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> They're simpler because they're only handling his use-cases. This is a major part of the thesis of no dependencies. General code is bad code. It’s slow, bran

> They're simpler because they're only handling his use-cases. This is a major part of the thesis of no dependencies. General code is bad code. It’s slow, branchy, complex, filled with mutexes, nan checks, etc. Read “the old new thing”, to see the extreme When you have a concrete goal you can apply assumptions that simplify the problem space. A good example of this was Casey’s work on a fast terminal. At first all the naysaying was “production terminals are really hard because you have to handle fonts and internationalization, accessibility, etc”. Indeed those problems suck, but he used a general windows API to render a concrete representation of the char set on demand, and the the rest was simple.

horsawlarway 2y ago
> General code is bad code. For whom? I think most times, as a user of software, I almost always prefer to have something that solves my problem, even if it's got some rough edges or warts. That's what general code is - stuff that solves a problem for lots of people. Would I prefer a tool that solves exactly my problem in the best way possible? Yeah, sure. Do I want to pay what that costs in money, time or attention? Usually no. The general purpose tool is plenty good enough to solve the problem now and let me move on. The value I get from solving the problem isn't really tied to how optimally I solve the problem. If I can buy a single hammer that drives all the nails I need today - that's a BETTER solution for me than spending 10 hours speccing out the ideal hammer for each nail and each hand that might hold it, much less paying for them all. I'll have already finished if I just pick the general purpose hammer, getting my job done and providing value. --- So to your terminal example - I think you're genuinely arguing for more general code here. There's performance in making a terminal run at 6k fps. It's an art. It's clearly a skill and I can respect it. Sounds like it's an edge case that dude wants, so I'm in favor of trying to make the terminal faster (and more general). But... I also don't give a flying fuck for anything I do. Printing 1gb of text to the terminal is useless to me from a value perspective (it's nearly 1000 full length novels of text, I can't read that much in a year if it was all I did, so going from 5 minutes to 5 seconds is almost meaningless to me). The sum total of the value I see from that change is "maybe once or twice a year when I cat a long file by mistake, I don't have to hit ctrl-c". I also genuinely fail to understand how this guy gets meaningful value from printing 1gb of text to a terminal that quickly either... even the fastest of speed readers are still going to be SO MANY orders of magnitude slower to process that, and anything else he might want to do with that text is already plenty fast - copying it to a new file? already fast. Searching it? fast. Deleting it? fast. Editing it? fast. So... I won't make any comment on why this case is slow or the discussion around it (I haven't read it, it sounds like it could be faster, and they made a lot of excuses not to solve his specific edge case). All I'll say is your argument sure sounds like adding an edge case that nearly no one has, there-by making the terminal more general. Any terminal I wrote for myself sure as fuck wouldn't be as fast as that because I don't have the rendering experience he has, and my use case doesn't need it at all.
- liontwist 2y ago
  > For whom? For users and programmers. Slower to use. Harder to read and maintain. More code to do the same tasks. > I almost always prefer to have something that solves my problem I didn’t say anything about losing features. I don’t read Arabic. I’m glad the OS supports it. But it would be bad if Arabic complexity had to leak into every line of code. Limit the complexity scope. Casey’s terminal supports Arabic by following this principle. > The value I get from solving the problem isn't really tied to how optimally I solve the problem. Yes it is. There are ok products and there are great products. > text still uses general solution Operating systems have to solve general problems which is why they are expensive and brittle. Every program is not an operating system. > There's performance in making a terminal run at 6k fps. It's an art. I think you are missing context about the issue that led to this. And yes, as soon as there are no spinning wheels while doing normal tasks, then we can stop complaining about performance. But that’s not the situation. > and my use case doesn't need it at all. Would the world be better or worse if your operating system respected your time more?
  - horsawlarway 2y ago
    > Would the world be better or worse if your operating system respected your time more? This is a non-sequitur. It's like saying that my Honda CRV is disrespecting my time because it has a top speed of 110, when it could be a 230 mph F1 racecar - it's a bad argument. I drive on roads with a max speed limit of 75... and most are down near 25mph. > There are ok products and there are great products. And users don't give a flying fuck about which yours is if they can't use it in the first place. That's why general things exist.
- deleted 2y ago
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horsawlarway 2y ago

> General code is bad code. For whom? I think most times, as a user of software, I almost always prefer to have something that solves my problem, even if it's got some rough edges or warts. That's what general code is - stuff that solves a problem for lots of people. Would I prefer a tool that solves exactly my problem in the best way possible? Yeah, sure. Do I want to pay what that costs in money, time or attention? Usually no. The general purpose tool is plenty good enough to solve the problem now and let me move on. The value I get from solving the problem isn't really tied to how optimally I solve the problem. If I can buy a single hammer that drives all the nails I need today - that's a BETTER solution for me than spending 10 hours speccing out the ideal hammer for each nail and each hand that might hold it, much less paying for them all. I'll have already finished if I just pick the general purpose hammer, getting my job done and providing value. --- So to your terminal example - I think you're genuinely arguing for more general code here. There's performance in making a terminal run at 6k fps. It's an art. It's clearly a skill and I can respect it. Sounds like it's an edge case that dude wants, so I'm in favor of trying to make the terminal faster (and more general). But... I also don't give a flying fuck for anything I do. Printing 1gb of text to the terminal is useless to me from a value perspective (it's nearly 1000 full length novels of text, I can't read that much in a year if it was all I did, so going from 5 minutes to 5 seconds is almost meaningless to me). The sum total of the value I see from that change is "maybe once or twice a year when I cat a long file by mistake, I don't have to hit ctrl-c". I also genuinely fail to understand how this guy gets meaningful value from printing 1gb of text to a terminal that quickly either... even the fastest of speed readers are still going to be SO MANY orders of magnitude slower to process that, and anything else he might want to do with that text is already plenty fast - copying it to a new file? already fast. Searching it? fast. Deleting it? fast. Editing it? fast. So... I won't make any comment on why this case is slow or the discussion around it (I haven't read it, it sounds like it could be faster, and they made a lot of excuses not to solve his specific edge case). All I'll say is your argument sure sounds like adding an edge case that nearly no one has, there-by making the terminal more general. Any terminal I wrote for myself sure as fuck wouldn't be as fast as that because I don't have the rendering experience he has, and my use case doesn't need it at all.

liontwist 2y ago
> For whom? For users and programmers. Slower to use. Harder to read and maintain. More code to do the same tasks. > I almost always prefer to have something that solves my problem I didn’t say anything about losing features. I don’t read Arabic. I’m glad the OS supports it. But it would be bad if Arabic complexity had to leak into every line of code. Limit the complexity scope. Casey’s terminal supports Arabic by following this principle. > The value I get from solving the problem isn't really tied to how optimally I solve the problem. Yes it is. There are ok products and there are great products. > text still uses general solution Operating systems have to solve general problems which is why they are expensive and brittle. Every program is not an operating system. > There's performance in making a terminal run at 6k fps. It's an art. I think you are missing context about the issue that led to this. And yes, as soon as there are no spinning wheels while doing normal tasks, then we can stop complaining about performance. But that’s not the situation. > and my use case doesn't need it at all. Would the world be better or worse if your operating system respected your time more?
- horsawlarway 2y ago
  > Would the world be better or worse if your operating system respected your time more? This is a non-sequitur. It's like saying that my Honda CRV is disrespecting my time because it has a top speed of 110, when it could be a 230 mph F1 racecar - it's a bad argument. I drive on roads with a max speed limit of 75... and most are down near 25mph. > There are ok products and there are great products. And users don't give a flying fuck about which yours is if they can't use it in the first place. That's why general things exist.
deleted 2y ago
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