stevedonovan

7 ms·

31.
by stevedonovan 6y ago
Although arguably a more 'difficult' language I sleep much better at night when using Rust, because Python is always in a hurry to get a wrong program running. So then, one has to test like hell. So I feel I'm still ahead of
32.
by stevedonovan 6y ago
This is of course true. But is a particular fashionable technology the best way to solve that business problem, or is yet another layer of fun? I suspect that being able to deliver simple scalable solutions without bandwagon dependencies is
33.
by stevedonovan 6y ago
Probably because Lua is meant to be embedded in an application and provides a small, highly optimized VM. On my system Lua is smaller than PCRE.
34.
by stevedonovan 6y ago
Except for written dialog with my inner Rubber Duck. But then it's all about process, and the result is not important after a few days.
35.
by stevedonovan 6y ago
Rust certainly has C++ attitude to performance, for example 'zero-cost abstractions'. That precludes GC. But this is more indirect influence: targeting the same niche
36.
by stevedonovan 6y ago
Or specializing in Nuclear Physics: "So could you build an atomic bomb?". It was a fun party topic, though.
37.
by stevedonovan 6y ago
Well, to be fair, sometimes the X is a Greek upper case Chi. Mathematics ran out of Greek and Roman a while back and Hebrew has appeared - א (as in "Aleph Null")
38.
by stevedonovan 7y ago
Interesting, although of course these things are very hard to study rigorously. When I did the UnderC interactive interpreter, my hypothesis was that people learn programming better in a 'conversational' setting, just as with huma
39.
by stevedonovan 7y ago
The traditional approach is dynamically loaded native libraries, and that certainly worked well when I did it in C++. The dynamic linking situation in Rust is immature, nothing like a stable ABI. Static linking has received much more attent
40.
by stevedonovan 7y ago
Our partners are very happy Grafana users. But I've observed some pain when they construct dashboards and alerts for each new device added. They are going to add thousands so this is very labour intensive! Some kind of "smart clon
41.
by stevedonovan 7y ago
Freud somewhere remarked that neurosis gives clues on mental functioning, which is certainly very clear in neurology (his first field). So lack of cognitive coherency in some disorders could be revealing.
42.
by stevedonovan 7y ago
I heard somewhere that Amazon did try to do a deal with Elastic and didn't like the price?
43.
by stevedonovan 7y ago
Very much how Lisp does it. Interpret, and then compile-on-the-fly, since you are inside the compiler.
44.
by stevedonovan 8y ago
Not necessarily. The compiler would become larger, but the VM would not. (I'm assuming that the VM can be decoupled from the compiler like Lua for restricted environments). Statically-typed 'scripting' is a very interesting
45.
by stevedonovan 8y ago
Not sure why you're being down-voted, but if done intelligently, and assuming good-quality libraries, the goal should be as few lines of code that you are directly responsible for.
46.
by stevedonovan 8y ago
Perhaps the problem is that they are _constantly_ changing their product managers.
47.
by stevedonovan 8y ago
While we're talking political economy, I was thinking that academia tends towards a degenerate form resembling subsistence agriculture: defending a small patch of turf and making just enough meaning to support a career. Even if the raw
48.
by stevedonovan 8y ago
Thanks, that's a great letter which should get more exposure. The issue is ultimately vocational vs. professional. If someone wants to do data science then Python is appropriate, but someone who is going on to do CS is going to need so
49.
by stevedonovan 8y ago
I'm a big fan of ripgrep, and there's been a minor revival of command-line tools exploiting the speed + higher-level + reusable-crates that Rust provides. So 'hardcore' is not correct. I've personally found it very
50.
by stevedonovan 8y ago
I approve whole-heartedly of the "no zealotry" rule. (I seriously doubt that the Jehovah's Witnesses have achieved conversion rates commensurate with the effort expended.) That being said, C has problems, particularly the ass
51.
by stevedonovan 8y ago
I'm obviously a fan, but evangelism does not sit easily with engineering. Can alienate outsiders, and pump up a positive bubble in which sound criticism might be neglected. (In fact, /r/rust has a 'no zealotry' rule
52.
by stevedonovan 8y ago
I got carried away with a personal enthusiasm. It happens :) `nom` is marvelous, but the hard bit with combinatorial parsers is getting them to spew out good error messages. By default they are like Prolog - the answer is 'no'.
53.
by stevedonovan 8y ago
"Disaffected C++ programmer" is altogether too accurate characterization of the author :). I've been removing references to other languages because (a) it's confusing (b) can be dismissive ("trash talking") -
54.
by stevedonovan 9y ago
It matters for the big things, but not for "stupid bullshit" as my dear wife calls it. Obviously there are things where principles and correctness are important; but what are they? It seems that we should prune the set of importan
55.
by stevedonovan 9y ago
My father did his BA at 70 from the Open University. Up to that point I think he was simply too restless to settle down to study.
56.
by stevedonovan 9y ago
Judging from the happiness of my fellow city dwellers when they hang out in the mall, I suspect that colonists would not mind being inside as long as there was enough shopping.
57.
by stevedonovan 9y ago
There is a middle ground between these positions :)
58.
by stevedonovan 9y ago
Thinking here about programming language acquisition. Some languages are harder to learn, and it's not necessarily directly related to the complexity of the language. It is harder to learn Rust than C++, but Rust is simpler - it's
59.
by stevedonovan 9y ago
Compile-time duck typing :) To be fair, C++ templates have a similar problem. Rust nails this one with traits, I think.
60.
by stevedonovan 9y ago
Cf. Paul Graham's 'secret weapon' essay.

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