Julia Evans
Writes jvns.ca, turning "hard and scary" topics — networking, debugging, Linux internals — into plain explanations and hand-drawn comics. Publishes Wizard Zines, illustrated programming zines. Software developer based in Montreal.
Julia Evans did not write this page. What is this?
It collects the places they publish and what they have said there, each linked to the source. They have no account here. Is this you? Claim it, correct it, or ask us to remove it from ppll.
Where they publish
jvns.caBlog Explains networking, debugging, Linux and dev tools in plain language, often with hand-drawn comics.
Her long-running programming blog — deep, friendly explainers on things like tcpdump, strace, DNS and "why is this slow", often illustrated with her own comics. Recent posts cover Django, SQLite and CSS.
Link verified 3 Sept 2026.
Beliefs
What they believeKorrents 2 beliefs, 2 changed minds — each backed by an exact quote.
Each is a — compiled by korrents.com, not by them: the one-line wordings are korrents', the quotes are theirs.
Recent
SQLite is a fine production database for a small site, but running it well is more complicated than the "SQLite in production is totally fine" blog posts make it sound.
I read a bunch of blog posts about how it is totally fine to use SQLite in production for a small site and I think it is totally fine, but what I did not fully appreciate is that SQLite is still a database, databases are complicated, and I do not know a lot about operating databases.
Learning a few things about running SQLite Said 17 Jul 2026
When two expert users argue over whether documentation is clear, that debate is unproductive — the way to actually find unclear documentation is to test it on real readers, not to have experts argue about wording.
I don’t think this is very productive (expert users of a piece of software are notoriously bad at being able to tell if an explanation will be clear to non-experts), so I needed to find a way to identify problems with the man pages that was a little more evidence-based.
A data model for Git (and other docs updates) Said 8 Jan 2026
What is a korrent?
A korrent is a belief a person has stated in their own words: one sentence stating the claim, backed by a quote and a source, kept at korrents.com.
Under a name here, the quoted block is what they actually said. The korrent beneath it is the claim those words support, in korrents' wording — tap it to see the record, its source, and who else holds it.
Nobody here wrote their own korrents. They are compiled from public statements, and a person can change their mind, which is recorded too.
Latest
Full feed →Everything, newest firstFeed Beliefs and changes of mind from the cards above, in one stream.
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- SQLite is a fine production database for a small site, but running it well is more complicated than the "SQLite in production is totally fine" blog posts make it sound. 17 Jul
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Tailwind is a good way to build a site you're happy with, even without strong CSS skills of your own.
15 May
WasI ended up making this site with Tailwind CSS, and it helped me make a site I felt pretty happy with my minimal CSS skills and just 2 evenings of work!
NowI’m a lot better at CSS than I was when I started using Tailwind Ultimately Tailwind is limiting: if you want to do Weird Stuff in your CSS, it’s not always possible with Tailwind. Those limits can be extremely useful (a lot of this post is about me reimplementing some of Tailwind’s limits!) but at this point I’d like to be able to pick and choose.
- When two expert users argue over whether documentation is clear, that debate is unproductive — the way to actually find unclear documentation is to test it on real readers, not to have experts argue about wording. 8 Jan
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Nix is worth switching your day-to-day package management to, over Homebrew.
1 Aug 2024
WasI’m also still not sure how much I like nix – it’s very confusing! But it’s helped me compile some software that I was struggling to compile otherwise, and in general it seems to install things faster than homebrew.
NowI’ve mostly switched back to Homebrew, nix was interesting but overall I think it’s not worth the complexity for me