«For a long time I’ve wanted an ssh-agent setup that would ask me before every
use, so I could slightly more comfortably forward authentication over SSH
without worrying that my session might get hijacked somewhere at the remote end
(I often find myself wanting to pull authenticated git repos on remote hosts).
I’m at DebConf this week, which is an ideal time to dig further into these
things, so I did so today. As is often the case it turns out this is already
possible, if you know how.»
Jacob Kaplan-Moss is known for his work on Django but, as he would describe
in his keynote, many think he had more to do with its creation than he
actually did. While his talk ranged quite a bit, the theme covered
something that software development organizations—and open source
projects—may be grappling with: a myth about developer performance and how
it impacts the industry. It was a thought-provoking talk that was
frequently punctuated by applause; these are the kinds of issues that the
Python community tries to confront head on, so the talk was aimed well.
«Why are there so many more undocumented systems than documented ones out
there, and how can we cause more well-documented systems to exist? The
answer isn’t “people are lazy”, and the solution is simple – though not
easy.»
«I manage a few servers for myself, friends and family as well as for the
Libravatar project. Here is how I customize recent releases of Debian on
those servers.»
«Developers can get better at their craft by learning from the great
writers who mastered theirs. Writing software isn’t the same as writing a
novel, but there are parallels. Besides, advice from writers is better
because writers have been struggling with their craft for many centuries,
not just a few decades. It’s better-written as well. This talk shares
great writers’ best advice for coders: Stephen King on refactoring, Anne
Rice on development hardware, Hemingway on modelling with personas, and
Neil Gaiman on everything.»