🌳💻 Issue 6

Modern local-first dev, green cement and DIY phone

I’m back after some health issues (fortunately not too serious in the end), but still motivated to learn how to make our software engineering work greener.

Here are the latest links I discovered:

ElectricSQL

My language of choice for web application is Elixir because it is a very pleasant functional syntax on top of the battle-proof Erlang virtual machine (heavily used in telecoms).

Saying that I was ecstatic when I heard about ElectricSQL would be an understatement. Using Elixir, Postgresql and Sqlite, it abstracts away the difficulties of building a local-first application in an elegant manner.

I liked that the landing page computes the savings you can make in $$$. I wish it would mention the savings in terms of energy and pollution too though.

The road to decarbonised cement

Brimstone energy is a startup developing “clean” cement (some would say they’re “paving the road” hum. 😅). This news article from CNBC gives a good overview of what they’re doing.

It’s not directly related to software engineering, but still caught my eye, as someone who tried to build a house as clean as possible. The topology of our land gave us no other choice than using some cement in the foundations. With this kind of tech, we could have reduced the total environmental cost of the building even more.

Paxo — The DIY phone

The website is in French, but if you do the effort of running it through a translator, you’ll be delighted to read about Gabriel, a 16 year old boy who developed an open-source mobile phone.

You’ve got all the schematics, files, 3D printing templates you need to build your own. This is the pinnacle of repairability and customisation.

When I was 16, I was helping the whole neighbourhood with their computers. If someone had told me mobile phones would become a commodity and that it would be possible to build your own, I would have passed out of nerdgasm! 🤓