Hello friends!

I've got some news!

First off, I just released the first piece of real content via iximiuz Labs - it's a tutorial Why and How to Use containerd From Command Line. The key "feature" of it is that it's backed by an automated solution checker.

The new tutorial format resembles my "classic" blog posts, but the materials are sprinkled with assignments, and students are expected to interact with the tutorial using the terminal on the right, while the background solution checker keeps a close eye on the state of the microVM. Any combination of the user's actions that brings the system to the "correct" state will make the text on the left send the student a positive reinforcement signal.

There were a lot of fun technical challenges behind this work, and I'll be happy to share them in greater detail in the nearest future, but for now, let me jump straight to the second portion of the news...

"Invite-wall" is going away!

Now anyone with a GitHub account can use the labs. It's still (very) early beta, so all sorts of bugs are expected, and servers can also run out of capacity at some point, but I really want to let as many folks as possible try out the platform.

What's next? I put a lot of effort into iximiuz Labs over the past half a year - all development still happens only in my free time (read - weekends, holidays, and vacations) - but with the last release, I may very well be done with the first version of the engine! So, I'm really looking forward to finally switching back from writing mostly code to doing more balanced work and reviving this newsletter and my other educational activities.

Have fun, do labs, and stay tuned!

Best

Ivan

P.S. Invite-wall is gone, but your support is still much needed!