Open source

Crell/Serde 1.5 released

Larry — Tue, 15 Jul 2025 18:01:11 +0000

Crell/Serde 1.5 released

Submitted by Larry on 15 July 2025 - 1:01pm

It's amazing what you can do when someone is willing to pay for the time!

There have been two new releases of Crell/Serde recently, leading to the latest, Serde 1.5. This is an important release, not because of how much is in it but what major things are in it.

That's right, Serde now has support for union, intersection, and compound types! And it includes "array serialized" objects, too.

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The era of the Linux desktop is here. Ish.

Larry — Sun, 21 Feb 2021 22:10:51 +0000

The era of the Linux desktop is here. Ish.

Submitted by Larry on 21 February 2021 - 4:10pm

I've been a Linux user for 20 years, and Linux-primary for about 15 years. That puts me in the minority in most groups, even among developers who these days are still mostly Mac-o-philes if they're non-Windows. For that entire time, it's been a running gag that "this will be the year of the Linux desktop." And, of course, it never is. Whatever that means.

Guess what, we're now in the age of Linux. On the desktop. But it's not what you thought, and probably not what you wanted.

According to Ars Technica, the second most popular desktop OS after Windows is no longer Mac. It's... Chrome OS. Chromebooks run Linux, but are probably not what most people meant by "Linux on the desktop." They're also four of the top ten selling Laptops on Amazon. (Two others are Mac.)

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Open Source is awful

Larry — Tue, 06 Mar 2018 23:48:19 +0000

Open Source is awful

Submitted by Larry on 6 March 2018 - 5:48pm

One of my favorite podcasts is Make Me Smart, hosted by public radio's Kai Ryssdal and Molly Wood. It's part of the Marketplace family of shows by American Public Media and is a friendly, casual look at the "big picture" of many of the stories of the day. One of their running themes is the "Make Me Smart question" that they ask everyone they interview, and encourage listeners to write or tweet or vlog in with their own answers to:

What is something you thought you knew that it later turned out you were wrong about?

It took me a while to decide what my own answer to that would be, but when I finally did I realized it was going to be way too long for a tweet to explain, so here we go.

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The Crafting Code Tour

Larry — Thu, 01 May 2014 00:37:01 +0000

The Crafting Code Tour

Submitted by Larry on 30 April 2014 - 7:37pm

Over the last few years, one of my foci has been bringing together the PHP community and taking the time to celebrate the PHP Renaissance. That effort has taken me all around the world, from Paris to Toronto to New York to Costa Rica to New Zealand. And this summer it's taking me to the Midwestern US as part of the Crafting Code Tour.

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Pay it Forward

Larry — Sat, 25 Dec 2010 18:48:49 +0000

Pay it Forward

Pay It Forward was a 2000 romantic drama featuring Kevin Spacey, Haley Joel Osment, and Helen Hunt. Decently well-received, I found it a good, heart-warming, thought-provoking movie.

It is also an allegory for how open source works.

Larry 25 December 2010 - 12:48pm

Experts vs. opinions

Larry — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 22:40:50 +0000

Experts vs. opinions

For those who don't know him, Aaron Seigo is one of the leading KDE developers and community leaders. (KDE doesn't have a "lead developer" position, just as Drupal does not, but my understanding is if you merge Earl Miles and Angie Byon you sort of have Aaron's role within the KDE community.) He also blogs far more than is probably healthy, but his posts, while long, tend to be very spot-on.

His latest article is one that is of particular interest to the Drupal community, I believe, because as a large, minimally-structured, Open Source development community we face many of the same challenges that other such projects do, such as KDE. In particular, the challenge of who to listen to.

Larry 24 January 2010 - 4:40pm

Nice knowing you, Palm

Larry — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 03:51:16 +0000

Nice knowing you, Palm

As many people who know me know, I've been a Palm OS affictionado for years. Starting with the Palm III back in 1998, I've used 8 different Palm OS devices personally, 5 of them Palm, Inc.-branded.

So it is therefore with much sadness that I now say "Palm, go to hell, preferably bankrupt".

Larry 23 September 2009 - 10:51pm

What is a colleague?

Larry — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 01:30:40 +0000

What is a colleague?

Earlier tonight, I was commenting on a friend's blog. He was asking about web game programming, and the challenges of Flash vs. Java. For whatever reason, the first thing that came to mind was OpenLaszlo, which some fellow Drupal colleagues have been very big on lately, so I left a quick note to that effect despite, to be honest, not knowing much about the subject.

Wait, colleagues? It took me a moment to realize that I had indeed just written "colleagues", because I've never actually worked with the people in question.

Larry 6 August 2008 - 8:30pm