erlkonig

10 ms·

31.
by erlkonig 4y ago
I've had Perl change its syntax on me and break my pet monitoring system too often to make me feel good about Perl. It hasn't been too hard to keep it running (20 years so far), but starting fresh I'd probably use Python. Py
32.
by erlkonig 4y ago
It's the effect of the extension on USER behavior that's the problem, the OS doesn't care.
33.
by erlkonig 4y ago
The extensions are improper from the outset. Commands should not have extensions.
34.
by erlkonig 4y ago
No, it doesn't. The extensions are usually too inaccurate to rely on. That could be either a Bourne or Bash script, meaning it could either fail at some arbitrary point during run if the wrong one is used, or just subtly, critically c
35.
by erlkonig 4y ago
Relying on errexit to save one from disaster is also often fatal, except for surpassingly simple scripts. While inside of many different kinds of control structures, the errexit is disabled, and usually just provides a false sense of sec
36.
by erlkonig 4y ago
No command should have an extension. And - quite notably - almost none do. Adding an extension to make it easier to tell what's inside without opening it is being lazy rather than following best practices. Best practice is half cent
37.
by erlkonig 4y ago
Amusingly, that UI in the film is a real piece of Unix software named FSN on IRIX; I used it some around 1994 on Silicon Graphics hosts at Origin Games. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fsn_(file_manager)
38.
by erlkonig 5y ago
I should add that it doesn't even work on my home network, where home directories are mounted over NFS - and not into /home/$user - /home was never guaranteed, that's what $HOME is FOR . I just can't believe
39.
by erlkonig 5y ago
Right. And that same utterly braindead constraint prevents it from scaling to - or handling at all - many commercial unix environments. Just... unimaginably little vision.
40.
by erlkonig 5y ago
TL;DR * Don't change any of the naming, Emacs's naming is either better than what the article proposes, or cannot be changed everywhere it would need to be * Don't push for CUA copy/paste unless there's a plan for
41.
by erlkonig 6y ago
For ext* filesystems, you can use tune2fs to change the reserved block percentage to accomplish this in what might - depending on your preferences - be a more graceful way. Basically it lets you knock 8 GB or more (although it's a perc
42.
by erlkonig 6y ago
He did mention graybeards.
43.
by erlkonig 6y ago
The ";" prompt was specific the "es" and "rc" shells, and not really used with any other more common ones, so most graybeards wouldn't have used that as PS1. Also, to be a graybeard and have copy/past
44.
by erlkonig 6y ago
The ": ... ; " is a good start, but you can also put in the $ or # before the semicolon using bash's "\$". This makes it especially protective if you copy+paste+oops as root ;-) You have to have a space after the &
45.
by erlkonig 6y ago
An IDE has some integration benefits, sure, for a relatively tiny number of languages, typically, compared to Emacs and Vim, at the cost of amazing raw editing capability no IDE comes close to. Samples: copy/paste rectangles of text
46.
by erlkonig 7y ago
As something of power FF user, I do two key things in Firefox that used to work perfectly, especially with a third thing from Session Manager. * Multiple profiles simultaneously, one for normal browsing, another for authenticated sites I ca
47.
by erlkonig 7y ago
The wildly more hand-friendly Kinesis model 100 was earlier, ~1992 (from https://kinesis-ergo.com/company/about-kinesis/ ), and the ergonomic Matron was pre-1980, I think. The Natural has always been a watered-dow
48.
by erlkonig 8y ago
Ah, this looks like the old ungetc() exploit, where (back in the 1980s at utexas.edu) we'd leave a process connected to a terminal, wait for another user to log in, then push characters to their shell from our program using ungetc().
49.
by erlkonig 11y ago
I remember liking es from a long time ago - definitely more function-capable than the other shells of the time. On the other hand, gray-on-white for the website's text is a questionable choice from a legibility perspective. Contrast i
50.
by erlkonig 11y ago
The arrows are weird and the less-than-normal function keys are suboptimal (and I've used these keyboards long enough to run into some very rare firmware quirks and odd choices made by the maker). However, since everything else is so
51.
by erlkonig 11y ago
Their "contrast" section belies their determination, since the text there is grey on a white background, and true black on white would unquestionably be more readable. (looking at UI designers more generally:) I'm so sick of
52.
by erlkonig 12y ago
Enabling overcommit machine-wide is a puerile, broken approach that not only converts your server to an unreliable toy, but encourages other idiots to rely on the same broken behavior in their libraries, language implementations, and so for
53.
by erlkonig 12y ago
The singing he mentions is strongly reminiscent of Invocations of Gompo, a track from The Pillow Book (a film), which shockingly is trivially found on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pg5oHTkH6hw
54.
by erlkonig 12y ago
If Firefox would just add DOCUMENTATION (text and perhaps a URL to more text) to the options in the about:config page, many aspects of using it would improve enormously.
55.
by erlkonig 12y ago
I'm pretty sure the wide spacing, overuse of italics, and massive overconsumption of vertical space mean that an straight text version of the changes emacs would be more comfortable to read. At least it doesn't use ghetto antiali
56.
by erlkonig 12y ago
Why is it that (nearly) every description I read about some random new Python command wrapper fails to get the "python" and ".py" out of the command examples, even in Linux? I don't blame this particular offering, s
57.
by erlkonig 13y ago
I used fsn on the SGIs in 1994/5, but I think this initially free (as in beer) program was later bundled with some for-pay package and vanished from the downloads area. The funny part is I probably still have a working copy of it on th
58.
by erlkonig 13y ago
It's a bit silly to claim that outside of Oberon, all modern graphical UIs are descended from the Lisa. Unix and its many variations were very active in the early 1980s, and there were non-Lisa sophisticated window systems emerging ar
59.
by erlkonig 13y ago
Austin is hot, over 100°F for a long time in the summer, snowless 4 years out of 5. It has a deliberately bad highway system leading to a three-hour rush hour from 4 PM to 7 PM on weekdays. Granted, anyone from Los Angeles would probably
60.
by erlkonig 13y ago
Pretty pitiful that the authors assume only 100 color graduations for her added color axis, and that normal folks can differentiate almost exactly 1 million colors. "99 million more" is such a random stab.

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