Everything wrong with developer tools in a single paragraph
I’m working on making a Dagger module for Wrangler, a CLI from Cloudflare that allows you to manage worker projects.
In their docs it feels like they summarize everything wrong with modern dev tools in a single paragraph:
To install Wrangler ↗, ensure you have Node.js ↗ and npm ↗ installed, preferably using a Node version manager like Volta ↗ or nvm ↗. Using a version manager helps avoid permission issues and allows you to change Node.js versions. Wrangler requires a Node version of 16.17.0 or later.
- Telling me to go install a bunch of external software before I can install your thing
- Giving me 4 different links to install 4 different pieces of software on my machine almost guaranteeing that its going to be different for my colleagues and in CI
- Giving me too many decisions. Do I need all of this software? What if I don’t want to use a version manager? Which one should I pick? This turns a simple README into 4 side quests.
- Why do I need to install software to manage versions at all? Why can’t the CLI just accept a parameter?
I don’t mean to pick on Cloudflare, we’ve all been doing this to ourselves for decades. Stuff like this makes me feel excited that Dagger is solving this once and for all.
In other news, this blog is now hosted on Cloudflare Pages and is being deployed using my Wrangler for Dagger module. 🤓
Thank you for reading! Share your thoughts with me on bluesky, mastodon, or via email.
Check out some more stuff to read down below.
Most popular posts this month
- SQLite DB Migrations with PRAGMA user_version
- Edge Detection with Inkscape
- Using cgit
- Making cgit Pretty
- Lev Lazinskiy
Recent Favorite Blog Posts
This is a collection of the last 8 posts that I bookmarked.
- Pluralistic: Enshittification and Reverse Centaurs go global (29 Jul 2026) from Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
- AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making from Ludicity
- No-One Escapes the Permanent Underclass from Fernando Borretti
- Is it ethical to use AI? from charity.wtf
- The logical destination of LLMs from Andy Bell
- Revised rules of engineering leadership. from Irrational Exuberance
- The circus freaks of open source from Drew DeVault's blog
- Clanker: A Word For The Machine from Armin Ronacher's Thoughts and Writings
Articles from blogs I follow around the net
Now we have a timeline of the OpenAI accidental attack against Hugging Face
OpenAI gave a last-minute presentation at the Black Hat security on Wednesday about "the Hugging Face Incident" (previously on this blog). The video was published yesterday. It's short and information dense and well worth watching, in particular because it...
via Simon Willison's Weblog: Entries August 7, 2026Spoiler: Wil Wheaton is a Wizard
I am holding pink pages in my hand, reviewing them before I collate them into my script. A magic battle ensues between Wil and Bert (fireballs, energy bolts, conjured beasts, etc.) I look at the script again, to make sure I haven’t misread it. Yeah, it rea...
via WIL WHEATON dot NET August 7, 2026Seeing like a state
The post about the dark mode toggle reminded me of two similar things rattling in my brain. On the positive side, here’s a delightful interaction from macOS. I can easily maximize the window to take up half the screen, but the moment I start dragging it, i...
via Unsung August 7, 2026Generated by openring