowledge, organization
Very nice piece. This is indeed mostly about building organizational knowledge. If someone leaves a project that person better not be alone to ensure some continuity… lost knowledge is very hard to piece back together.
https://olano.dev/blog/software-design-is-knowledge-building/
Bye for now!