Rok Garbas

Self-hosting has always been a niche hobby for a reason.

TL;DR: Communication isn’t a soft skill bolted onto engineering.

I keep watching people copy-paste NixOS configurations without understanding them.

TL;DR: The DevEx product market is getting squeezed from four directions: AI makes features free, developers expect free tools, the interface layer is collapsing to APIs, and big companies build in-house because it got cheap.

TL;DR: You can’t make AI deterministic.

It’s 2026 and nobody’s surprised anymore - most of us spend our days working alongside AI agents in the terminal.

A child touches a hot stove and learns not to do it again.

If you’ve ever run terragrunt run --all plan on a large repo, you know the feeling.

Your website has users you’ve never seen in analytics.

I’ve been using AI coding assistants daily for the past year.

TL;DR: Twenty years of engineering and zero videos to show for it.

I’ve been setting up MCP servers for Claude Code, and I hit a common problem: the server I wanted wasn’t on npm.

I speak at conferences about Nix, NixOS, reproducible builds, DevOps practices, and the future of AI in software development.

This isn’t a prediction.

I’m Rok Garbas.

Historical Note: Written in January 2017 reflecting on technology choices.

Historical Note: Written in December 2016 after the Reproducible Builds Summit.

Historical Note: Written in October 2016 about automating Nix updates at Mozilla.

Historical Note: Written in October 2016 about systemd.conf.

Historical Note: This post was written in 2016. pypi2nix has evolved significantly since then.

Historical Note: Written in July 2016 about a multi-day NixOS hackathon in Berlin.

Historical Note: Written in November 2015 after systemd.conf.

Historical Note: Written in September 2015.

Historical Note: Written in August 2015 when leaving RhodeCode.

Historical Note: Written in March 2015 when Slack was rapidly gaining adoption.

Historical Note: Written in March 2015 about the very first NixOS meetup in Berlin.

Historical Note: Written in February 2015 about switching to Pelican.

Historical Note: Written in December 2013 during Plone 5 development.

Historical Note: Written in November 2013 during Plone 5 development.

Historical Note: Written in October 2013 announcing a PloneConf talk in Brasilia.

Historical Note: Written in April 2013 as the final report on Chipin-funded plone.app.toolbar work.

Historical Note: Written in April 2013 about a PLOG (Plone Oldenburg Group) sprint.

Historical Note: Written in April 2013 as a mid-point update on Chipin-funded plone.app.toolbar work.

Historical Note: Written in April 2013 at the start of Chipin-funded work on plone.app.toolbar for Plone 5.

Historical Note: Written in April 2013 (yes, about January!).

Historical Note: Written in December 2012 when JavaScript testing in Plone was uncommon.