In a world dominated by mass-produced software, making your own tools is a way to take back agency in your digital life. Linus joins Mark and Adam to talk about his experiences building a personal software ecosystem; tools that are a reflection of the maker’s values and taste; and packaging/sharing solutions like Docker, CodePen, Replit, and Deno. And: is it possible for software to ever be “done”? — Linus thinks so.

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Show notes

Linus Lee @thesephist
Surface Duo
Nintendo DS
Backbone.js
Spensa (farming technology startup)
Django
Replit
Monocle
full-text search
Ink (programming language)
changing lightbulb meme
DigitalOcean
August (Linus’ self-made x86 assembler)
Metamuse episode with Weiwei Xu
situated software
stream fusion in mathematics
reverse proxy
software erosion aka bit rot
FileMaker Pro
newline-delimited JSON
flat dependency trees
dynamic linked libraries
Go static linking
not invented here
Hundred Rabbits
lil apps
Szymon Kaliski
An app can be a home-cooked meal
Lucerne (Linus' self-made Twitter client)
TweetDeck
Taylor Swift
Go by Example
multi-tenancy
Metamuse episode on local-first
whoami
game modding
Deno
Deno’s sandboxing and permissions
Qubes OS
Docker container
Heroku Buttons
macOS .app bundles
CodePen
xkcd on modern software dependencies
ProseMirror
Metamuse episode on filmmaking
curl maintainer has been at it for 23 years

42 // Self-made tools with Linus Lee

Metamuse