eschaton

16 ms·

241.
by eschaton 2y ago
This has not been my experience; at Apple most of my managers were very good and were also coding.
242.
by eschaton 2y ago
Amen, intent matters. And it sounds like in both of the cases the OP cited, the intent was to force otherwise-unnecessary replacement, which is bad.
243.
by eschaton 2y ago
So you know of two cases of companies putting in work to defraud people by selling products that aren’t fit for purpose outside their warranty window. Name & shame.
244.
by eschaton 2y ago
Don't forget that Microsoft did an awful lot of non-technical work to "facilitate" the porting of large workstation applications to Windows NT. If you had a large-scale workstation application, Microsoft would assign you a re
245.
by eschaton 2y ago
Also, keep in mind that an Intel-based system *competitive with an SGI system* was still *much* more than $2K to $3K. You cannot simply compare the price of a no-name corner shop parts bin PC with something designed to the same standards as
246.
by eschaton 2y ago
There's a parts vendor who charges pretty high prices and a small, insular community that thinks his prices are just fine and bid everything up to that level as they try to acquire (many) duplicates of systems they already have, which
247.
by eschaton 2y ago
Mac developers who used CodeWarrior on its native platform from the PowerPC System 7 through Mac OS 9 era (so 1993-2001) generally consider it a fine compiler and the best IDE ever made. I wonder what happened.
248.
by eschaton 2y ago
And while you may want to use Rust in some of these situations, you won’t be able to without that level of qualification and certification. This probably does mean there will be room in the market for a commercially-supported qualified and
249.
by eschaton 2y ago
Ada definitely targets the same domain as Rust, it just _also_ targets additional domains like low level control systems. It has a lot of flexibility and is quite a good language design that people seem irrationally prejudiced against becau
250.
by eschaton 2y ago
Maybe you’re too focused on “rival[ing] what Rust can express” and aren’t looking for “better than plain C in a way that improves security and analyzability and would also improve Rust import of C APIs.” As an example, there are annotation
251.
by eschaton 2y ago
Nevertheless, it should be pursued because it also benefits the C code when combined with static analysis.
252.
by eschaton 2y ago
C has been extended in *exactly* that way using the `__((attribute))__` mechanism in GCC and clang. One does not need to wait for a standards body to do this. This is one of the ways in which the static analyzer in clang works and they’re v
253.
by eschaton 2y ago
Yes, and that’s just what has to be done. Welcome to interfacing with C, it’s been like that for decades. There are ways these semantics can be annotated via the attribute mechanism in many compilers; this, like nullability, should be added
254.
by eschaton 2y ago
They could also revise how their C interop works such that the kernel internal interfaces can continue to be specified in C and just used easily from Rust. This is the Swift approach: Consistent, predictable interop that doesn’t insist or p
255.
by eschaton 2y ago
Routing of input events to windows has turned out to also be extremely important for a display subsystem in practice. It wasn’t just X11 that did this, it was also the NeXT window server, and Sun’s NeWS, and SGI’s pre-X window system, and t
256.
by eschaton 2y ago
Voting patterns in the US follow population density. The higher the density, the more Democratic voters there tend to be. It’s only if you look at geography that the US appears conservative; unfortunately, due to the Electoral College, “lan
257.
by eschaton 2y ago
Nah.
258.
by eschaton 2y ago
Why would this be expected?
259.
by eschaton 2y ago
The ability to recognize and join a hype train, I presume. It’s one way to appear proactively leading-edge to marginally-informed product managers, marketers, execs and press.
260.
by eschaton 2y ago
The ultimate effect is the same.
261.
by eschaton 2y ago
Only if you consider “Highest and Best Use” to be that which is most profitable for the property owners, rather than that which is in society’s long-term interest. Of course, capitalist economists work very, very hard to conflate “economi
262.
by eschaton 2y ago
Achieving this by cutting regulation would get you the other aspects of Kowloon Walled City too, the more horrifying ones.
263.
by eschaton 2y ago
That’s exactly what’s meant by “make housing a human right”—the law, at all levels, would need to comport with its protection.
264.
by eschaton 2y ago
It’s extremely expensive to be poor. Often you wind up paying a lot more over time because you never accumulate the necessary up-front capital to pick the option that will cost less over the long term. Terry Pratchett had a perfect example
265.
by eschaton 2y ago
Are you sure the sole goal really is providing safe storage? Or is it providing the safest possible storage within a certain minimal cost envelope, or even providing it at a profit? People get lazy and complacent even if well-compensated,
266.
by eschaton 2y ago
It’s called a “response file” and they’re at least common among developer tools like compilers and linkers for avoiding common limits on command line arguments.
267.
by eschaton 2y ago
They shouldn’t be expected to improve in accuracy because of what they are and how they work. Contrary to what the average HackerNews seems to believe, LLMs don’t “think,” they just predict. And there’s nothing in them that will constrain t
268.
by eschaton 2y ago
Other rules for command line tools: 1. Don’t assume a terminal type. Look at `TERM` and use termcap/terminfo or a library built atop them for anything beyond line-oriented plain text output, or least assume a plain teletype unless you
269.
by eschaton 2y ago
Why would you ask the other commenters on Hacker News this, to try to work it out from first principles? It looked more like you were trying to cast doubt on the work these scientists have done because you’re either reflexively contrarian,
270.
by eschaton 2y ago
I’m sure the authors of this paper that was published in one of the premiere scientific journals and the authors of all of the works they cite did not consider these elementary questions whatsoever and will appreciate your insight.

More ›