astrobe_

36 ms·

511.
by astrobe_ 4y ago
Every time I have let complexity live, or increased it in a program, it was due to deadlines, bugs in third party software, artificial complexity in third party interfaces, fear of touching a part that's a "ball of mud"... Ra
512.
by astrobe_ 4y ago
From a programmer's perspective, I'd say "if you want to go faster, release the brakes". So I think the first job of a manager is to "remove the brakes", which implies that they have to find where they are firs
513.
by astrobe_ 4y ago
Gratz, you have the last word.
514.
by astrobe_ 4y ago
I'm no Forth expert, yet I know which type of company is more likely to use Forth, and also who to try to talk to in the community. For a niche language which is not taught in schools, it is unavoidable to getting to know the community
515.
by astrobe_ 4y ago
If you are asking this question, this means that you are very unlikely to pass the interview.
516.
by astrobe_ 4y ago
Half correct. It's true that you can improve the safety that way, but what proponents of memory safety consider a no-go is pointer arithmetic and crafting - basically not what C allows. You can forbid yourself to do these things and im
517.
by astrobe_ 4y ago
With regard to local variables, although standard Forth has them or considers them as an extension, Moore is correct in the sense that they are a crutch for when you did something wrong - often they allow to sweep under the carpet a "s
518.
by astrobe_ 4y ago
Speaking of, when I think about it, it's amazing we've been keeping track days and years exactly for all this time (about 4000 years), with different calendar systems between civilizations. I guess astronomic event records (supern
519.
by astrobe_ 4y ago
> "what software do you build in Forth?" Like others I indeed started with making my own Forth dialect (actually more than one try; and yes one of them could compile itself), but now it is my go-to scripting language. My latest
520.
by astrobe_ 4y ago
Then find all the little half-truths in that post. I think this part sums up the problem with Forth quite well: > I defined the instruction set in a couple of hours. It mapped to Forth words as straightforwardly as possible [...] but it
521.
by astrobe_ 4y ago
I think you imagine what people imagine. People are very well aware of what a nuclear meltdown means. They have Chernobyl and Fukushima as well-documented cases: populations forced to move from their home permanently, contamination of the f
522.
by astrobe_ 4y ago
Perhaps, but the real reality behind this 1.3 years figure is that someone somewhere dies too early. That's something people won't easily accept - especially if we talk about cancer, one of the most feared diseases. It's li
523.
by astrobe_ 4y ago
Yes, that's "just" a standard library convention, not a feature of the language itself. The devil is in the "just", though. It is actually a hassle to use counted strings when every one else uses ASCIIZ; you sacrifi
524.
by astrobe_ 4y ago
> Now ask your parrot to do some math No problem, just use the right parrot for the right job [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_parrot#Intelligence_and_c...
525.
by astrobe_ 4y ago
> I see a Forth reference about once per month on HN but nothing in developer-specific forums, so I have to assume Forth is dead. Depends on your definition of dead |1]. > Is there some use case that only Forth can satisfy? Interacti
526.
by astrobe_ 4y ago
> The fact that we still write software by hand using lines of source code in a text editor is pretty ridiculous to me. It's not that far removed from punch cards. Well, it wasn't hard to beat punch cards in terms of convenienc
527.
by astrobe_ 4y ago
In my experience it is about code reuse and/or maintainability - what if this code becomes a library and is integrated as part of a long-lived program? It would be risky a posteriori to retrofit a proper memory management. And perhap
528.
by astrobe_ 4y ago
> This keeps getting rediscovered in new domains. I'm not sure there's a need for a "strong version" of Goodhart's law, or I fail to understand the distinction the author is trying to make. Goodhart is "so t
529.
by astrobe_ 4y ago
Yes. Start bit, stop bit, bit length and sampling. And maybe one can add the RTS/CTS hardware protocol because so many UARTs implement it.
530.
by astrobe_ 4y ago
> I'm adverse to debuggers as i've more than once caught myself following a rabbit hole of steping through code instead of thinking. Yes. I was kind of forced to think and do printf debugging at the beginning of my career, afte
531.
by astrobe_ 4y ago
I don't think so, or we disagree on the meaning of words. Chunking is not message-oriented in the same sense that UDP is. With chunking, you basically just insert markers into the stream; this does not imply by any mean that the stream
532.
by astrobe_ 4y ago
That happens too often with Forth. Someone gets interested, thinks it would be sooo awesome to add this and that "modern" feature, and then they end up with something that combines the disadvantages of Forth with the complicatio
533.
by astrobe_ 4y ago
I wish people would abstain from that sort of insipid comments and offer instead suggestions about how to replace 40+ years of programming (that's just for C, BTW) and teralines of code in less than a century, and who's gonna pa
534.
by astrobe_ 4y ago
> This would be great for Rally racing games, since it's all about reacting to unknown terrain. Indeed, eventually you know the tracks by heart, so much so that you don't need the pacing notes anymore. I'm surprised nobody
535.
by astrobe_ 4y ago
From what Forth, Inc. and MPE tell about their projects and customers, it seems indeed to be micro-controller focused, but extends sometimes to the desktop. For instance Forth, Inc. talked about a cold storage facility ("a fridge as bi
536.
by astrobe_ 4y ago
Nice tips. Personally I have hlsearch turned on and nohlsearch mapped to H because persistent highlighting is sometimes useful, sometimes a bit annoying.
537.
by astrobe_ 4y ago
Yes, it seems that we learn to do that really early [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intention#Knowledge_of_the_int...
538.
by astrobe_ 4y ago
Perhaps there is an analogy with how "western" words are formed. We usually use so mix of Greek and Latin roots, especially in science and engineering. For instance the word "telemetry". It has the "tele-" pref
539.
by astrobe_ 4y ago
I agree that semantic mismatches are a worse problem than syntactic mismatches. However in the case of Lua, because of dynamic typing and late binding, it would not be wise to not have unit tests and full test coverage. This mostly reduces
540.
by astrobe_ 4y ago
I've heard that ORMs are the "Vietnam" of CS [1]. The article is pretty old, is it still the case? [1] https://blog.codinghorror.com/object-relational-mapping-is-t...

More ›