If you've spent any time using Linux, you'll be used to installing software like this: The README says to download from this link. Huh, I'm not sure how to unarchive .tar.xz files - guess I'll search for that. Right, it says run setup.sh hmm, that doesn't work. Oh, I need to set the permissions. What was the chmod command again? OK, that's working. Wait, it needs sudo. Let me run that again.…
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As part of my ongoing (and somewhat futile) efforts to ReDeCentralise, I'm looking at moving my personal projects away from GitHub. I already have accounts with GitLab and CodeBerg - but both of those sites are run by someone else. While they're lovely now, there's nothing stopping them becoming as slow or AI-infested as GitHub. So I want to host my own Git instance for my personal projects. …
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M'colleague Charles has introduced me to the most spectacular phrase - "Time To 200". That's a measurement of the length of time it takes a new user to go from signing up to your API to getting their first HTTP 200 response. Think about the last time you started using a new API... Fill in a tediously long registration form Set up billing in case you go over the free trial limits Wait for a…
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Twitter now allows people to upload videos directly to the micro-blogging platform. It's an attempt to bypass 3rd party sites like YouTube (owned by Google) and Instagram (owned by Facebook). In an uncharacteristic display of openness, Twitter's API allows developers to get direct access to video. This is a quick blog post to explain how you get access, and what you can do with the…
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OMG! Some star LOVES Samsung. Back when Twitter started, they used to advertise which Twitter clients people used. You could see that Stephen Fry preferred Feathers, and that I used Dabr. All was well. Then, of course, Twitter went to war with its third party developers. They cut their API limits, reduced their functionality, and obliterated all mention of third party clients. Which means …
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I've been thinking a lot about APIs and their design recently. I stumbled on this fantastic quote from Greg Parker: Greg Parker@gparkerA programming language is a user interface for developers. Language authors should learn from HCI principles.❤️ 41💬 6🔁 019:10 - Wed 22 February 2012 When I first started learning C++ (back in the bad old days) I was convinced that any 1st year student could desi…
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