The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source
Display custom maps on your website for free (News)
Mon, 30 Sep 2024
OpenFreeMap puts OpenStreetMap data on your website for free, Fatih Arslan builds a Dieter Rams inspired iPhone dock, Joseph Gentle thinks the Rust programming language feels like a first-gen product & the web dev community is debating the viability of Web Components once again.
Full Episode
What up, nerds? I'm Jared, and this is Changelog News for the week of Monday, September 30th, 2024. So, the WordPress mess, aka implosion, is almost too much for me to pick a single canonical link to summarize it. But I also don't want to do an entire episode about that one story, so what's a guy to do?
I know, I'll punt it entirely to the bottom of the newsletter, but make up for it with a rock-solid meme plus an unordered list of links to review. We're containing the WordPress mess to today's newsletter, link in the show notes. The audio version remains squeaky clean. Okay, let's get into the rest of the news. Display custom maps on your website for free.
OpenFreeMap takes map data from OpenStreetMap and serves up the necessary tiles in various styles for anyone to render them on their website or app for $0. Kind of amazing. Quote, using our public instance is completely free. There are no limits on the number of map views or requests. There's no registration, no user database, no API keys, and no cookies.
We aim to cover the running costs of our public instance through donations. That sounds almost too good to be true, and it probably is, unless people step up with recurring donations. However, the service's creator, Zolt Aero, has taken a few steps to make sure it's not prohibitively expensive.
Quote, there is no tile server running, only Nginx serving a ButterFS image with 300 million hard-linked files. This was my idea. I haven't read about anyone else doing this in production, but it works really well. There is no cloud, just dedicated servers. how I designed a Dieter Rams inspired iPhone dock.
I am beyond impressed by what Fatih Arslan was able to create with nothing but some old Braun catalogs, a 3D printer, and some serious iteration. Quote, I'm still astonished by what you can do with CAD software and a 3D printer at home. Even though I'm a software engineer, it allows me to experiment with other arts and skills in my spare time. End quote.
There's not much to say about this project that's useful without the images, so you'll have to check the chapter image or newsletter to see for yourself. You can download the 3D model for free, but he also created a Gumroad page, so you can donate as well. Rewriting Rust. Joseph Gentle thinks the Rust programming language feels like a first-gen product. Kind of like the first iPhone.
Tons of potential, but so much missing. Quote, I fell in love with Rust at the start. Algebraic types? Memory safety without compromising on performance? A modern package manager? Count me in. But now that I've been programming in Rust for four years or so, it just feels like it's never quite there. End quote. Sometimes, Joseph lies awake at night and fantasizes about forking the Rust compiler.
Quote, I know how I do it. In my fork, I leave all the Rust stuff alone, but make my own Ceph edition of the Rust language. Then I could add all sorts of breaking features to that addition. So long as my compiler still compiles mainline rust as well, I could keep using all the wonderful crates on cargo, end quote. In the linked post, Joseph lays out what his fork would look like in extreme detail.
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