Wilem82 (u/Wilem82) - Readit News

Wilem82 commented on GitHub Copilot investigation githubcopilotinvestigatio... · Posted by u/john-doe

Careful though, you are trading yours (and their) muscle memory and brainpower to be locked into a proprietary solution.

Reread your post. Doesn't it sound scary? You are blocked from even thinking and crafting because a specific web service is down.

Even if Google is down you can go direct to Stackoverflow and MDN, and have a choice of information sources.

Also what is "productivity" ... as in features built / month or lines of code / month?

Wilem82 · 3 years ago

Correction: even if Google is down, you won’t notice, because DDG works just fine. Last time I went to any of Google websites was 4 years ago.

Wilem82 commented on Ask HN: Have we screwed ourselves as software engineers? · Posted by u/tejinderss

javajosh · 3 years ago

You are experiencing what I call "The Bisquick Problem". Bisquick is basically flour with some other stuff, like salt, premixed into it, and sold in a box in the USA. So instead of just buying flour and salt, you buy them together, which makes some things easier (like making pancakes), but it complicates literally everything else. You can't use it as flour, or as salt.

With software, the problem is even greater. You can use react, for example, but you will probably start with create-react-app, which adds a lot of things. Or you could start with Next.js, which adds a lot of things. You could use Java, but you will probably start with Spring Boot, or Dropwizard, which adds a LOT of things. Plus all of these starting points imply the use of new languages, configurations, and programs, in particular, builds.

In my view, all of these "Bisquicks" represent experiments-in-progress, with the ultimate goal of the systematic characterization of "software application", in general. In other words, they are systems of alchemy, pushing toward being a system of chemistry, which we don't have yet. So it is bound to be a confusing time, just as it was surely confusing to play with chemicals before Lavoisier systematized the practice.

Wilem82 · 3 years ago

> Plus all of these starting points imply the use of new languages, configurations, and programs, in particular, builds.

Oh yeah, true, some people keep saying a language is just a tool trying to convince somebody to use it, but they forget, or omit for some reason, the fact that it's not "just a tool", it's a huge ecosystem that brings additional, enormous mental burden with it - build system(s), libraries popular within that specific ecosystem, language syntax, language quirks, project structure, its own conventions and so forth.

It's much simpler and more efficient (technically and labour market-wise) to write everything in a single language, as much as possible - unless you start going completely against the grain. Like, auxilliary scripts are usually written in cli-centric languages like Bash, as opposed to API-centric like Python, because you get maximum convenience using cli programs and composing them together.

But no, some people casually shoot themselves in the foot by jumping from language to language depending on the task because it's "just a tool". Ripgrep is a just tool. An entire programming language with its ecosystem is not.

Wilem82 commented on Ask HN: Software you hate but can't replace? · Posted by u/andrecarini

Wilem82 · 4 years ago

MacOS. Project scripts and software are hardcoded for Mac. The alternative is Windows, but making the project dev environment cross-platform takes time. I dislike non-standard keyboard shortcuts for everything, lack of FAR Manager (using Midnight Commander has the same problem as all the different keyboard shortcuts), its constant annoying notification popups that covert part of my windows, its problem with handling non-Apple mice (have to jump through many hoops to make mouse movements sensible, put mouse wheel in the proper direction etc), its windows rounded corners that cut at the application's view area (run Alacritty without status bar, the rounded corners at the left bottom corner will obscure part of the shell prompt), its support for Linux that is significantly worse than in Windows and probably more that I cba to remember.

The other thing that I dislike but can't get rid of is JVM. Mind you, Python, Go, Javascript and so on is worse, but JVM is what I have to work with, unlike the rest of them.

Wilem82 commented on Go is about to get faster dominictobias.medium.com/... · Posted by u/is0tope

xyzzy_plugh · 4 years ago

I don't believe Go is about to get faster, at least not in an especially unique way compared to past releases.

Historically the Go compiler has been seeing performance improvements every release, so historically, Go has always been getting faster.

When it comes to Generics, the benefits are not so straightforward as simply recompiling with a new binary. I just rebuilt one of our larger services with Go 1.17 and compared it to 1.18 and the benchmarks come out roughly the same after variance. There is a slight improvement, but what's interesting is that we don't use generics anywhere.

My employer has a blanket ban on Generics in Go until at least the next release. I know others that do too. There is also nothing in our code base that is screaming to be rewritten with Generics. We collectively thought about it and no one could come up with anything worthwhile. Internally, we're still not sure when they're even warranted. Sure, there's a few three line for-loops that could be removed, but none of those are in a hot path. Yawn.

If Go generics radically change the Go ecosystem overnight, they will ruin the language. The ecosystem prefers stability and compatibility over features, and it's pervasive and good. I update Java and JavaScript dependencies regularly and it's a fucking nightmare compared to Go.

Lastly, Go had attracted a large community of developers who eschew unnecessary abstractions. It's lovely and refreshing. I can't say the same about Rust or Swift or Scala, where complexity is sometimes celebrated as simplicity when it's really just convenience wearing lipstick.

Wilem82 · 4 years ago

Java was released in 1996. It got generics in 2004, 8 years later. I don't remember anyone panicking and yelling from every corner that the world is ending. Everyone understood the benefits and it was a much awaited feature. And yes, after Java got them, it became easier and more typesafe to use. End of story. And by the way, Java too was a very simple language and generics didn't ruin it.

Wilem82 commented on Burn My Windows github.com/Schneegans/Bur... · Posted by u/marcodiego

vultour · 4 years ago

I don't even know how to type an emoji on my computer

Wilem82 · 4 years ago

On Windows just press Win+; .

Wilem82 commented on macOS Setup after 15 Years of Linux hookrace.net/blog/macos-s... · Posted by u/def-

wraptile · 4 years ago

I really tried to like macOS for an entire year. I used Yabai[1] as tilling window manager which is much better than Amethyst mentioned in the article. I also wrote my own compose key tool macos-compose[2] and rofi-like clone choosem[3] (eventually bought into Alfred).

Yet with all of this effort I still went back to linux after a year (Arch with Qtile and Gnome). What really killed macos for me was the fact that animations could not be disabled entirely and everything felt like it's behind several ms of a delay. I work on the move so I don't have the luxury of multi-screen setup so switching between programs, workspaces and windows is the most important part of my workflow - it just drove me nuts.

Now I run simple Lenovo yoga laptop with arch+qtile+gnome and honestly, my performance at work at least doubled. That's my anecdote anyway.

1 - https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai

2 - https://github.com/Granitosaurus/macos-compose

3 - https://github.com/Granitosaurus/choosem

Wilem82 · 4 years ago

I’m in a team where every member was forced into macOS against their will, because a lot of project scripts were hardcoded for macOS by a long-gone “architect”. My biggest gripes with macOS, after decades of Windows and Linux:

- Windows has better Linux support than macOS (WSL gives better integration which means Docker is easier to use compared to Minikube via Hyperkit vm)

- macOS doesn’t have the crucial software I need: FAR Manager

- I’ve had terrible experience with Apple’s customer support in the past where they couldn’t fix broken font antialiasing for external monitors

- I’ve been plagued by serious macOS bugs where it would cause 100% cpu load that could only be cured with closing/reopening the lid, and there are still some sleep-related bugs in it, whereas on Windows everything’s fine

- The window manager in macOS lacks basic features compared to Windows: no tiling, but Windows gets it out of the box with Win+arrows

- All hotkeys on macOS are different from the rest of the world (Windows, Linux) for no good reason and it makes switching between computers very difficult. And no, switching Cmd to Ctrl doesn’t solve it

- Rounded window corners make the first character on the bottom line of terminals unreadable

- GUI feels slow compared to Windows

Wilem82 commented on Can I Email? caniemail.com/... · Posted by u/ggregoire

jonathanstrange · 4 years ago

Not in emails, you got that right.

Wilem82 · 4 years ago

And how are emails any different from web articles? Both contain structured thoughts represented as structured text, both often contain code and quotations, lists and so on. Why special treatment?

Wilem82 commented on Can I Email? caniemail.com/... · Posted by u/ggregoire

jonathanstrange · 4 years ago

Nobody needs rich text.

Wilem82 · 4 years ago

But, almost everyone does? Would you prefer all web articles to be strictly in plain text, same colour? No font changes between text and code, no colors for quotations, no indented multilevel bullet points? Basically, nothing that markdown can do. In your opinion, those things don’t improve ease of reading, right? What about syntax highlight in code - nobody needs that either, am I getting it right?

Wilem82 commented on Can I Email? caniemail.com/... · Posted by u/ggregoire

mro_name · 4 years ago

Html emails are as selfish and disrespectful like sneezing in other people's faces.

For the sake of presenting marketing (Logos). Disgusting. Wear a mask, write text.

Wilem82 · 4 years ago

I mean, how are you going to use rich text otherwise?

Wilem82 commented on Ask HN: Would you pay for Hacker News? · Posted by u/avonmach

cm2012 · 4 years ago

Yes, it would improve discussion quality

Wilem82 · 4 years ago

Any closed community ends up as a cult, derangement reinforced through the circular patting on the backs. HN already got a bit of a loony reputation (for example, see the comment about being a think tank), and it’ll get even worse behind a paywall.