geophile

53 ms·

601.
by geophile 7y ago
Yes, I just bought a Darter, (their new laptop model), after considering others, including Dell. I am very happy with the purchase. A decent case, fantastic keyboard, and PopOS on this machine is beautiful and trouble-free. Also, System76 p
602.
by geophile 7y ago
I agree that a very common Java pattern is to create getters/setters for every private field. Which is just stupid, might as well have the members be public. To use the popular phrase, Java classes like that have a "bad code smell
603.
by geophile 7y ago
I've worked with production Java systems for many years, and have had to tune GC, implement suballocation schemes etc. It is definitely not a panacea, and I meant to say that it was not, in my original comment. But at least GC fixes mo
604.
by geophile 7y ago
I do have some experience, playing with an iOS app for several months, through various versions of the language (3.x, 4.x). But this was as a hobby. I liked Optionals when I learned about them, and less as I started using them. I found that
605.
by geophile 8y ago
I get all that, but in one case the type of the value bound to the declared identifier is T, and in the other case it is T?. To me, that violates The Law of Least Astonishment, but that is admittedly subjective.
606.
by geophile 8y ago
"if let x = someOptional" unwraps the optional, no? And "let x = someOptional" doesn't, right? So the first form does have something to do with Optionals, and it is true that the two forms of let behave differently
607.
by geophile 8y ago
I don't care about the random TIOBE fluctuations. But I really don't get the love for Swift. - Optional is a nuisance and I don't think it is highly effective at preventing the dereference of a nil pointer in practice . Peop
608.
by geophile 8y ago
I was in exactly your situation -- longtime macOS user who wanted to migrate because of the decline in hardware quality. (And software quality, too.) I looked around a lot and bought a System76 Darter running PopOS. The specs blow MBPs out
609.
by geophile 8y ago
I am somewhat locked in to "the ecosystem", having an iPhone and an MBP. But the badly designed apps, the disaster that is iCloud, and the new MBP keyboard (the broken butterfly keys, the moronic touchbar) have motivated me to esc
610.
by geophile 8y ago
But on the other hand, iCloud is shit. The rules for what photos sync where, and which ones are safe to delete from my phone are puzzling, to say the least. Music syncing rarely goes smoothly because some tracks, for some unknown reason, ca
611.
by geophile 8y ago
My rant about the state of Apple: https://github.com/geophile/reality-distortion-field
612.
by geophile 8y ago
In 1978, I wrote a SNOBOL program for my MSc thesis. (SNOBOL is a dynamic, garbage-collected, string-oriented language, with bizarre syntax and control structures.) It needed a lot of memory (for the time). I managed to get an account on my
613.
by geophile 8y ago
Can you post a link to this extension?
614.
by geophile 8y ago
My rant about the state of Apple: https://github.com/geophile/reality-distortion-field
615.
by geophile 8y ago
Yes, you do need to explore languages to become talented in using languages. I think you are not an average developer if you are learning and using so many languages, pretty much by definition.
616.
by geophile 8y ago
It's not a "meme", it's just my speculation. Yes, languages are made for people, but the people aren't all the same. TFA overlooked the point that maybe it is more curious and more talented people who make their way
617.
by geophile 8y ago
Because those esoteric languages are better. The comment I responded to points out that TFA makes the unreasonable assumption that the Java programmers and the Smalltalk programmers are equally talented. And that perhaps what is going on is
618.
by geophile 8y ago
I came here to make the same point. The real test would be to take those same Lisp or Smalltalk programmers, and have them work in Java. I’ll bet you see the same increase in productivity. It’s the people, not the language.
619.
by geophile 8y ago
Another rich person story: I came across a copy of Worth magazine once. This is aimed at the top 0.1% of the 1%. Ads for jets, watches that cost 6 figures, etc. There was an article about the four kinds of rich kids, helpfully arranged from
620.
by geophile 8y ago
When I was in college, I knew one of the more remote heirs to the Seagram's fortune. I don't know if his father was a billionaire, but they were extremely rich. This guy turned out OK professionally. He didn't have to work, b
621.
by geophile 8y ago
GC is only part of the issue. Value types allow much finer control over locality, something completely lacking in Java now. And without that, you give up a lot of performance. For example: https://rcoh.me/posts/cache-ob
622.
by geophile 8y ago
Are they ever going to release value types?
623.
by geophile 8y ago
The difference between a function that depends only on its arguments, and a method which depends only on its aruments and the object is trivial, which is why the distinction bothers me. Another often overlooked difference between the two is
624.
by geophile 8y ago
Isn't a crucial difference that a method call may have a return value, while message passing never does? Now method calls and function calls: to me they're the same thing. After over 20 years of Java, I still stumble over that ter
625.
by geophile 8y ago
Actually, I think I know a little about the etymology. There was (and is) "systems programming" and "application programming". I suspect the term "application" comes from there.
626.
by geophile 8y ago
I don't have a citation, just my memory.
627.
by geophile 8y ago
Yeah, me too. Mostly it's the keyboard and execrable touchbar. But also, just the general decline in quality of Apple software and design. Got a System76 Darter. Very happy with it. Great keyboard. By the way, the dude in that video is
628.
by geophile 8y ago
We didn't have "applications" back then, we had "programs".
629.
by geophile 8y ago
He is talking about algorithmic efficiency using big-O notation but then limits N to 30. So, dumb question. Also, who the hell has 30 distinct pairs of socks?
630.
by geophile 8y ago
Right, because we don't spend enough time watching the thing upgrade its software.

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