billforsternz

8 ms·

61.
by billforsternz 1y ago
I can't decide whether the double spaced code samples in this blog post are intended or a mistake. I kind of hope it's a mistake.
62.
by billforsternz 1y ago
I love this. The passion. The perfectionism. The complete absence of any commercial considerations. Just pure hacker culture, presented and disected with uncompromising attention to detail. I also really appreciated the way this write up st
63.
by billforsternz 1y ago
A misconception on my part, apologies. I had somehow conflated the automatic conversion from float to double that occurs in some circumstances to something that occurs in all circumstances. Or perhaps taken a quirk from a 1980s compiler (Tu
64.
by billforsternz 1y ago
I'm going to guess f(double) because floats have always been promoted to doubles for function calls since K&R. But I'm not sure by any means. I'd be ready to get more explicit if I needed some specific behaviour.
65.
by billforsternz 1y ago
Thanks, so application comes down to plugging in values, I got as far as "plugging in values" in the subject document (except that I didn't realise that's what application meant). Then I kind of recoiled from reforming,
66.
by billforsternz 1y ago
Thanks. Sadly I'm an old school assembly, C, C++ type. I don't know Closure or Haskell and my attempts to write Javascript always involving basically writing C in Javascript.
67.
by billforsternz 1y ago
The very first sentence; > The λ calculus is, at heart, a simple notation for functions and application. I'm already confused! and application . Does that even make sense? It didn't get much better when I started on the first
68.
by billforsternz 1y ago
I quite like a terse but consistent conventions myself. I remember finally being able to quiet the tedious part of my brain that couldn't get past the NS conundrum when I finally came up with the NextStep thing as a reasonable theory.
69.
by billforsternz 1y ago
One problem I remember from (briefly, fortunately) dealing with Apple APIs is wondering incessantly why every API (I was looking at) started with NS. Admittedly these days any AI would tell me it stands for Next Step. But if you are creatin
70.
by billforsternz 1y ago
Thanks, interesting.
71.
by billforsternz 1y ago
Nice, thanks.
72.
by billforsternz 1y ago
A little off topic but amidst a lot of discussion of UTF-8 and its ASCII compatibility property I'm going to mention my one gripe with ASCII, something I never see anyone talking about, something I've never talked about before: Th
73.
by billforsternz 1y ago
Understandable, thanks for explaining.
74.
by billforsternz 1y ago
I'd rather not know if the car is on the street (which is what I imagined). If the car is in my house that's quite different.
75.
by billforsternz 1y ago
Me too. Having figured out what it means I cannot over-empathise how much I DO NOT WANT NOTIFICATIONS of an unhoused neighbour door checking my car in the middle of the night.
76.
by billforsternz 1y ago
I agree with everything you say but I'm still exceptionally triggered by you going 2x10^5 - 300 = 199700 and change.
77.
by billforsternz 1y ago
Thank you, yes.
78.
by billforsternz 1y ago
I find it strangely pleasing how a bunch of boutique(ish) companies from the UK, France, USA, Japan (others maybe?) all make plastic model kits of a variety of classic aeroplanes, WW2 planes in particular, in a series of scales. When I was
79.
by billforsternz 1y ago
I think you mean 300Mbps and 920Mbps (M not K right?)
80.
by billforsternz 1y ago
I recall back in the day when I was an embedded systems programmer at the coal face I had similar antipathy towards a pattern. I think it was called the State pattern or similar. It involved a class hierarchy and virtual functions, one for
81.
by billforsternz 1y ago
This excerpt features a terrible typo, so I agree it's poorly written, or at least not properly proof read. I don't agree with your specific criticism of the excerpt though. I think the excerpt makes it perfectly clear she disprov
82.
by billforsternz 1y ago
> if the candidate submits a “better” answer than the interviewer’s , candidate takes over their job Corporate life meets the squid games (I quite like it:)
83.
by billforsternz 1y ago
Off topic complaint: I am guessing an absolutely massive amount of (admittedly minor in each instance) grief has been caused by the most widely deployed simple, inexpensive, useful and familiar drug unnecessarily having two different names
84.
by billforsternz 1y ago
> Throughout the product lifecycle, continuous software upgrades strengthen the security, performance, power consumption, and functionality of products in the field. This doesn't feel right to me. Back in the day when I started in e
85.
by billforsternz 1y ago
Obscure data point of the day; McDonalds is a small but long-standing real estate company in a provincial city in New Zealand. Their website address? eieio.co.nz
86.
by billforsternz 1y ago
A very HN reply to a poetic and heartfelt comment.
87.
by billforsternz 1y ago
I'm on holiday in Japan at the moment and I notice the cabs look like London cabs and are mainly black too. Made by Toyota. I haven't yet taken one, so I don't know if the similarity extends to the interior layout.
88.
by billforsternz 1y ago
One thing I can do really easily with DOS but can never remember how to do on Linux is find a file somewhere in the filesystem. dir/s filename I know there are many ways to do the same thing in Linux, but they are all more complicated
89.
by billforsternz 1y ago
Ironic that this is one case when you don't use an apostrophe to indicate the possessing entity. I suppose the rule is possessive nouns only, not pronouns.
90.
by billforsternz 1y ago
"Look this guy's job seems to be mainly writing blog posts . We could replace that with AI and get it to regularly pitch the new Visual Enshitify 2.0 product launch as a bonus. Win win win!"

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