stefco_

17 ms·

91.
by stefco_ 7y ago
> Syntax coloring isn't useless, it is childish, like training wheels or school paste Not as childish as writing a blog post bragging about how you don't need syntax highlighting to code. In all seriousness, though: yes, after
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by stefco_ 7y ago
This is the same reason astronomers like HEALPix tiling for skymaps [0]. Equal areas-per-pixel (important for integrating over areas) with straightforward spherical harmonics calculations and hierarchical extensions that can store images at
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by stefco_ 7y ago
This isn't that good of a metric for code utility. Sure, very-long-lived code probably solved the problem well (though it can also just be a first-mover kind of thing), but a lot of code is written to solve specific problems in a way t
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by stefco_ 7y ago
This is somewhat cleaner, and I also use this idiom when things get ugly with the inline formatting shown above. But my point is that none of these are very elegant for an extremely common use case. Throw this block in the middle of som
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by stefco_ 7y ago
This is a good solution! I don't directly use `iter` very often so I only remember it's simplicity part of the time. Sadly, this is not the idiom I see in most places. I will say, though, that I was not comfortable using itera
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by stefco_ 7y ago
Yes! `textwrap.dedent` is great. On further reflection `wrap` is actually more useful for this kludge (see below). But my point is that that's a whole import for a kludge. Compare the f-string ideal (by my standards): raise ValueEr
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by stefco_ 7y ago
> UAL's Mr. Petty refused, writing back that the command would be confusing if a pilot by the name of "Max" was in the cockpit! The reaction of a manager who's watched too many Simpsons episodes [0]. [0] https:/
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by stefco_ 7y ago
f-strings are the first truly-pretty way to do string formatting in python, and the best thing is that they avoid all of the shortcomings of other interpolation syntaxes I've worked with. It's one of those magical features that ju
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by stefco_ 7y ago
There's a lot of talk in this thread about Python going down-hill and becoming less obvious/simple. I rather like modern python, but I agree that some features (like async/await, whose implementation fractures functions and l
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by stefco_ 7y ago
> And for months, small businesses have turned to social media to complain about the company’s outstanding debts. Though D&D was a company and the situation is somewhat different, this reminds me of my tutoring experience with a fe
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by stefco_ 7y ago
I almost did a FORTRAN subcontracting gig like this to translate an old but accurate simulation of a mechanical system to Python. I literally got a binder full of FORTRAN to start with, though eventually (to my great relief) the guy I was g
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by stefco_ 7y ago
Why would the card not identify your account? We already have cards that can do this. It seems that the only point of using facial ID is if you want to avoid forcing people to use cards (or if you want to collect and sell their biometrics
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by stefco_ 7y ago
Cloud solutions have plenty of issues, but I'm quite surprised there aren't more replies talking about how many impossible problems have been made tractable and reliable thanks to the cloud (or to be more precise, made much cheap
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by stefco_ 7y ago
> Except that the planet has been warming and cooling for millions of years. This does not invalidate calling it "global warming". Just because it's happened before doesn't mean it's not happening now. When you h
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by stefco_ 7y ago
Why would you need the facial recognition if you're already using your card?
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by stefco_ 7y ago
Ah, yes, that would be one good place to put a lot of the energy (if you could also get some water for the hydrogen).
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by stefco_ 7y ago
Right, that's the point! The low pressure would make it very very inefficient, and you would actually need a heat exchange system far larger than earth reactors. We use liquid cooling in our PCs because a smaller heat sink can pump o
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by stefco_ 7y ago
What concerns me is that shortcuts in industrial manufacturing processes are often directly detrimental or even fatal to workers. Heavy industry uses toxic chemicals and large, powerful machinery; cutting corners around those things is acti
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by stefco_ 7y ago
You still need a heat sink of some sort to extract usable energy from any reactor, nuclear or otherwise; this is a universal property of engines [1]. Radiators are very inefficient for this and would be far heavier than the equivalent water
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by stefco_ 7y ago
It is! My response to the other comment describes some of the challenges, but overall it's wonderful! It feels a lot like running a startup, though of course the compensation is more spiritual than financial. But it has all of the grea
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by stefco_ 7y ago
I have, and they're great! But limited. The real issue is the size of the dependency stack for scientific computing; I need to use a lot of monolithic, project-wide libraries (read: minimal python installs of many gigabytes), far beyon
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by stefco_ 7y ago
This is really great! I wrote and operate a pipeline framework for analyzing data from multiple astronomical observatories in low-latency [1], and I'm currently adding this sort of burst-performance scaling for things like background s
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by stefco_ 7y ago
To be fair, this kind of idiocy is in no way limited to scooters. In NYC we don't have Bird yet but we do have tons of delivery people on bikes (electric and traditional) that do stuff even more dangerous than this. One time while I wa
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by stefco_ 7y ago
I suspect that this sort of project requires them to develop tools that significantly lower the barrier to performing automated biometric data gathering. It is also easier for them to link your body to your digital presence and identity sin
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by stefco_ 7y ago
If you count the filesystem stats on a file as part of the system state, it is certainly not idempotent. You need to be aware of that effect on system state before you can decide whether to ignore it. Idempotency requires that the function
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by stefco_ 7y ago
Robust concurrency options for python exist that are not Docker-based (e.g. Celery). Even basic "fork" calls are cheap on UNIX (and wrapped with the multiprocessing package for cross-platform use). Package managers like Conda make
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by stefco_ 7y ago
“When it rains, it pours” is the conventional wisdom distillation of Poisson variable behavior
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by stefco_ 7y ago
We have some standardized emoji like . Seems like the partial 2019 solution would be to use emoji that should work in any modern font (you could make a more UNIXy-feeling font if you want everything to look less skeuomorphic and more stripp
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by stefco_ 7y ago
What distro are you using that has these issues? My Debian server has been running solidly for years without crashing or (automatically) updating. I've also never had any problems with QA or package management; everything installed wit
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by stefco_ 8y ago
Totally agree with the second paragraph (I'm a current grad student). My advisor is excellent, and while I've often had to push myself to the limit of what I can get done, I've also had a tremendous amount of freedom on how t

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