Posts on Unix systems programming

Ruby
1

I would like to do a series of mailing list posts on the subject of Unix
systems programming in Ruby. I only intend to cover standardized,
POSIX-compliant features of the standard Ruby distribution. No
extensions or Linux-only parts.

Is there anybody who would NOT want these posts in ruby-talk?

I could do this on a separate mailing list, but I think it’ll be
beneficial to a wider audience in ruby-talk. I will prefix subjects
with “[USP]” for ease-of-filtering. I’ll start posting in a week or two
if there are no objections. I’ll try to space the posts so they’re
several days apart and allow time for questions/clarifications.

I don’t consider myself a great writer nor programmer, but several folks
expressed interest in learning this subject to me directly. I don’t
know if anybody else is willing to teach this subject or contribute, but
if I’m to do it, it’ll be over my preferred medium: plain-text email[1].

Most people would start a blog/wiki, but I dislike dealing with any
browsers/formatting/layout/presentation, so absolutely no
markup/markdown/troff/textile if I’m to do this. I’m interested in
reader feedback and contributions; and (plain-text, minimally quoted)
email is great for that. I will not use anything other than plain-text
email to interact with readers/editors/contributors.

I will provide downloadable mbox archives of all posts (and replies).

All of my posts will be licensed under the GPLv3, but code examples will
be all-permissive and reusable freely without attribution.

If anybody wants to take mailing list posts and make a website/wiki or
even publish a book so more people can read it, please do so! The GPLv3
protects readers who circumvent DRM if distributed in proprietary
formats. Editorial help to fix/correct things will be greatly
appreciated.

I request (but cannot enforce) my name/likeness NOT be used in promoting
any websites/books/etc… I do NOT want recognition, so you can (and
are encouraged to) hide/bury my name while respecting the GPL and take
all the credit for making it presentable to a non-mailing-list-reading
audience. I will not accept any payment/donations/gifts from this, you
can make all the money you can from selling this (the GPL allows it).

All I want from this is more people to understand Unix systems
programming (and to avoid all HTML/browsers/forms while doing it).

Thanks for reading!

[1] - includes 7-bit clean ASCII art that works in any terminal :slight_smile:

2

On Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 6:00 PM, Eric W. [email protected] wrote:

I would like to do a series of mailing list posts on the subject of Unix
systems programming in Ruby. I only intend to cover standardized,
POSIX-compliant features of the standard Ruby distribution. No
extensions or Linux-only parts.

Is there anybody who would NOT want these posts in ruby-talk?

THIS IS AMAZING. I am so excited to read them.

James Edward G. II

3

On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 4:30 AM, Eric W. [email protected] wrote:

I would like to do a series of mailing list posts on the subject of Unix
systems programming in Ruby. I only intend to cover standardized,
POSIX-compliant features of the standard Ruby distribution. No
extensions or Linux-only parts.

I would be interested in the Linux-only parts as well.

[…]

I don’t consider myself a great writer nor programmer, but several folks
expressed interest in learning this subject to me directly. I don’t
know if anybody else is willing to teach this subject or contribute, but
if I’m to do it, it’ll be over my preferred medium: plain-text email[1].

Comes at a great time for me. After having searched unsuccessfully for
your blog, I was gonna drop you a mail myself :).

[…]

If anybody wants to take mailing list posts and make a website/wiki or
even publish a book so more people can read it, please do so! The GPLv3
protects readers who circumvent DRM if distributed in proprietary
formats. Editorial help to fix/correct things will be greatly
appreciated.

Not sure if it aligns well with the theme of ‘Ruby Best Practices’,
but I feel that it would be a great place to publish your posts later.
Magnus H.'s (judofyr) Timeless, if he agrees, would be another good
place to publish to publish your posts later. If not anything else, I
would be delighted to mirror them on my (useless) blog :D.

[…]

Thanks for reading!

Thanks for doing this :). I am really delighted and looking forward to
your posts.

4

i, for one at least, would welcome such posts. :smiley:
hex

On Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 7:00 PM, Eric W. [email protected] wrote:

if there are no objections. I’ll try to space the posts so they’re
reader feedback and contributions; and (plain-text, minimally quoted)
protects readers who circumvent DRM if distributed in proprietary
All I want from this is more people to understand Unix systems

–
my blog is cooler than yours: serialhex.github.com

The wise man said: “Never argue with an idiot. They bring you down to
their
level and beat you with experience.”

Other than the fact Linux has a cool name, could someone explain why I
should use Linux over BSD?

No. That’s it. The cool name, that is. We worked very hard on
creating a name that would appeal to the majority of people, and it
certainly paid off: thousands of people are using linux just to be able
to say “OS/2? Hah. I’ve got Linux. What a cool name”. 386BSD made the
mistake of putting a lot of numbers and weird abbreviations into the
name, and is scaring away a lot of people just because it sounds too
technical.
– Linus Torvalds’ follow-up to a question about Linux

5

Anurag P. [email protected] wrote:

I would be interested in the Linux-only parts as well.

I’ve thought about this as a separate series (after the majority of the
POSIX-only parts are done). I don’t think there is much, though.

I don’t consider myself a great writer nor programmer, but several folks
expressed interest in learning this subject to me directly. I don’t
know if anybody else is willing to teach this subject or contribute, but
if I’m to do it, it’ll be over my preferred medium: plain-text email[1].

Comes at a great time for me. After having searched unsuccessfully for
your blog, I was gonna drop you a mail myself :).

Good to know folks are interested. I think my original email explains
why I don’t (and am unlikely to ever) blog :slight_smile:

6

Eric W. wrote in post #1020497:
I would like to do a series of mailing list posts on the subject of Unix
systems programming in Ruby.

Yes, please! I’d love some examples of common Unix systems programming
patterns and when to use them and stuff. Basically, I’m interested in
Unix programming mainly for server-related stuff. rtomayko’s post about
Unicorn and Unix got me interested in this stuff and I’d love to learn
more.

Thanks!

-Luke

7

James G. [email protected] wrote:

On Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 6:00 PM, Eric W. [email protected] wrote:

I don’t
know if anybody else is willing to teach this subject or contribute, but
if I’m to do it, it’ll be over my preferred medium: plain-text email[1].

I have a series of posts planned called “Forking by Example.” I’ve
written and tested the code, I just need to add prose. I was going to
throw it on my blog, but it could go nicely with your stuff. Then
again, you may cover it all. Let me see what you do and go from
there.

Don’t let me hold you back :slight_smile: I don’t know how my posts will be
ordered, yet, so it may be several posts(weeks) before I cover forking
in depth. I am leaning towards the early posts being more conceptual
and work on putting mental models together.

8

I’d love to read this, and since I know a lot of people don’t read
mailing lists, I’ll publish them on my blog as well. I’ll make sure to
mention that they’re not mine, but since you don’t want attribution,
won’t mention you either.

9

On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 1:00 AM, Eric W. [email protected] wrote:

Is there anybody who would NOT want these posts in ruby-talk?

Yes. A mailing list is not really the proper medium for such an
endeavour.

I could do this on a separate mailing list, but I think it’ll be
beneficial to a wider audience in ruby-talk. I will prefix subjects
with “[USP]” for ease-of-filtering. I’ll start posting in a week or two
if there are no objections. I’ll try to space the posts so they’re
several days apart and allow time for questions/clarifications.

How about setting up a Posterous/Tumblr/whatever blog platform strikes
your fancy account and posting the articles there? That makes it
easier to link to them, reference them, and to subscribe to them.

Of course, plugging your posts is another matter (and would be widely
appreciated, I’m sure).

–
Phillip G.

phgaw.posterous.com | twitter.com/phgaw | gplus.to/phgaw

A method of solution is perfect if we can forsee from the start,
and even prove, that following that method we shall attain our aim.
– Leibniz

10

On Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 6:00 PM, Eric W. [email protected] wrote:

I don’t
know if anybody else is willing to teach this subject or contribute, but
if I’m to do it, it’ll be over my preferred medium: plain-text email[1].

I have a series of posts planned called “Forking by Example.” I’ve
written and tested the code, I just need to add prose. I was going to
throw it on my blog, but it could go nicely with your stuff. Then
again, you may cover it all. Let me see what you do and go from
there.

James Edward G. II

11

Phillip G. [email protected] wrote:

On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 1:00 AM, Eric W. [email protected] wrote:

Is there anybody who would NOT want these posts in ruby-talk?

Yes. A mailing list is not really the proper medium for such an endeavour.

If I’m to write it, it must be a mailing list for interaction,
maybe not this one.

How about setting up a Posterous/Tumblr/whatever blog platform strikes
your fancy account and posting the articles there? That makes it
easier to link to them, reference them, and to subscribe to them.

Did you read the rest of my original post?

12

Eric W. wrote in post #1020497:

I would like to do a series of mailing list posts on the subject of Unix
systems programming in Ruby. I only intend to cover standardized,
POSIX-compliant features of the standard Ruby distribution. No
extensions or Linux-only parts.

Is there anybody who would NOT want these posts in ruby-talk?

Yes, me. A mailing list is for discussion (ruby talk), and apart from
occasional announcements, I don’t think it is for broadcast content. In
my opinion, if everyone decided to mirror their personal blog onto
ruby-talk then it would make ruby-talk useless; and although what you’re
doing sounds great, I don’t think it is any more exceptional than many
other series of blog postings on ruby-related matters.

So I would rather see it in something like a github wiki. Then it’s easy
to link to, and it can also be easily updated and maintained going
forwards. Of course, feel free to post an announcement here with the
URL.

Most people would start a blog/wiki, but I dislike dealing with any
browsers/formatting/layout/presentation, so absolutely no
markup/markdown/troff/textile if I’m to do this.

github wiki’s “markdown” is about as close to plain text as you can get.
Basically all you need to do is write paragraphs, and wrap code examples
like this:

# First ruby program
puts "Hello world"

Hey presto, your document suddenly renders in HTML nicely, and can be
exported to PDF etc (google for “pandoc” for my favoured tool). It’s so
worth taking 5 minutes to do this. (And I agree with you that life’s too
short to do textile, troff, latex etc; focus on the content)

Regards,

Brian.

13

Brian C. [email protected] wrote:

Eric W. wrote in post #1020497:

Is there anybody who would NOT want these posts in ruby-talk?

Yes, me. A mailing list is for discussion (ruby talk), and apart from
occasional announcements, I don’t think it is for broadcast content. In
my opinion, if everyone decided to mirror their personal blog onto
ruby-talk then it would make ruby-talk useless; and although what you’re
doing sounds great, I don’t think it is any more exceptional than many
other series of blog postings on ruby-related matters.

Fair enough, I can do a dedicated mailing list which people can opt
into.

So I would rather see it in something like a github wiki. Then it’s easy
to link to, and it can also be easily updated and maintained going
forwards. Of course, feel free to post an announcement here with the
URL.

I don’t like using web browsers at all. I’m certainly never going to
rely on or endorse any commercial hosting sites, either.

Most people would start a blog/wiki, but I dislike dealing with any
browsers/formatting/layout/presentation, so absolutely no
markup/markdown/troff/textile if I’m to do this.

exported to PDF etc (google for “pandoc” for my favoured tool). It’s so
worth taking 5 minutes to do this. (And I agree with you that life’s too
short to do textile, troff, latex etc; focus on the content)

I already use Markdown and pandoc for other projects and expect my
emails to be reasonably close to Markdown.

However, I don’t ever want to open a web browser (or any GUI) to verify
things look right for GUI users. Somebody else can format it better
than I’m willing to. They can also freely endorse/use commercial
hosting sites if they want.

14

Eric W. wrote in post #1020551:

Fair enough, I can do a dedicated mailing list which people can opt
into.

Please do post a link here and to your project mailing lists
(unicorn|rainbows|etc) with the address of the new mailing list.

Thanks much for doing this, SUPER psyched about this!

15

Robert K. [email protected] wrote:

On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 2:01 AM, Anurag P. [email protected] wrote:

Not sure if it aligns well with the theme of ‘Ruby Best Practices’,
but I feel that it would be a great place to publish your posts later.

I volunteer to edit posts if Eric agrees to have them on RBP.

Sure! As long as it’s in accordance to the GPLv3 anywhere is
acceptable. Any markup/markdown/whatever your preferred form of
modification is, should be available to readers of RBP.

Magnus H.'s (judofyr) Timeless, if he agrees, would be another good
place to publish to publish your posts later. If not anything else, I
would be delighted to mirror them on my (useless) blog :D.

There’s probably a ton of good places to host this content if it’s not
in a mailing list. Now how do we decide where to put it? :slight_smile:

Multiple places (especially geographically) is best for redundancy. I
like mailing lists also because everything gets mirrored to subscribers’
inboxes. Unfortunately the list server itself is still a single point
of failure (a shame that Usenet is dead), but most subscribers/posters
can still fall back to emailing each other directly.

16

On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 12:00 AM, Eric W. [email protected]
wrote:

I would like to do a series of mailing list posts on the subject of Unix
systems programming in Ruby. I only intend to cover standardized,
POSIX-compliant features of the standard Ruby distribution. No
extensions or Linux-only parts.

I would love to see this.

I could do this on a separate mailing list, but I think it’ll be
beneficial to a wider audience in ruby-talk. I will prefix subjects
with “[USP]” for ease-of-filtering. I’ll start posting in a week or two
if there are no objections. I’ll try to space the posts so they’re
several days apart and allow time for questions/clarifications.

Although I’d be happy to see it on ruby-talk (heavens know we could
all do with a bit of education :), a separate mailing list might be
more suitable given some people’s strong objections.

If anybody wants to take mailing list posts and make a website/wiki or
even publish a book so more people can read it, please do so! The GPLv3
protects readers who circumvent DRM if distributed in proprietary
formats. Editorial help to fix/correct things will be greatly
appreciated.

Would you object to someone setting up a github repo to host the code
and a github wiki for the articles?

As for plaintext, I’m with you all the way.

Looking forward to your posts.

Regards,
Sean

17

On Wed, Sep 07, 2011 at 09:01:45AM +0900, Anurag P. wrote:

On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 4:30 AM, Eric W. [email protected] wrote:

I would like to do a series of mailing list posts on the subject
of Unix systems programming in Ruby. I only intend to cover
standardized, POSIX-compliant features of the standard Ruby
distribution. No extensions or Linux-only parts.

I would be interested in the Linux-only parts as well.

I would be interested in similar material related to BSD Unix systems.
In the meantime, however, I think the POSIX-compliant focus is a good
idea for a generalized Unix approach.

18

On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 2:01 AM, Anurag P. [email protected]
wrote:

On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 4:30 AM, Eric W. [email protected] wrote:

I would like to do a series of mailing list posts on the subject of Unix
systems programming in Ruby. I only intend to cover standardized,
POSIX-compliant features of the standard Ruby distribution. No
extensions or Linux-only parts.

Eric, I am looking forward to this. This is good news.

If anybody wants to take mailing list posts and make a website/wiki or
even publish a book so more people can read it, please do so! The GPLv3
protects readers who circumvent DRM if distributed in proprietary
formats. Editorial help to fix/correct things will be greatly
appreciated.

Not sure if it aligns well with the theme of ‘Ruby Best Practices’,
but I feel that it would be a great place to publish your posts later.

I volunteer to edit posts if Eric agrees to have them on RBP.

Magnus H.'s (judofyr) Timeless, if he agrees, would be another good
place to publish to publish your posts later. If not anything else, I
would be delighted to mirror them on my (useless) blog :D.

There’s probably a ton of good places to host this content if it’s not
in a mailing list. Now how do we decide where to put it? :slight_smile:

Kind regards

robert

19

Sean O’Halpin [email protected] wrote:

Would you object to someone setting up a github repo to host the code
and a github wiki for the articles?

No objection. It is my strong preference that you accept
patches/pull requests/contributions/updates via email (and explicitly
state so) to not encourage signups/logins, though.

As stated before, I will never endorse commercial entities so my
non-objection is also a non-endorsement.

As for plaintext, I’m with you all the way.

I have no intention of using a web browser or GUI at all for this
project :slight_smile:

Looking forward to your posts.

Thanks!

20

On Wed, Sep 07, 2011 at 08:00:26AM +0900, Eric W. wrote:

I would like to do a series of mailing list posts on the subject of Unix
systems programming in Ruby. I only intend to cover standardized,
POSIX-compliant features of the standard Ruby distribution. No
extensions or Linux-only parts.

I think this would be great, and if it ends up being on a separate,
dedicated mailing list (as some people have requested), I hope we’ll be
informed enough in advance so that nobody misses anything (especially
me).

Most people would start a blog/wiki, but I dislike dealing with any
browsers/formatting/layout/presentation, so absolutely no
markup/markdown/troff/textile if I’m to do this. I’m interested in
reader feedback and contributions; and (plain-text, minimally quoted)
email is great for that. I will not use anything other than plain-text
email to interact with readers/editors/contributors.

I think email is an excellent interface for something like this.

All of my posts will be licensed under the GPLv3, but code examples will
be all-permissive and reusable freely without attribution.

Do you plan to use something like the Creative Commons 0 waiver or the
GNU All-Permissive License to explictly establish this permissive
distribution permission?

If anybody wants to take mailing list posts and make a website/wiki or
even publish a book so more people can read it, please do so! The
GPLv3 protects readers who circumvent DRM if distributed in proprietary
formats. Editorial help to fix/correct things will be greatly
appreciated.

GPLv3 provides essentially the same legal protection for circumventing
DRM that (almost) any other open source license provides, as far as I’m
aware. What GPLv3 does differently is require distribution of the
complete mechanism for the DRM in usable/source form, including keys, as
I understand it. In some respects, Creative Commons Attribution License
(CC-BY, the most permissive Creative Commons license apart from public
domain statements and waivers of copyright protections) is actually more
protective against DRM by simply disallowing “any effective
technological
measures on the Work that restrict the ability of a recipient of the
Work
from You to exercise the rights granted to that recipient under the
terms
of the License.”

Of course, I think that any attempt to address DRM for something like
this is unnecessary licensing complexity, but if you feel otherwise I
think these considerations are worth . . . considering. In addition,
the
GPLv3 deals with a lot of complexity that does not really apply to
non-code content, which some might consider reasons to use a license
more
appropriate for documentation per se, or that does not make assumptions
about the form of the materials distributed.

standard disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, and this should not be taken as
legal advice, blah blah blah, please don’t sue me.

All I want from this is more people to understand Unix systems
programming (and to avoid all HTML/browsers/forms while doing it).

I believe that is a noble goal. Thank you for making this effort.