NixOS is making me less afraid

Something funny happened a little while ago: I read about FreshRSS, and it sounded nice, so I installed it on a server and started using it. That would not have happened a year ago, but then again, a year ago I didn’t have any NixOS servers.

Previously I've maintained configuration by writing things down carefully, and sometimes turning those careful notes into flaky shell scripts. A NixOS configuration reads a lot like the careful instructions to myself, except they’re executable and they produce the same result every time.

Full article (2–6 minute read): NixOS is making me less afraid

Flashcard of the week

From The Independent Consulting Manual:

What is the first step before building a software solution?

I like this one because it ties into many other things that stuck with me form the book. The answer is practically an instance of Paul Graham's advice to "do things that don't scale".

Offering the solution as a productised service.

A productised service is something you do (rather than something your software does) but unlike many other services you may provide, a productised service has a fixed price, clear expectations, well-defined boundaries, known time requirements, a guaranteed outcome, etc. It's a repeatable, somewhat predictable process you've worked out for solving a problem.

See, the fiendish thing about software solutions is that they're fast and efficient, but inflexible. Automation is great at doing something over and over, but the drawback is that if something is the wrong thing, the automation is just producing defects at a high rate.

Humans aren't efficient in the same sense, but they're nearly infinitely flexible. They can adjust their approach on the fly, reflect over mistakes, and learn and improve the process as they go through it. At some point, they have found the right process that produces the right outcomes, and then it makes sense to automate (parts of?) it.

But first, work through the process many times manually.

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