jhillyerd (u/jhillyerd)

jhillyerd commented on Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (March 2024) · Posted by u/whoishiring

jhillyerd · 2 years ago

Location: Redmond, WA

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Primarily Go; also have experience with Rust, Python, Java, JavaScript, Elm, Nix

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jhillyerd/

CV: Upon request

Email: james at hillyerd dot com

My recent experience is in back-end development, but I am a generalist software engineer. I love working with platform technologies; Linux, containers, automation, orchestration (nomad & k8s), CI/CD, NixOS, etc. At Google I worked on a distributed application that handled a million requests per second, but I've also worked at startups with no customers.

jhillyerd commented on We want to make Nix better determinate.systems/posts... · Posted by u/biggestlou

mixedCase · 4 years ago

Hot take as a NixOS user that uses Nix for work: "all" we need is a much better, sound, statically typed language to build better abstractions with.

The only hard requirements I can think of are algebraic data types with exhaustive pattern matching to go with, row polymorphism, purity and good inline documentation support.

I don't know if a good enough hostable language exists or if it should be a new version of Nixlang, but almost every single annoying problem that makes me go "Nix is getting in my way" can be traced back to the lack of a good, powerful type system leading to a house of cards situation whether it comes from nixpkgs or entirely of my own making.

jhillyerd · 4 years ago

I think this is true for Nix in the deployment/ops space, where debugging a broken build can be very frustrating. Language improvements are going to be less useful for app developers, the Flake learning curve is not going to get better with a type system.

Perhaps something like heroku buildpaks (https://github.com/railwayapp/nixpacks ?) would help devs get on the Nix train.

jhillyerd commented on Ask HN: If Kubernetes is the solution, why are there so many DevOps jobs? · Posted by u/picozeta

digianarchist · 4 years ago

HashiCorp Nomad is a good alternative.

jhillyerd · 4 years ago

I've started running Nomad in my homelab, and it is a great piece of software. Although I feel like the question is sort of flawed, if you want to learn Kubernetes, you are going to need to run Kubernetes - or one of the downsized versions of it.

If you want to learn about containers, distributed workloads, etc, then Nomad is a great option that is easy to learn/adopt piecemeal.

jhillyerd commented on Minikube quickly sets up a local Kubernetes cluster on macOS, Linux, and Windows minikube.sigs.k8s.io/docs... · Posted by u/gjvc

claudiulodro · 4 years ago

I'm late to the distributed system game, and I have a handful of old PCs which I've been wanting to connect into some sort of "supercomputer" or cluster as a learning exercise. Looking at the docs, it seems to me like I could accomplish that in theory using minikube, by treating the PCs as a local environment and managing them all with k8s. Does that sound reasonable, am I way off base, or is there a simpler method?

jhillyerd · 4 years ago

If you end up not liking (or not wanting to learn) k8s, check out Hashicorp's Nomad. I set it up recently, it's great for a homelab, and a bit more flexible than k8s because it can also run raw executables and VMs.

jhillyerd commented on Riot is now Element element.io/blog/welcome-t... · Posted by u/J_tt

easytiger · 6 years ago

Press release pro tip: sidle in what the company or app does very early in. Verging on all of the releases I read on HN don't do this but are for companies I've not heard of. So you leave knowing almost nothing about the company

jhillyerd · 6 years ago

Yes, please. The first couple paragraphs of this PR I thought I was reading about Riot Games renaming themselves.

jhillyerd commented on Sonos's “recycle mode” intentionally bricks devices so they can't be reused twitter.com/atomicthumbs/... · Posted by u/gyger

cellularmitosis · 6 years ago

For a physical device (ie featured-locked upon shipping), “support” amounts to paying the server bill, which is likely negligible.

jhillyerd · 6 years ago

Not true, Sonos works in a mesh, so all Sonos devices need to talk to each other, and to the controller app on phone or PC.

jhillyerd commented on NixOS 19.09 nixos.org/nixos/manual/re... · Posted by u/trulyrandom

tathougies · 6 years ago

No. Nix requires much less maintenance than gentoo. The maintenance it does require is typically very fast. Gentoo builds everything from source and portage is not immutable the way Nix is. My experience running Gentoo (and I ran it during the GCC 3 -> 4 upgrade, which required a full emerge world) is that updates cane be slow, and prone to breakage, due to missing or clashing or outdated dependencies.

Nix is a dream come true. Due to the way the nix store keeps all dependencies separate and reproduces builds to a high fidelity, when you do need to build a system package (very rare, as most are just downloaded straight out of a binary cache), it will invariably succeed with few exceptions, and the resulting binaries will work correctly.

But the best part about nix vs portage is that it won't leave your system in a half way state. Upgrading NixOS means downloading or building a bunch of packages. This can be interrupted at anytime. At no point during the download or build will the old system become unusable. Nothing in the old system is overwritten. At the time you have everything built and are ready to change, the change occurs atomically and instantly. If the new system does not work, you can revert back to the old system atomically and instantly as well. In the rare case that the new system has made your computer unstable, you can reboot the system back into the old version without the need for a rescue CD or USB stick.

jhillyerd · 6 years ago

+1. It's been years since I used Gentoo, but I felt like it broke me, or required some sort of intervention once a month. Arch was much better, more like once every few months. So far Nix has not broken anything for me in a year of use.

jhillyerd commented on Newmail: Generating random email aliases on OpenSMPTD hakon.gylterud.net/newmai... · Posted by u/gylterud

liuw · 7 years ago

I want this functionality but I balk at the idea of running my own email infrastructure.

I'm fine with writing code to call APIs from email providers to manage email addresses though.

jhillyerd · 7 years ago

If you are alright with running a single piece app that provides webmail, SMTP, POP, and REST, you might be interested in my project: http://www.inbucket.org/

It's really targeted for intranet use though, I wouldn't recommend exposing anything other than the SMTP port to the internet.

jhillyerd commented on The Internet of Unprofitable Things strugglers.net/~andy/blog... · Posted by u/popey

robertAngst · 7 years ago

Question for people who read the link-

Do you like the writing style and inclusion of gifs?

jhillyerd · 7 years ago

I found the headings a bit weird to read, and apparently my brain thought the GIFs were ads, because I didn't notice them at all.

jhillyerd commented on Amp – A complete text editor for the terminal amp.rs/... · Posted by u/sphinxc0re

lunchables · 7 years ago

>and you aren’t able to just walk up to vim somewhere else

Is this something people do? I use a handful of machines and use git+stow for managing my vimrc. I've never had this problem where I need to "walk up to vim somewhere else" where I wouldnt just clone my dotfiles and stow my vim config. Takes all of 10 seconds and I'm up and running.

jhillyerd · 7 years ago

I'd say yes; there are many times I've ssh'd into a server and wanted to do a quick edit where I don't have my vimrc; not going to bother to install it.

Complexity increases when you want one vimrc with many plugins to work on Windows, Linux and OS X, and both in your work and home environments.

I'm not arguing that Amp is the answer. I don't think I'd stick with vim as my daily driver if I couldn't customize it, and have the plugins I do.