devtools.fm: Developer Tools, Open Source, Software Development Jeff Dickey - Mise, Usage, and Pitchfork and the Future of Polyglot Tools
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Jan 27, 2025 Jeff Dickey, creator of tools like Mise, Usage, and Pitchfork, discusses ways to streamline developer productivity through innovative solutions. He shares insights on Oaklift’s on-demand command loading and how it surpasses traditional Node.js frameworks. The conversation covers best practices for creating intuitive command-line interfaces and the crucial role of user-friendly documentation. Jeff also dives into Mies, a Rust-based version manager promising improved efficiency and security, and Pitchfork, aimed at simplifying daemon management across programming environments.
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ASDF Performance Issues
- ASDF, a popular polyglot tool manager, suffers from slow performance, especially noticeable in shell loading times.
- Rewriting it in a different language could improve speed.
Heroku CLI Rewrite
- Jeff Dickey's first developer tools job was rewriting the Heroku CLI from Ruby to another language.
- This experience sparked his passion for building developer tools, especially CLIs.
Node.js CLI Startup Time
- Node.js CLIs often have slow startup times because they require all commands upon loading.
- Oclif addresses this by loading only the command being executed.