The politics of language design by Pierre-Étienne Meunier in #LixCon2026
« Create your own language only if you need something new in language design »
« OCaml already exists and is the best language for that particular job »
Yeah, I would have loved instead of Nix language 😱 and Guix Scheme DSL 🤨 to have OCaml. 🤩
5/6
The politics of language design by Pierre-Étienne Meunier in #LixCon2026
« Fake supply chain security, even worse than no supply chain security at all? »
…Yeah:
1. The builds aren’t guaranteed reproducible by design, I mean, it’s the exactly same as Debian, etc. About Nix I don’t know the details, please read Nix’s expert @luj blog post: https://luj.fr/blog/is-nixos-truly-reproducible.html
About Guix, it’s currently poorly monitored, to my knowledge.
3/6
The politics of language design by Pierre-Étienne Meunier in #LixCon2026
« Fake supply chain security, even worse than no supply chain security at all? »
…Yeah:
2. Guix/Nix packages stuff: it means it provides tooling for auditing and verifying if the binary matches the identified source; and for the whole chain of dependencies. But there is no guarantee it’s fully error-free – we’re able to point where the error if any comes from. It’s already a lot!
Guix is like the indian Dabbawala service using “barecodes” everywhere. It doesn’t prevent stories as The Lunchbox. 😉
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dabbawala
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lunchbox
4/6
The politics of language design by Pierre-Étienne Meunier in #LixCon2026
« Fake supply chain security, even worse than no supply chain security at all? »
…Yeah:
1. The builds aren’t guaranteed reproducible by design, I mean, it’s the exactly same as Debian, etc. About Nix I don’t know the details, please read Nix’s expert @luj blog post: https://luj.fr/blog/is-nixos-truly-reproducible.html
About Guix, it’s currently poorly monitored, to my knowledge.
3/6
« The politics of language design » by Pierre-Étienne Meunier
🤔 and again 🤔
Although, I’m not sure to follow the “stir up a hornet's nest”, the talk raises some core questions about governance or the social impact of technical choices.
Damned, I’m sad that although living in Paris my schedule hasn’t let me the opportunity for attending to #LixCon2026 in Paris. Next time, maybe…
1/6
The politics of language design by Pierre-Étienne Meunier in #LixCon2026
« Fake supply chain security, even worse than no supply chain security at all? »
Indeed, it’s a question for #Nix and #Guix. Yeah 1. … and then 2. …
2/6
« The politics of language design » by Pierre-Étienne Meunier
🤔 and again 🤔
Although, I’m not sure to follow the “stir up a hornet's nest”, the talk raises some core questions about governance or the social impact of technical choices.
Damned, I’m sad that although living in Paris my schedule hasn’t let me the opportunity for attending to #LixCon2026 in Paris. Next time, maybe…
1/6
