Readit NewsGeneralMaximus commented on I tried every todo app and ended up with a .txt file al3rez.com/todo-txt-journ... · Posted by u/al3rez
I see no need to sugar coat it when it's my reality and there's no labor disputes. If you want to be outraged by what works in my relationship have at it, meanwhile we'll continue our 20 years and counting... but if it makes you feel better, I fully realize it's self-deprecating and I'm basically a Homer Simpson of an oaf. I'd invite you to consider that some women/wives actually enjoy traditional home-making and more traditional roles which we have followed as it comes natural to us based our similar values. While you're at it, you should consider that I have a pretty high stress job and she doesn't. I also make about 8x what she makes and while she chooses to work, she's the one with the bandwidth for maintaining the house/kid's schedule. Need I continue?
I think @mock-possum was responding negatively to the tone of your post, not the content of it. The division of labor within your relationship is nobody's business but your own. If it works for you and your partner, nobody has a right to question it. However, when you say this:
> At work, I use my calendar. At home, I have a wife.
Then you're talking about your partner as if they were an appliance of piece of software rather than a person. You're objectifying them, even if in jest. This is the sort of language that makes many people feel unwelcome on HN.
To be clear, I don't believe you meant for your remark to be malicious! I just wanted to point out why it might make some people feel like outsiders in this community.
GeneralMaximus commented on Ask HN: What are your most regretted tech purchases? · Posted by u/sys_64738
The M2 iPad Pro with Apple Pencil and Magic Keyboard.
I got it so that I could do some writing and note-taking away from my main work computer. Forum posters and tech reviewers assured me the device was up to the task. But the reality is that while iPadOS can do about 60-70% of what macOS can do, the remaining 30% is entirely impossible to accomplish unless you have access to a computer.
I learned this the hard way when I was traveling with just my iPad and somebody sent me a ZIP file that had a hidden file in it (in the UNIX sense, i.e, with a name starting with a period). At the time, there was no way to view or open this file using the iPad Files app. I could pay for a third-party file manager, or I could use iSH to edit it in Vim. Why make it impossible to see dotfiles at all?! Why not give me a checkbox I can enable to temporarily view those files? I understand that it's rare to receive a dotfile over email, but it's not an impossible event.
At some point I discovered you can't install custom fonts on an iPad. Apps can bundle their own fonts, but installing a font globally requires a nasty workaround: use a third-party app to embed your font files inside a security profile, then install that security profile via the Settings app. For a device that targets designers, video editors, and musicians, not being able to install your own fonts is such a bizarre choice.
There were other weird papercuts too. When exporting tracks from Logic, I couldn't put the app in the background. I had to sit there and wait for it to finish. Many apps had iPhone and Mac versions, but no iPad versions. For a while the Magic Keyboard's trackpad cursor didn't send hover events to web pages in Safari, which meant some webapps were unusable. The Apple Pencil could send hover events, though, which meant I had a fun week navigating the WordPress admin interface using the Pencil instead of the trackpad. They eventually fixed this issue.
You can't play more than one sound source at a time. A one second looping sound on a webpage can permanently stop playback in Spotify or Apple Music. This behavior might be fine for a phone, but for a tablet that claims to be a computer replacement? Weird choice.
I could go on and on about this. After all these years, the iPad is still pretty much a consumption device unless you're a digital artist who relies on the Apple Pencil for work. Besides digital drawing and handwriting, there is very little you can accomplish on an iPad that you can't accomplish far more easily on a Mac.
My iPad Pro is basically a Kindle now. Sometimes I use it to watch YouTube, but only sometimes. The YouTube app on iPad is far worse than the website, and it's easier to just reach for my Mac.
GeneralMaximus commented on Ask HN: Which language for Advent of Code in 2024? · Posted by u/usgroup
I watched somebody on YouTube solve some AoC problems in Excel, so I’m going to try that this year. Not sure how far I’m going to get, but it’ll be a fun challenge!
> If you’re using Calc/Excel to handle some accounting or some other kind of quantitative organization, there’s probably a specialized system that you should be using, or just using a CRUD application.
This greatly underestimates the importance of Excel for anything to do with physical goods, which is all of the world outside of the tiny SV/HN SaaS bubble. Excel files are the API that glues every factory, supplier, vendor and system together. Good luck replacing that and forcing all of the involved parties to switch to this replacement.
Yep. I’m currently working for a client who build software for the insurance industry, and we have a whole pipeline to parse and generate Excel files. The industry mostly runs on Excel and email. Without support for parsing those spreadsheets, my client would never have been able to convince their customers to use the rest of their software.
In this modern age of .md and similar files why not try for "blue water sailing" and instead create an office suite which specifically plays to only open standards?
A word processor which supports the same style options as Google Docs and used pandoc to import/export would be as much as most users need.
That said, I'd really like to see an office suite put together out of the various opensource tools which try to approach documents/graphics in new and striking ways:
- LyX --- a "What You See Is What You Mean" document processor, it can offer quite professional capabilities (when I was doing STEM composition, the book which came in as LaTeX exported from LyX was the cleanest and most straight-forward manuscript I ever worked on)
- PySpread --- (or maybe Flexisheet if someone can get it to a usable state) Way more than most folks need, this Pythonic spreadsheet where every cell can be either a Python program or the output of a Python program could revolutionize what folks do w/ spreadsheets and data
- Jupyter Notebooks --- almost a de facto standard, getting wider adoption would be a good thing
- ipe --- https://ipe.otfried.org/ --- this, or TikzEdit or maybe xasy for Asymptote would be more drawing tool than most users would ever want, and able to make anything anyone really needs
> In this modern age of .md and similar files why not try for "blue water sailing" and instead create an office suite which specifically plays to only open standards?
Because your publisher, professor, employer, collaborators, and book club members all want an Office file. Full stop. They will not accept anything else, and they will refuse to work with you unless you have the clout to force them to use your new format. And then they will be unhappy.
That’s what this article is getting at. If you want to replace Office, you need to have full compatibility with Office files. There’s no way around it. Most people don’t want more open, faster, more features, or better. They want Office (or increasingly, Google Docs).
Every time I read takes like this I think people forget why big brands exist?
Small business (or “lifestyle business”) vs big brand is often framed about being high quality vs cheap price, because in practice it often is. But in theory the two things are completely unrelated.
Yes fixing stuff is good for the planet. But big brands could offer customer service just fine if people wanted it.
Small business vs big brand is a problem of predictability. If you have many independent small businesses, NOT all of them will be good. It will be a mixed bag what you get in your area. OP has felt so fortunate with his local highly-skilled asian-owned small business that he felt compelled to write about it on the internet. Not everyone will be this lucky.
And in a world where information travels very fast (this is really the key point) this system is unsustainable, as there are really only 2 options: either people accept the fact that some neighbourhoods are served worse than others, or the take the car and make the travel up to the nice asian shop they read about on the internet, because that’s apparently worth it.
But, surprise, this second option doesn't scale. Because as soon as the nice asian shop goes viral, they realise they can’t keep up with the demand at all. And so they will probably refuse lots of customers. (Note, I’m not even considering the option they might increase prices)
In this sense, the derogatory “lifestyle business” comment makes sense, since I think it’s meant to highlight how elitist it is. It doesn't scale in the sense that it creates a race for who is able to cop the best option. When I need a sofa, I want to be able to “just” get a sofa. Simple and predictable. If the sofa is good quality, even better.
> ... either people accept the fact that some neighbourhoods are served worse than others, or the take the car and make the travel up to the nice asian shop they read about on the internet, because that’s apparently worth it.
What's better: having to do a few minutes of research to find a good sofa repair shop in your city or having to buy a new sofa every 5 years?
Further: what's better for you personally, and what's better for the planet? Are they compatible?
> But, surprise, this second option doesn't scale.
Why is it important for every type of business to scale? Is "scale" a virtue we must judge every business by?
GeneralMaximus commented on 25 Years of Krita krita.org/en/posts/2024/k... · Posted by u/TangerineDream
> Krita is a great replacement for photoshop.
No it is not.
Krita was meant to be an OSS alternative to Corel (ex Fractal Design, ex Meta Creations) Painter [1].
And that's what it became, eventually. And quite a bit more.
I've been using Photoshop and Krita since the first version of both of these DCC apps came out (and Painter too, btw). Professionally. I.e. for most of my adult life.
Krita is a great paint app. It's not a Photoshop alternative.
Photoshop is a great image manipulation app. It's not a Krita alternative.
Krita absolutely is a Painter alternative.
Painter is no longer a Krita alternative, if you need certain features (that's a topic for an entire blog post).
Would it be accurate to say that Krita is a Procreate alternative?
GeneralMaximus commented on After 6 years, I'm over GraphQL bessey.dev/blog/2024/05/2... · Posted by u/mattbessey
> idea that a frontend developer would send a ticket to somebody so they can get all the data they need... it's just crazy.
For me, what's crazy is that there are "web" developers who can't just add the endpoint they need while working on a frontend feature, or "web" developers who can't just add an element or a page for testing the backend endpoint.
What ever happened to full-stack developers? The "frontend" and "backend" developer split is so incredibly inefficient that it's really jarring—you take something that should take 2 hours and magically, through tickets, delegation, and waiting for results (then repeat that for debugging, who knows how many times!), make it into a 2-3 day task.
I once reproduced (black-box style!) a two-week effort by a three-man team in six hours of work simply because I had PyCharm and IDEA opened side-by-side and could write code on both sides at the same time.
If someone has a good explanation for why the full-stacks that were once the norm went almost extinct, I'd be happy to give it a read!
For context: I work on large-scale browser apps that are closer in complexity to something like Linear or Obsidian than to your standard WordPress blog with some forms. E.g I'm currently working on a browser-based GIS tool for the financial sector.
I started my career as a full-stack developer, but went all-in on frontend because I felt I was spreading myself too thin. At one point I found that I could choose to be almost good enough at doing two different things or extremely good at one thing. I chose the latter option.
Modern browser apps are complex beasts, at least if you want to do them right. You obviously have to worry about all the technical bits --- HTML, CSS, JavaScript, your view library of choice, platform APIs like <canvas> and WebAudio, cross browser testing, bundle sizes, performance optimizations, techniques like optimistic rendering, all that good stuff.
On top of that, you also need to work closely with designers to make sure they know the features and limitations of the platform(s) they're designing for. More often than not, you end up being a sort of bridge between the backend devs, designers, and product managers.
A lot of times you end up doing design too, whether you like it or not. I've learned a lot about UI/UX design just because I often have to fill in the gaps where a designer forgot to include a certain error state, or didn't test their design on tablet screens, or didn't account for cases where a certain API might not be available.
I tried for many years to learn as much as I could about Django as well as React and friends. But it eventually got too much. I found that I wasn't able to keep up with both ecosystems, and I was producing code that wasn't very good. I could certainly build things quickly because I was familiar with all parts of the stack, but it came at the cost of code quality, security, stability, and robustness. I eventually decided to hang up my backend developer hat and focus exclusively on what goes on inside the browser (which can be a lot by itself these days!)
It's probably possible for a single individual to build a high-quality server-rendered MPA with some forms without making a mess of it. But that says more about how good Rails/Django/Laravel are than about the capabilities of any single individual. I don't think a single person could build a product like Linear end-to-end without cutting corners.
> This is the sort of language that makes many people feel unwelcome on HN
Really? How do you navigate as a functional person IRL if your sensibilities are so easily disrupted? I feel like if that's the case, you need to work on yourself first. Expecting the world to alter their stance and sugarcoat every word or POV is insanity. You're literally living life in hard mode by choice. I'm not a big fan of appeasing fragile people, I'm sure this is a generational thing but here's the thing, that cohort is going to live a majority of their life alongside my cohort and they're choosing to bring friction into the mix.
I think HN is a place for adults to talk maturely and generally "we" read past this stuff. Places like Reddit are places for kids (or immature adults) to talk, they would gladly turn the entire conversation into a dissection of word choice based on whatever is trending in the offends-me-today cult. This is a what keeps HN community, and our discourse, high quality.
I don't think this will be a productive conversation. Let's just agree we feel differently about how words affect people and move on.