Daniel Moch

I’m not sure what systems programming means. It used to mean something like designing operating systems. The creators of the Go programming language sought to redefine the term (although they may not have seen it that way) to mean something like designing networked systems, and particularly web servers. This to say, the term’s usefulness is debatable.

And yet I find myself attracted to it. I even like to think of myself as a systems programmer of a sort. I’m not content to simply use the layers of abstraction provided to me. I always want to know what’s going on above and especially below the layer I am programming. Over the course of my career I’ve had the privilege of working on everything from device drivers, to power-on self-test (POST), all the way up the stack to large, web-based systems.

A couple years back I was introduced to some of the folks at Galois, and they convinced me that formal methods can lower the cost of software development. Now I’m reading this post from Marc Brooker where he adds a bit of nuance that I think is helpful. I’ll summarize it this way: formal methods can lower the total cost to develop and maintain system-level software, where the requirements are stable and well-understood. If you’re designing a user-facing system and need to interactively respond to customer feedback—in other words, if your requirements are shifting and poorly understood—Agile remains the best choice.

I couldn’t read about the advantages of Homa in datacenters without imagining one populated with servers communicating over 9p. What would the performance of Plan9 look like if 9p were implemented on top of Homa?

The image of zombies felt inescapable as I got up to speed on Hawk Tuah girl Haliey Welch, a story and character so packed with minor happenings that it could be its own cinematic universe.

Why zombies? Look it what Welch has done since her debut. There are podcasts, public appearances, and now an infamous meme coin. The last of these is clearly tied to her value as a meme, but the others were enabled by her pop culture currency as well. Her ability to do these things at all is a recycling of her first moment, like that ouroborus, eating its own tail, recycling itself. Or, if you like, it is an act of cannibalism, just like what zombies are known for.

Until about six months ago I had drawn a hard line on social media. I am not proud of this since I prefer to take a thoughtful approach to things. Thoughfulness and absolutes make poor neighbors, and so with the new year it seems like a good time to reflect, in writing, on how I am using and plan to use this site in the next season of life.