kiawe_fire (u/kiawe_fire)

kiawe_fire commented on JetBrains Fleet drops support for Kotlin Multiplatform blog.jetbrains.com/kotlin... · Posted by u/konradkissener

vips7L · a year ago

Dart is an amazing and underrated language too. It compiles to native assembly, has pattern matching, async/await, and null safety. The only thing it's missing in my opinion is some form of checked errors, currently they only have unchecked exceptions.

kiawe_fire · a year ago

Oddly, I’m conflicted on Flutter so far, but I have loved working in Dart.

So much so that I ended up writing a queueing app for scheduling batches of sequential tasks on the server in Dart just to see how it could work as a NodeJS replacement, and thought the whole dev experience was great.

kiawe_fire commented on On writing (or not) bessstillman.substack.com... · Posted by u/jseliger

BigHatLogan · 2 years ago

Can you share how you got through this period and found alignment? I’m going through something similar to what you’ve described. Not the hospital situation—I’m sorry to hear about your mom—but more so the thoughts darting rapidly on their own. I can’t seem to get ahold of them either, and I notice it getting worse. Lots of intrusive thoughts, lots of “open cycles” that cause me mental strain, lots of down cycles too. If you could share, I’m curious how you channeled it into something positive and grew* as a result.

kiawe_fire · 2 years ago

In my case, it was almost out of existential need. I could see myself falling apart to the point of not being functional or even doing something to myself, and I knew that my parents were depending on me.

So out of existential need, I intentionally starting taking on large, creative projects at work that I knew would hold my interest and consume my thoughts. In some cases, this meant undertaking projects of my own volition and "asking for forgiveness rather than permission" at work.

In part because of a couple of articles I read on the scientifically shown improvement of outcomes of cancer patients with positive attitudes, and because I knew my mom already had several negative voices around her daily, I decided my role with her would be relentlessly positive.

An attitude of "we don't know the future, all things are possible, and anything can be overcome with the right set of inputs -- we just need to find what those are". I quickly adopted this attitude for myself, and it allowed me to embrace failure more - because the attitude wasn't predicated on being the best, but rather of overcoming.

Granted, this was all about 6 years ago. Since then, much has changed, and I do find myself facing similar issues again. Without the presence of something "existential" pushing me, I am finding it harder to overcome this time myself.

As with most things, though, feedback cycles are a thing. Negativity feeds on itself, and success begets success, so the first step is finding whatever you can to help break the feedback loop. Catch any negative thoughts as quickly as you can, and redirect them from fatalistic into something malleable.

Catch any random, distracting "I need to Google this" type thoughts as they happen, and write them down on a notebook as something you should Google later, but not right now.

One important thing at the start is that, you don't have to necessarily believe every positive mantra or habit you say, you just have to do it. Over time, the believability will come on its own.

If you can get momentum going towards the positive instead of the negative, break the feedback loop, and get onto the "success begets success" side of it, it gets much easier.

Hope that helps and makes sense. Wish I had an actual, easy answer, but a lot of it is just trying things until you see what works, and being consistent above all else.

Good luck, and if you come up with any of your own tips, please let me know, because as I said - for as much as I've been through this before successfully, I can see it happening again, and I'm realizing it's time to deal with it again myself.

kiawe_fire commented on On writing (or not) bessstillman.substack.com... · Posted by u/jseliger

nuancebydefault · 2 years ago

The writing style of this article makes me think about the periods when a lot of impulses are happening erratically on in my mind, and I can't seem to get the thoughts to align. My guess is that she wrote this with a similar state of mind, more so since her husband is severely ill. I wonder if other HN'ers recognize it in a similar way.

kiawe_fire · 2 years ago

I certainly did. In fact, the opening paragraphs of this piece immediately brought me back to my own state of mind when my Mom was diagnosed with cancer.

There was at least a year long period in which my thoughts darted and weaved wildly, with every mix of emotion, all at once.

“I need to finish this bug fix. But first I should get some coffee. That coffee in the hospital was so warm and comforting, in that styrofoam cup. Just what I needed in the waiting room… which is when the doctor told me her prognosis.

“Six months, he said. F*k. How can I do this? I need lots of coffee. But coffee is reminding me of bad things. How will I ever drink coffee again? Would be a shame to never drink coffee, though… it’s a big industry after all. Wonder what it looks Like to pick coffee beans? Bet it would be nice to just be picking coffee beans without any other care. But I have my own job to do… that bug fix. I’ll do that instead.”

Random thoughts of work, grief, jokes, and childlike daydreaming, all running together. All day. Every day.

The author of this captured this feeling insanely well, whether that was intended or not.

I can also relate in the sense that, that period of my life was perhaps one of the more intense periods of self improvement and introspection I’ve had.

Something about having so many thoughts, and needing to channel them to something positive to overcome the blatant and glaring negative, led to growth as a software developer, in some cruel way.

That aside, the rest of the piece is timely and relevant for me now.

I feel like there’s so much I can relate to regarding “resistance” and self doubt. Of casting aside bad criticisms from incapable critics as the author described from her MFA experience.

My heart is with the author through all of this. I hope to follow more of her work.

kiawe_fire commented on The feds asked TikTok for lots of domestic spying features gizmodo.com/tiktok-cfius-... · Posted by u/thunderbong

kiawe_fire · 2 years ago

Slowly but surely, I’m beginning to learn that whenever a US government agency has a problem with something, the problem isn’t that they are genuinely concerned about the thing they say they are, the problem is they aren’t the ones benefiting from it.

kiawe_fire commented on Atari Launches Atari 2600+ atari.com/products/atari-... · Posted by u/manaskarekar

layer8 · 2 years ago

CRT monitors being out of production is the single biggest impediment to authentic retro gaming. It just doesn’t look anywhere near the same on a modern display, unless maybe if you use the most advanced CRT shaders on a high-powered PC with a 4K+ display, and then you still have the higher latency.

kiawe_fire · 2 years ago

I’ve often wondered of the feasibility of some kind of special built LED monitor with a custom chip to handle real-time (within a frame or two) scan line generation and CRT mask / phosphor glow emulation built in, with a slightly curved glass in front of it to complete the illusion.

That way, to my uneducated mind, the monitor itself would be handling the CRT shader effects and could accept any input, including real 80s/90s/00s devices.

But it’s quite likely that I’m underestimating what it would take to have a dedicated input processor in a display that works as well as the GPU shaders do, and underestimating the minimum amount of input lag required.

kiawe_fire commented on Ask HN: Switch to Ubuntu, or Stay with Fedora? · Posted by u/theycallhermax

kiawe_fire · 2 years ago

With no other context, I would not suggest stock Ubuntu.

It’s had incremental improvements, but as a desktop OS, it’s a bit rough in my recent (within the last 1.5 years) experience.

If there are specific issues you have with Fedora, and/or you simply want something Debian based, I would suggest a stable Ubuntu derivative like pop_os! or Zorin OS.

Seeking recommendations is great, but as a desktop Linux user myself, I don’t think there’s any better substitute for having a spare “play” computer (even a junker or a cheap mini PC) that you can just try a few distros out without affecting your main PC until you find your match.

kiawe_fire commented on Nintendo is trying to patent some broad Tears of the Kingdom mechanics kotaku.com/nintendo-is-tr... · Posted by u/PaulHoule

emmanueloga_ · 2 years ago

I agree this is not good!

Note that "slippery slope" is usually used to refer to a logical fallacy [1]. Maybe this is something that could "snowball out of control"? [2] I'm not sure what other phrases could be used.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowballing

kiawe_fire · 2 years ago

I tend to argue that “slippery slope” is not actually a logical fallacy the way others (e.g. straw man) are.

A slippery slope is often a legitimate concern.

Using it as the sole means to shut down an idea is often disingenuous, but so, too, is shutting down any concerns of a ”snowball effect” by calling it a logical fallacy.

kiawe_fire commented on Intel exiting the PC business as it stops investment in the Intel NUC servethehome.com/intel-ex... · Posted by u/2bluesc

stevezsa8 · 3 years ago

How is the beelink? I'm really tempted by the price and what you get. But I've never bought anything that wasn't a well known brand like Dell.

kiawe_fire · 3 years ago

I bought one with an AMD 4800U in early 2022 to be used as a cheap, dedicated Linux device for work (mostly Remote Desktop plus some local docker development environments) and it’s been rock solid for me.

Your mileage may vary, but I’ve been happy enough with mine for the price that I had already decided I would be choosing Beelink for my next mini PC over a NUC.

That said, I have seen some mixed reports of some issues around thermal throttling and eGPU support for some of the newer gaming focused ones, but I think if you have realistic expectations given the form factor (and especially if you’re not going for gaming) then they are fairly reliable and sturdy little devices.

* Also note, I bought mine barebones and added my own ram and SSD. I can’t speak to the quality of what they ship with, but I also haven’t heard any complaints from others with that regard.

kiawe_fire commented on Windows 9x and Word 9x at 800x600 resolution. Spacious. Comfy oldbytes.space/@48kRAM/11... · Posted by u/gslin

dingaling · 3 years ago

I can't see how the Ribbon is any better than hunt-and-peck menus. If you can't see what you want on the current Ribbon view you have to click along the various arbitrary Ribbontabs until you find it. But wait, some of them have subsidiary Ribbontabtabs!

kiawe_fire · 3 years ago

One of the many paradoxes that I’ve found (but never figured a reason for) is why I’m able to quickly memorize and find my way to common functions via text-based toolbar menus, but to this day, I STILL have to click through each ribbon menu multiple times, study each icon and struggle to read each label, before finding what I want.

Logically one would think icons and visually distinctly colored ribbon tabs would be better, but (at least for me) they are decidedly worse.

kiawe_fire commented on Ask HN: What boosted your confidence as a new programmer? · Posted by u/optbuild

sh34r · 3 years ago

With many exceptions (the left-pad debacle comes to mind), it’s generally much better to use a third party library instead of supporting your own implementation.

kiawe_fire · 3 years ago

I know this is the mantra, but my experience has been highly mixed and only generalizable to how low in the stack it sits.

For, say, security implementations for authorization and access controls, or even low level HTTP request routing? Absolutely. The goal there is to adhere to something standard and battle tested by experts, and the third party libraries tend to be fewer in number, and of higher quality, with longer term support and clearly defined upgrade paths.

But that’s the lower level stuff, where your special custom needs are superseded by the primary goal of just “doing the one right thing”, or “adhere to the commonly agreed upon standard”.

For all the other things that make an app unique - things like CSS frameworks, UI components (beyond basic, accessibility-minded building blocks), chart drawing, report generation and caching - my experience has taught me otherwise, the hard way.

Being stuck using a 3rd party library that doesn’t do what the client or business needs it to do, having to juggle our own internal patches and bug fixes with updates to the library itself, all only to have the library abandoned or deprecated in favor of the author’s next pet project, really sucks and often comes with a high opportunity cost and a high development cost.

I now consider third party implementations of higher level features (and especially anything front-end) to be something that needs to be evaluated as equally costly as an internal implementation by default, and not favored just because somebody else wrote it.

Maybe I’ve just been unlucky in my experience, though. I also suspect ecosystem makes a difference. The PHP and JS ecosystems are full of poor libraries with snake oil sales pitches. I suspect this is different with, say, Rust.