Readit Newspajuc commented on The Swift compiler is slow due to how types are inferred danielchasehooper.com/pos... · Posted by u/paraboul
The designers of the language didn't intend for it to end up this way, it just worked out like it did. GP is pointing out that their parent assumed it was intentionally choosing pretty syntax over speed, when it was more likely for them to start with the syntax without considering speed.
What's the difference between "choosing pretty syntax over speed" and "start with syntax without considering speed"?
pajuc commented on The Swift compiler is slow due to how types are inferred danielchasehooper.com/pos... · Posted by u/paraboul
Here's some light to make it appear less stupid:
He doesn't claim its not a design failure.
He doesn't say they sat down and said "You know what? Lets do beautiful minimal syntax but have awful error messages & really bad compile times"
The light here is recursive. As you lay out, it is extremely s̶t̶u̶p̶i̶d̶ unlikely that choice was made, actively.
Left with an unlikely scenario, we take a step back and question if we have any assumptions: and our assumption is they made the choice actively.
So they didn't focus actively on good error messages and fast compile times when designing a new language?
pajuc commented on The Swift compiler is slow due to how types are inferred danielchasehooper.com/pos... · Posted by u/paraboul
It's really hard for me to read past Lattner's quote. "Beautiful minimal syntax" vs "really bad compile times" and "awful error messages".
I know it's not helpful to judge in hindsight, lots of smart people, etc.
But why on earth would you make this decision for a language aimed at app developers? How is this not a design failure?
If I read this article correctly, it would have been an unacceptable decision to make users write setThreatLevel(ThreatLevel.midnight) in order to have great compile times and error messages.
Can someone shed some light on this to make it appear less stupid? Because I'm sure there must be something less stupid going on.
pajuc commented on When robustly tolerable beats precariously optimal (2020) askell.blog/when-robustly... · Posted by u/pajuc
Great short read on a concept we can find in many places, including software engineering or even UX design in general.
pajuc commented on Show HN: Five Leaves, a Drawing App for Kids five-leaves.de/... · Posted by u/pajuc
Pretty cool. Though, it seems like the leaves don't scale properly in different screen sizes.
Could you explain what you see in more detail? I don't quite understand what you mean and I'd like to fix it.
Generally, scaling is based on the shorter edge of the frame. The edge length of the largest square is about 30% of that. All other squares follow in a similar fashion.
Its just as stupid to insist on that being the case.
If that's not convincing to you on its merits, consider another aspect, you expressly were inviting conversation on why that wasn't the case
This is a perfectly reasonable question to ask. And a straight simple answer might be that no, they didn't. Or not initially but later it was too late. Or here are the circumstances in leadership, historical contexts that led to it and we find those in other projects as well.
That would be interesting to hear.