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Pike: To Exit or Not to Exit
- sharkjacobs 7mo agoMy phone is littered with apps like these, which seem well designed to address a very specific problem which I don't have very often. The problem is remembering the app's there 3 or 6 or 9 or 18 months later when it would actually be useful to me.
- Affric 7mo agoI always think that the goal of apps like these is build userbase and then get acquired, like darksky or waze: the big providers realise they have missed a trick and then it becomes the default.
- tbyehl 7mo ago"Needed tens of dollars of rental compute" isn't much of a moat to get acquired instead of copied. I loath Waze. Its idea of shortcuts are terrible, its search routinely suggests things hundreds of mile away ahead of the match that's nearby, and sometimes I go through an area of intermittent service where it just decides to stop routing without giving a heads-up. But Waze is so much better at accurately alerting me to police than my Valentine 1 was that I never even bothered mounting it in my latest car. Google supposedly integrates that data for years now but every time I try it comes up short. Google and Apple Maps are better in every other way, but for me at least, that one feature of Waze is a massive moat.
- kelvinjps10 7mo agoWhy they police alerting feature it's so important for you? Google maps it's almost as good I find anyways.
- projektfu 7mo agoHis car burns cannabis while blasting "Fuck Tha Police" at 10,000W.
- tbyehl 7mo agoNonono, despite my outward white appearance, I follow the sage wisdom of Chris Rock[0]. It's so I have enough advance notice to blast "Fuck the Fire Department" so we can share a nice laugh at the historic rivalry between LE / FD. [0] How Not To Get Your Ass Kicked by the Police: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uj0mtxXEGE8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uj0mtxXEGE8
- vmilner 7mo agoI thought this was going to be an article by Rob Pike on control flow in golang...
- jhbadger 7mo agoOr the (mostly forgotten) scripting language Pike (derived from the internal language of a MUD) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pike_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pike_(programming_language)
- cestith 7mo agoI was prepared for a debate on calling _exit() vs exit() vs no explicit exit in Pike. This app is pretty interesting, too though.
- em-bee 7mo agothere is also the use of return from main(), in particular return -1; which doesn't exit. i was debating whether i should post this discussion on the pike language discord, but now i will. you two made my day!
- cestith 7mo agoI don’t program regularly in Pike. I’ve played with some of the examples from various benchmark and language comparison sites for the most part, but given additional free time it’s a language I’d like to actually use sometimes. I therefore wasn’t even aware of returning -1 from main() doing that. It’s an interesting thing. I’d like to read about that, but maybe not enough to join the language discord.
- thiscatis 7mo agoI would have loved this for my road trips in the US. From the other apps it was never clear whether this was a restaurant or a gas station where it's next to the highway (a quick stop) or I had to drive a mile into a town and find it. Perhaps it has improved since then (this was 2015-ish). Congrats on building this!
- kper1337 7mo agoAs an european (Austria) that never have been in the US, can someone please explain to me what exit left and exit right mean? In Austria, you have usually one exit. Alternatively, there might be a roundabout.
- Pyrodogg 7mo agoIf unspecified, 'exit' would mean 'exit right' to the right side of the traffic flow. In dense urban areas it might make sense for geography or cost reasons to put it on the left in which case youll see "Exit Left" to make sure people know to be in the 'fast lane' in preparation to leave the highway since it departs the highway exceptionally on the left I-94 and I-35E in St. Paul, Minnesota comes to mind. You just merge left onto the other highway if you need to change.
- givc 7mo agoIn US highways the exit ramp off the road is usually on the right, but is some cases the exit is on the left, especially in areas where the highway is elevated or in crammed downtowns. The left lane is also usually the “passing lane” and cars drive faster than on the right, so if there is a left exit and you’re cruising on the right line, you have to know in advance to safely move over to the left
- tylerflick 7mo agoAlso High Occupancy Lanes will sometimes have their own exits on the left side.
- rdtsc 7mo agoIt’s still one exit but sometimes it’s on the left side. That is, you have to get in the left lane and then exit from there.
- tjohnell 7mo agoHi - author of Pike here. You have it right. I don't think the current UX is perfect though. Clearly it's confusing folks!
- mwillis 7mo agoA six-week road trip sounds amazing. A six-week road trip with lots of interstate driving does not.
- tjohnell 7mo agoAuthor here - I agree with you :)
- tjohnell 7mo agoHi all - author of Pike here. Happy to answer any questions.
- sbecker 7mo agoHi, great write up and very cool project! I was wondering how you arrived at the idea to use OSRM and pre-computing the drive time from every exit to every POI. Was that something you learned existed along the way? Did Claude/codex point the way to this?
- tjohnell 7mo agoHello, I appreciate the kind words. When I realized that radial search just wasn't going to be accurate (and potentially harmful given people might exit onto another interstate thinking they could grab some Wendy's), I posited to Claude: "I need to understand reachability of a POI from an exit, reachability being defined as driving time less than X amount of time". Claude then suggested two open-source projects: Valhalla & OSRM. I haven't done much research on Valhalla - Claude ultimately recommended OSRM for its "simplicity" but again, I don't honestly know if that's true. Claude can definitely be credited with my decision to choose OSRM.
- projektfu 7mo agoNot available on Android? I do notice several other apps with the same name and different purposes on the Play Store.
- tjohnell 7mo agoNo Android app - however, using the current app as the spec, it would be interesting and fun to take on creating the Android version. I really don't believe it would be that hard. Stay tuned.
- jmx02 7mo agoHi Tom, this app looks great! Would you consider making it available in App Store regions outside the US? (I understand it's meant for US drivers but e.g. my Apple Account predates my move to the States)
- jonathaneunice 7mo agoLove this! Have wanted to work on a "better situational awareness while traveling" app, but haven't yet had the chance. Reachability of a POI is a great place to start, and I _feel_ that "it's a lot harder than it at first looks" aspect. It would also be cool to: * Become aware of local attractions. Esp. good restaurants, shops, views, hotels, hiking trails, etc. A lot of rating systems seem to give every fast food venue 3 or 4+ stars. Impossible to sift out the truly good and local / unique from the chaff. * Become aware of time-limited events. Fairs, art shows, VFD chicken BBQs or fish fries, ... all the little "I wish I knew that was happening, I would have stopped by!" I constantly search for the local, the offbeat, the not-yet-another-corporate-outpost. But again, the chaff! * Be able to navigate on backroads and scenic roads. Mapping apps are so hyper-focused on getting you there fast. They're not good at "get me there happy"—at least not for those of us that value the path less traveled far more than the highest-speed highway.
- tjohnell 7mo agoI'm also interested in your second bullet. The likelihood that you're passing by a cool outdoor event while blazing down the interstate is a lot higher than if you're staying in town. The data would be very difficult to source. Thanks for the ideas though. Give Pike a try and let me know what you think.