Eji1700's recent activity
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Comment on What's the benefit of avoiding the debugger? in ~comp
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Comment on What's the benefit of avoiding the debugger? in ~comp
Eji1700 Link ParentI feel like this is try catch with a match expression in modern languages? F# synatax would be roughly try stuff with | "ex1" -> call specific method | _ (everything else short hand) -> generic...Basically if it’s possible or likely a method will cause an error you can use the throws keyword to force the method that calls it to catch the specific type of exception it could cause.
I feel like this is try catch with a match expression in modern languages? F# synatax would be roughly
try stuff with | "ex1" -> call specific method | _ (everything else short hand) -> generic exceptionWhich you'd often wrap in a Result type of Ok/Error.
I might just be misunderstanding.
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Comment on Why should anyone care about low-level programming? in ~comp
Eji1700 Link Parent2013 is 1 year into windows 8, which yes was probably the FIRST time we really saw enterprise level stability start to matter. IE end of life was 2010. Windows 10, where they finally figured out...To be fair to the author, “ten years ago” would have been 2013, not 2005...
I’m not entirely sure if that would have been the case in 2023 when this talk was given.2013 is 1 year into windows 8, which yes was probably the FIRST time we really saw enterprise level stability start to matter.
IE end of life was 2010.
Windows 10, where they finally figured out they might need to maintain this thing, was 2015.I will take the 2023 software and web world in a heartbeat over the "glorious" age of 2010-2015. I'd say that MAYBE by 2017 you're finally seeing diminishing returns on progress (again, from a coding performance perspective, not a shitty business practices one), but again I'm not willing to lay the blame of the "decline" of technology on people deciding that memory management is mostly a foot gun.
There's this belief that the people who made new reddit and decided to pull a framework that updates every single component on a message close would somehow have done better if they'd only used a lower level language.
It seems to ignore that those people were just as trendy/ill trained and would've just copied whatever the current library or pattern was for C/C++ and low and behold we've got memory leaks/overflows and seg faults instead of a 2000ms update.
There are, and were, frameworks with a lot more reasonable control over your dom, but there's also about 100x more people who know react than whatever one you're thinking of. Things are changing, coders are adopting better tools (again javascript raw is basically a sin now), and we're seeing lots of talk about how yeah importing 38 gigs of framework for a CRUD app isn't really necessary.
But to me that's not "low level". That's just "please god let me control my application state" and some of that is coming from the fact that things like RAM are orders of magnitude higher than they were in low level days. If you want to do a fully function immutable web app in WASM, go for it. It'll probably be more performant than some JS framework and 1000x easier to control and debug, but you're still not going to need to touch a pointer.
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Comment on Why should anyone care about low-level programming? in ~comp
Eji1700 Link ParentTo be a bit fair "the browser is the desktop" was the goal all the way back in the days of netscape, and just kinda....went off the rails. It makes sense as it's the only cross platform protocol...To be a bit fair "the browser is the desktop" was the goal all the way back in the days of netscape, and just kinda....went off the rails.
It makes sense as it's the only cross platform protocol we've ever been forced to agree upon that has higher level functionality. Its one of the few conversion points where you can pass an instruction and KNOW how it will turn out on every device...or at least roughly. Browser/OS/Hardware/Chipset for once doesn't matter.
It's really that or containers, and of course wouldn't be necessary if we'd been able to agree on standards (or i guess have an even more dominate or state mandated monopoly), but so long as you've got about 1000x hardware/software combinations, having an agreed upon norm ANYWHERE is going to attract attention.
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Comment on Why everyone is suddenly in a ‘very Chinese time’ in their lives in ~tech
Eji1700 Link"Why suddenly everyone is raising Digimon/dabbing on the haters/linking you to rick asterly/feeding their neo pet/talking about narwhals" is roughly how this reads to me. It's just...weird that we..."Why suddenly everyone is raising Digimon/dabbing on the haters/linking you to rick asterly/feeding their neo pet/talking about narwhals" is roughly how this reads to me. It's just...weird that we treat these obvious flash in the pan trends reinforced by influencers and marketing as some larger and deep comment on society.
It feels engineered and I'd suspect it is honestly. We've made politics even more a part of these trends and it muddies everything.
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Comment on Why should anyone care about low-level programming? in ~comp
Eji1700 LinkI suspect I will not be a fan of this, thoughts as I go: This is such a rose tinted view of things. I've had one blue screen in the last year. In 2005 alt tab was still a coin flip between...I suspect I will not be a fan of this, thoughts as I go:
We in the Handmade community often bemoan the state of the software industry. Modern software is slow and bloated beyond belief—our computers are literally ten times more powerful than a decade ago, yet they run worse than they used to, purely because the software is so bad. The actual user experience has steadily declined over the years despite the insane power at our fingertips. Worst of all, people’s expectations have hit rock bottom, and everyone thinks this is normal.
This is such a rose tinted view of things. I've had one blue screen in the last year. In 2005 alt tab was still a coin flip between "quickly check something else" and "catastrophic failure". Yes, we 100% use memory inefficiently, probably because moore's law was still kicking around so "make it efficient" hasn't mattered as much as "make it work", but these hyperbole's get under my skin soooo much. Was I the only one playing family and friend tech support as people walked off cliffs on a daily basis, or used to just saying "Fuck it nuke the machine" as a fairly common recovery method from "shit just getting worse with time" caused by a pile of horrible practices, designs, and other nonsense?
I could maybe let it slide if it was just about power users, but no, the actual user experience has not "declined" by any meaningful metric related to software optimization. All sorts of shitty business practices are a problem, sure, but if we had perfectly optimized websites you're still not solving the fact that they want to harvest my data, force me to subscribe, and use AI (and hey at least popups and toolbars are MOSTLY dead and they finally put down flash and IE6....fuck HOW do you think things were better during IE6?!).
Maybe tbh. But laziness alone doesn’t tell the whole story. The real problem with New Reddit was the stack it was built on.
You know, the truckla example was more accurate than I think they understood. The problem wasn't the stack (or maybe, just the stack) the problem WAS THE GOAL.
The goal of new reddit is NOT FUNCTIONALITY. The goal is engagement and time on page. These "problems" were acceptable costs to instead get the PILE of react + redux developers that were (are?) floating around and make something that the maximizes for advertisers and investors. They did not want to build an efficient car, they wanted to copy paste something that "worked" and change the color.
And I think this gets back to a bigger problem. Coding is an industry, not an art. Some engineer out there can make an absolutely perfect and elegant mechanism to solve a problem, but the vast majority of people in construction aren't engineers.
The industry isn't going to move towards higher skilled bespoke work. There will always be more McDonalds than family owned/5 start unique restaurants. Any solution has to start at something that's trivial to replicate because the vast majority of coders in the work force aren't actually that great at coding.
I get that, in essence, I basically agree with this person. I just dislike how the argument is always framed. I have HATED the idea of doing any front end in JS. I've been diving in on things like htmx/datastar/webassembly because it's such an ugly pointless overhead to use JS (and I think at least 2 of those are a wonderful refutation to his claim that people at the higher level can't make meaningful improvements)
But....that's as "that one F# guy". If you learned JS...well it's probably "good enough" for 90% of what you're doing, and it's not a bad choice to learn. Like python, it's extremely well supported, and unlike python, it's also what you're going to code your frontend in anyways. Not having to switch tech stacks for the entire app is extremely appealing (if insanely frustrating when it's something as fundamentally flawed as JS, even with things like typescript finally emerging out of the radioactive wasteland).
This is simply not the case for the low-level space. If you’re lucky, you can maybe find an expensive book or course. But more likely, you’ll just get a gigantic manual that lists every property of the system in excruciating detail, which is totally worthless for learning and barely usable as reference. And that’s if you’re lucky—there’s a good chance that you’ll only get a wiki or a maze of man pages, which are impenetrable walls of jargon. In some cases the only documentation that exists is the Linux Kernel Mailing List, and you can only pray that the one guy who can answer your question hasn’t flamed out in the past decade.
Amen. It's not just low level programming or linux. There's a lot of genres of...things (games, media, skills, etc) that have HORRIFIC onboarding problems. Often reinforced by a community that tends to be proud of that fact and see it as a useful filter rather than the most horrific pain in the ass. Doubly so because there's always some loud portion that are MASSIVE hypocrites. The number of people i've watched high five themselves after posting some snarky RTFM response despite absolutely only being where they are because they found meaningful tutors and help on their journey is disturbingly high.
Handmade hero stuff
I find this part very interesting because I stumbled across someone named randy years ago and would occasionally tune into his journey through a similar goal. I think it shows a lot of the pitfalls and sidequests one can easily wind up lost in, and a more realistic view of what will likely happen to someone following in handmade's footsteps.
There's a LOT to discuss there on all sides, but I think it's fair to point out that Randy didn't release jack and or shit until he finally stopped fucking around with reinventing reverse kinematics and just used unity.
I personally have found this to be true of so many “low-level” disciplines. “Low-level” programming is not impossible; in fact, in many cases, it’s simpler than the high-level web dev work I used to do! Today’s “high-level” frameworks and tools are so complicated and so poorly designed that they are harder to understand and work with than their low-level counterparts. But all the modern nonsense like Svelte, Symfony, Kubernetes—those tools have docs! They have dev tools! Because, for some reason, people are not afraid of them!
Low-level programming is artificially terrible. I really believe that. And I know that it doesn’t have to be this way.
Okay...so I have this issue with this entire article...where's the line on low level? We get a lot of flowery talk about how high level frameworks get all these nice tooling and documentation features, but the author doesn't even seem to mention an example of a low level language, or the things that have been going on in that space, or some of the VERY real problems that aren't tooling related depending on where you draw the line.
Again, i'm F# guy, and I love it. It's in a very nice middle ground that lets me do basically whatever I want. I have never had a problem where i've thought "gosh I really should be managing my memory manually" because I don't live in the kind of world where that performance matters. So am I "low level" because i'm not doing my apps in javascript and am actually writing exe's, or am I still high level because i'm letting a garbage compiler make sure I don't blow my foot of and lead me into memory and security hell.
The very big problem low level has (which has always struck me as oddly defined since my dad's version of low level was assembly and punch cards you cowards) is humans suck at memory management, and the classic low level lang's of C and C++ don't really help. If we're talking about some app that has to be used by users and isn't just an internal only application, having memory errors isn't just "oh that's annoying", it's mostly what caused all the nightmares I mentioned from the past, and also the massive career ending security flaws that people have nightmares about.
I was sort of hoping we'd get their take on more modern low level languages like rust, zig, and odin which are actually trying to solve these problems, but they just stayed very vague about the whole thing. I've seen sooo much discussion and criticism of what they are or aren't doing right (most recently this which while I suspect is way too purist and biased, does intrigue me with comments about https://www.idris-lang.org/ ), but it's hard to approach from the outside.
Sadly it doesn't seem that the rest of their blogs really dive into the issue either.
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Comment on What's the benefit of avoiding the debugger? in ~comp
Eji1700 Link ParentYeah I realized after I saw your LISP topic that i'd misunderstood your approach and we're basically on the same page. Your reference to competitive coding threw me off as I've met some people who...Yeah I realized after I saw your LISP topic that i'd misunderstood your approach and we're basically on the same page. Your reference to competitive coding threw me off as I've met some people who were into that, but not really great at practical coding because they cared more about developing quickly in the moment than in the long term. Obviously that's not what you were going for.
Odin's actually been on my docket to look into for awhile as a natural progression from F#, but god I don't want to give up white space as it keeps the files so clean and readable and I despite seeing curly braces taking up space.
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Comment on What's the benefit of avoiding the debugger? in ~comp
Eji1700 Link ParentI don't love the answer or the theory. I've been supporting my own code for about 7ish years at my current company, and it taught me a LOT about best practices and using technology correctly. The...I don't love the answer or the theory.
I've been supporting my own code for about 7ish years at my current company, and it taught me a LOT about best practices and using technology correctly. The vast majority of work that proper practices try to eliminate isn't development but maintenance. How much are you going to hate yourself when you look at this in 2 years and don't remember what you were thinking, or how easily can you hand it to a total stranger?
A major reason i became such a huge proponent of languages like F# (a functional language but still willing to let you do OOP/side effects unlike say haskell), is because domain driven design makes 90% of bugs flat out impossible. The code can not compile if you don't handle everything, and the compiler is vastly better at checking every possible end point of my functions and making sure i'm handling all cases. I feel like this is very similar to your mental debugging, but the nice thing about it is since it's part of the code I can hand the base off to someone else and they get the same insights/power without having to have a similar thought process.
Likewise for the data that can't be caught there (IO) debuggers are wildly important. I deal in data that's often in the hundreds of millions, if not billions, of records. Print statements are functionally useless at that volume except for very specific kinds of problems which likely should have been caught by using proper design in the first place.
There is a middle ground where yes during early testing might do some cheeky print statements, but that's also because it's trivial to throw code into the F# REPL from your code base or an .fsx script, at which point again i'm probably going to be better served by using more proper practices.
In short I think my theory boils down to:
- For all business logic, you should ideally have a "if it compiles, it runs" style of coding. Some languages make this easier than others. I haven't had a non IO runtime error in F# in 99% of my code in years. The only spot it does happen is a small helper library where I used some reflection and didn't know back then how to properly wrap the failure (and really should clean that up).
- For IO, you probably need tests and debugging skills if you're planning on dealing with any sort of serious volume and future proofing.
- Print statements are a quick and dirty way to solve small mid development problems (why won't this line compile?) ,but I don't think they make sense beyond that initial stage.
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Comment on Hacktivist deletes three white supremacist websites live onstage during hacker conference in ~tech
Eji1700 Link ParentVery familiar with both. Just surprised you seem to have the same view of the problem that Israel does with PalestineVery familiar with both. Just surprised you seem to have the same view of the problem that Israel does with Palestine
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Comment on Hacktivist deletes three white supremacist websites live onstage during hacker conference in ~tech
Eji1700 Link ParentUh huh. So if killing someone maybe saves 1000 other people it’s justified. So if your family/friends/children voted the wrong way off with their head?Uh huh. So if killing someone maybe saves 1000 other people it’s justified.
So if your family/friends/children voted the wrong way off with their head?
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Comment on Hacktivist deletes three white supremacist websites live onstage during hacker conference in ~tech
Eji1700 Link ParentBecause people change? People are often products of their environment? Because people who have shit views but are not taking violent action on it probably doing need to be met with random murder?...Because people change? People are often products of their environment? Because people who have shit views but are not taking violent action on it probably doing need to be met with random murder? Because it probably makes things worse?
Let me ask at what age is it ok to kill a Nazi? I mean that 6 year old isn’t going to be thrilled you ran down his parents right?
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Comment on Avengers: Doomsday | X-Men teaser in ~movies
Eji1700 LinkUhhhhh. The original avengers worked because to help balance a large cast they had made several previous movies to establish the characters. Unless this is 3-4 hours long I’ve got no idea how you...Uhhhhh.
The original avengers worked because to help balance a large cast they had made several previous movies to establish the characters.
Unless this is 3-4 hours long I’ve got no idea how you cram in Dr. doom and the entire cast of the x men?
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Comment on What are some stories of progressivism gone wrong in implementation? in ~society
Eji1700 Link ParentI mean i haven't read the whole topic, but I quote V17's post which I think is a very relatable story to anyone who's met the kind of person who grew up around/lived through that environment. It...Read how things are written,
I mean i haven't read the whole topic, but I quote V17's post which I think is a very relatable story to anyone who's met the kind of person who grew up around/lived through that environment. It doesn't come off as mean. Most of these posts don't even strike me as being construable as mean, or at least against the entire movement. A lot of the top ones have some very constructive discussion?
If I wrote "a bunch of cousin fucking conservative retards"
Yeah...because it's outright unabashedly insulting? Maybe i just don't get it, but do you have an example? Hell if you have one, have you reported it? I don't see anything on that level glancing through this, but again i'll admit I haven't read every word.
You just described sensitivity training.
Yes? I have no problem with it? I don't know how else to say that you might want to re-read what people are saying, because I don't think i've ever implied or meant to imply, I'm against progressive policy.
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Comment on What are some stories of progressivism gone wrong in implementation? in ~society
Eji1700 Link ParentProgressive politics are capable of doing damage. Just like every other form of politics. People are human, not perfect, and their ideology does not preclude them from being corrupt, or much more...Progressive politics are capable of doing damage. Just like every other form of politics. People are human, not perfect, and their ideology does not preclude them from being corrupt, or much more often, ignorant/naive.
Being a movement often based in moral stances the details can be left out, and it can be problematic, and I think if you're serious about establishing progressive policies you have to identify and be realistic about where failures have occurred or bad faith committed in its name.
I related heavily to V17's top comment here because it's a story I've heard variations of (and witnessed much minor version) throughout my life. Not even getting into the touchier stuff like communism, but simple things like "UN workers arrive in local population, think they know how to do everything better than them, fail when they find out things people who lived there have known for years"
To be clear this was not always the case (anyone who had a "oh god we were fucking stupid" story always spoke highly about overall progress), but many people with "boots on the ground" so to speak will gladly tell you how quickly ideological movements will sabotage themselves due to being unwilling to deal with the reality. This is NOT unique to progressive stories, and I think it's problematic that everyone assumes any criticism is a all out attack or denial of their values.
In my personal case, it's quite the contrary. I don't think you get anything to succeed unless you take a very cold analysis of your failures and flaws, and have a real solution for that. Addressing people's concerns, especially those who have been bit before, is SO important to putting them at ease. Attacking them for criticism/concern does much the opposite.
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Comment on Mystery trader garners $400,000-plus windfall on Nicolas Maduro's capture in ~society
Eji1700 Link ParentI mean this is the least of your problems from it. You're risking peoples lives. If this is an insider they're ABSOLUTELY in violation of about 1000x laws that would see a normal person behind...On the other hand, does it incentivize these institutions to take more unpredictable actions, simply because they are unpredictable, to be able to make huge returns through insider knowledge?
I mean this is the least of your problems from it. You're risking peoples lives. If this is an insider they're ABSOLUTELY in violation of about 1000x laws that would see a normal person behind bars for life for violating national security and endangering an operation and the lives of those carrying it out.
And on the other side "well of course they'll reinforce the levy" is not something you want insiders taking the long odds on.
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Comment on What are some stories of progressivism gone wrong in implementation? in ~society
Eji1700 Link ParentYeah i'm aware of at least one person from chat circles who feels they were passed over for some college in California because they were Asian American. They were NOT under privileged to my...Yeah i'm aware of at least one person from chat circles who feels they were passed over for some college in California because they were Asian American. They were NOT under privileged to my knowledge, but obviously it still fosters a lot of resentment when you bust your ass to do everything possible and then get essentially told "We have too many of your kind".
I don't totally agree with the takeaways they espoused from the experience, but it's hard to sit there and say "well no not for you" to one group but not others.
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Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games
Eji1700 Link ParentI will second that everyone should at least try the Armored Core series. It's unfortunate that I find that 4/FA/5/VD are very hard to get running even on emulator (a lot less plug and play and a...I will second that everyone should at least try the Armored Core series. It's unfortunate that I find that 4/FA/5/VD are very hard to get running even on emulator (a lot less plug and play and a lot more screwing around).
That said, I also think VI is close to a perfect AC game anyways and where I'd say anyone should start (good inbetween on FA's "what if we gave everyone SPEEEEEED" and the slow tankier takes of the others). I just wish there was a "real economy" mode for the hardcore nuts but meh.
AC VI DLC WHEN?/PLS! Don't do this to me again fromsoft. Sekiro still burns.
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Comment on Flu cases are surging and rates will likely get worse, new US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data shows in ~health
Eji1700 Link ParentSome interesting quotes: So yes this is higher than normal, although I do wish they'd be more specific on the magnitude (I know that's gotten a lot harder due to..you know...fucking stupidity). I...Some interesting quotes:
"Anywhere we detect this virus, you can see a large surge of influenza cases coming afterwards," says Andrew Pekosz, a virologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. In the U.S., "the timing is not that much different from other flu seasons, but the number of cases, and how quickly those cases are increasing is something that is not usually seen this time of year."
New York has been hit especially hard, with state health officials announcing over 71,000 cases last week — the most cases ever recorded in a single week in the state. But other states are seeing high levels of flu activity, particularly in the northeast, midwest and south.So yes this is higher than normal, although I do wish they'd be more specific on the magnitude (I know that's gotten a lot harder due to..you know...fucking stupidity).
So far, there's no indication that this new strain is more severe, or even more contagious than previous years, says Florian Krammer, a virologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
But there have been changes to the virus that may allow it to get around our immune defenses, he says. "There's less immunity to it, and that's allowing the virus to spread very quickly and extensively."I feel that to the layman "less immune" = "more contagious" but yeah good to know that's the unique factor here. People tend to forgot how wildly infectious the flu is since our immune systems are generally good at dealing with it, especially with the vax.
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Comment on Advice on avoiding the hedonic treadmill of endless content? in ~life
Eji1700 LinkA big thing that helped me was getting my RSS feeds figured out so i'm more aware when content I actually care about exists. No "oh better check 15 websites", just one stop "nothing new, cool",...A big thing that helped me was getting my RSS feeds figured out so i'm more aware when content I actually care about exists.
No "oh better check 15 websites", just one stop "nothing new, cool", back to whatever.
Doesn't stop me on slow days from scrolling for new content when I probably should be more productive, but at the very least it's a more conscious decision rather than going for one thing and then just settling into another.
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Comment on What are some stories of progressivism gone wrong in implementation? in ~society
Eji1700 Link ParentSo while I don’t care about the charge at all from a moral standpoint I was one of the people who was NOT good at git at the time and spent a day figuring out why some stuff wouldn’t work and...So while I don’t care about the charge at all from a moral standpoint I was one of the people who was NOT good at git at the time and spent a day figuring out why some stuff wouldn’t work and ended in the tried and true “fuck it I’ll just copy everything because I didn’t even know about he .git file”.
More of a fun anecdote than anything
That’s what the match case would force though?
But yeah I’m clearly not getting something. I’ll look into it myself and see where my mental gap is