Monday, December 30, 2013

Third annual blog reflection

Today, it's three years ago that I started this blog, so I thought this is a good opportunity to reflect about last year's writings.

Obtaining my PhD degree


I think the most memorable thing that happened for me this year is the fact that I finally obtained my PhD degree. From that moment on, I can finally call myself Dr. Sander, or actually (if I take my other degree into account): Dr. Ir. Sander (or in fact: Dr. Ir. Ing. Sander if I take all of them into account, but I believe the last degree has been been superseded by the middle one, but I'm not sure :-) ).

Anyway, after obtaining my PhD degree I don't feel that much different, apart from the fact that I feel relieved that it's done. It took me quite some effort to get my PhD dissertation and all the preparations done for the defense. Besides my thesis, I also had to defend my propositions. Most of them were not supposed to be directly related to my research subject.

Programming in JavaScript


From the moment that I have switched jobs, I have also been involved in a lot of JavaScript programming these days. Every programming language and runtime environment have their weird/obscure problems/challenges, but in my opinion JavaScript is a very special case.

As a former teaching assistant for the concepts of programming languages course, I remain interested in discovering important lessons allowing me to prevent turning code into a mess and dealing with challenges that a particular programming gives. So far, I have investigated object oriented programming through prototypes, and two perspectives of dealing with asynchronous programming problems that come with most JavaScript environments.

Besides programming challenges I also have to perform deployment tasks from JavaScript programs. People who happen to know me know that I prefer Nix and Nix-related solutions. I have developed NiJS: an internal DSL for Nix to make my life a bit easier to do that.

Continuous integration and testing


Another technical aspect I have been working on is setting up a continuous integration facility by using Hydra: the Nix-based continuous integration server. I wrote a couple of blog posts describing its features, how to set it up and how to secure it.

I also made a couple improvements to the Android and iOS Nix build functions, so that I can use Hydra to continuously build mobile apps.

Nix/NixOS development


Besides Hydra, I have been involved with various other parts of the Nix project as well. One of the more interesting things I did is developing a Nix function that can be used to compose FHS-compatible chroot environments. This function is particularly useful to run binary-only software in NixOS that cannot be patched, such as Steam.

I also wrote two blog posts to explain the user environment and development environment concepts.

Fun programming


Besides my PhD defense and all other activities, there was a bit of room to do some fun programming as well. I have improved my Amiga video emulation library (part of my IFF file format experiments project) a bit by implementing support for super hires resolutions and redefining its architecture.

Moreover, I have updated all the packages to use the new version of this library.

Research


After obtaining my PhD degree, I'm basically relieved from my research/publication duties. However, there is one research related thing that caught my attention two months ago.

The journal paper titled: 'Disnix: A toolset for distributed deployment' that got accepted in April last year is finally going to get published in Volume 79 of 'Science of Computer Programming', unbelievable!

Although it sounds like good news that another paper of mine gets published, the thing that disturbs me is that the publication process took an insanely long time! I wrote the first version of this paper for the WASDeTT-3 workshop that was held in October 2010. So that technically means that I started doing the work for the paper several months prior to that.

In February 2011, I have adapted/extended the workshop paper and submitted its first journal draft. Now, in January 2014 it finally gets published, which means that it took almost 3 years to get published (if you take the workshop into account as well, then it's actually closer to 3,5 years!).

In some academic assessment standards, journal papers have more value than conference papers. Although this journal paper should increase my value as a researcher, it's actually crazy if you think too much about it. The first reason is that I wrote the first version of this paper before I started this blog. Meanwhile, I have already written 54 blog articles, two tech reports, published two papers at conferences, and I finished my PhD dissertation.

The other reason is that peer reviewing and publishing should help the authors and the research discipline in general. To me this does not look like any help. Meanwhile, in the current development version of Disnix some aspects of its architecture have evolved considerably compared to what has been described in the paper, so it is no use for anyone else in the research community anymore.

The only value the paper still provides are the general ideas and the way Disnix manifests itself externally.

Although the paper is not completely valueless, and I'm happy it gets published, it also feels weird that I don't depend on it anymore.

Blog posts


As with my previous annual reflections, I will also publish the top 10 of my most frequently read blog posts:

  1. On Nix and GNU Guix. This is a critical blog post that also ended up first in last year's top 10. I think this blog posts will remain at the top position for the time being, since it attracted an insane amount of visitors.
  2. An alternative explanation of the Nix package manager. My alternative explanation of Nix, which I wrote to clarify things. It was also second in last year's top 10.
  3. Setting up a Hydra build cluster for continuous integration and testing (part 1). Apparently, Hydra and some general principles about continuous integration have attracted quite some vistors. However, the follow up blog posts I wrote about Hydra don't seem to be that interesting to outsiders.
  4. Using Nix while doing development. I wrote this blog post 2 days ago, and it attracted quite some visitors. I have noticed that setting up development environments is an attractive feature for Nix users.
  5. Second computer. This is an old blog post about my good ol' Amiga. It was also in all previous top 10s and I think it will remain like that for the time being. The Amiga rocks!
  6. An evaluation and comparison of GoboLinux. Another blog article that remains popular from the beginning. It's still a pity that GoboLinux has not been updated and sticks to their 014.01 release, which dates from 2008.
  7. Composing FHS-compatible chroot environments with Nix (or deploying Steam in NixOS). This is something I have developed to be able to run Steam in NixOS. It seems to have attracted quite some users, which does not come as a surprise. NixOS users want to play Half-Life!
  8. Software deployment complexity. An old blog post about software deployment complexity in general. Still remains popular.
  9. Deploying iOS applications with the Nix package manager. A blog post that I wrote last year describing how we can use the Nix package manager to build apps for the iPhone/iPad. For a long time the Android variant of this blog post was more popular, but recently this blog article surpassed it. I have no clue why.
  10. Porting software to AmigaOS (unconventional style). People still seem to like one of my craziest experiments.

Conclusion


I already have three more blog posts in draft/planning stages and more ideas that I like to explore, so expect more to come. The remaining thing I'd like to say is:

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

2 comments:

  1. Journals: I see relatively often such long publication times in theoretical CS (even very high-quality journals). And I find peer review very useful, both in research and nixpkgs hacking, but maybe it depends on particular case (and I've seen some really useless reviews, but that was on low-quality conference/journal).

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  2. Although I have some criticism about the publishing process, I'm not against peer reviewing or publishing in general. Moreover, I'm also not blaming anyone personally involved in the process.

    However, I see quite often that we forget what writing and publishing is about. In my opinion, it's about achieving a goal. Publishing should help researchers achieving that, but if the process takes so long that the research is outdated when it gets published, it's not that helpful anymore.

    A paper itself should not be the goal.

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