zelphirkalt

8,077 karmajoined 9 ปีที่แล้ว

Repos: https://codeberg.org/ZelphirKaltstahl

Website: https://web.xiaolong-hosting.com

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Interests: AI/ML, Education, Gaming, Mentorship, Open Source, Free Software, Philosophy, Computer Programming, Remote Work, Startups, Technology, Web Development, Writing

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2 pointsby zelphirkalt7 เดือนที่ผ่านมา0 comments

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14 ชั่วโมงที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

> Also, arguably the best is to have certain features in the language itself, that can be used to build proper abstractions - so you don't have to resolve to using macros in its place.

I don't agree, because that would mean, that the language must be huge, or grow huge over time, or alternatively be extremely abstract at its core, to be able to fit every use-case. Furthermore, so far I have not seen a language, in which the language designers managed to pull it off, so I tend to think that what already has been successfully pulled off, which is macros for language extensions, is the way to go.

Also this seems to be arguing from a limiting idea about what macros do. Macros are not always the right solution for any problem, in fact often they are not, but there are things you simply cannot do otherwise (without syntactic clutter), like for example changing the order of evaluation.

I also don't agree with your point about only making toy examples easier to write. For example I have written macros for implementing new define forms, which allow to specify contracts for function arguments and return values, or a macro for automatically defining functions that communicate to API routes, based on the function name, which I used to implement a proof of concept docker client for Scheme. Those are not toy examples, but real world applications, where a small macro can have big effect.

If you think macros need to be big and elaborate and complicated and otherwise are toys, then you don't really understand the power of macros. One of my favorite macros is the following threading macro:

    (define-syntax ->
      (syntax-rules ()
        [(-> expr) expr]
        [(-> expr* ... (op args* ...))
         (op args* ... (-> expr* ...))]
        [(-> expr* ... op)
         (op (-> expr* ...))]))

Small, but a great addition to the code, that improves readability in many places of the code. It doesn't have to be big or long, in order to not be a toy example, but actually be a useful macro.

17 ชั่วโมงที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

> Homoiconicity doesn't give you anything special if your language can parse itself and can eval code. It just makes these completely abstract implementations simpler.

Well, in a way it does give you something: By making expression of things like macros simpler, it makes them sometimes worthwhile, and makes it a reasonable request to have this kind of meta programming in your language at all. Without homoiconicity such things become even more difficult endeavors and often unjustifiable for the language design and its implementation.

17 ชั่วโมงที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

Is it just my personal feeling, or are Java version numbers becoming as inflationary as browser version numbers?

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It's especially "funny", when "Senior" software engineers post AI spam, to inform you about solving Fibonacci recursively, as if this was just the first day they learned about the Fibonacci sequence.

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Pedos would definitely know what job to work in.

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State owned news will follow orders or people be removed. Arrrrr! They will have their incentives, even if people at the top of news reporting institutions are highly paid. Wouldn't want that dirt they have hidden be uncovered, now would they? Better dance to the tune and keep an overpaid job living by leeching off the tax payers.

Example: Look at Germany and how many Rundfunk Intendanten there are and how much they make a year, plus how little coverage such topics get.

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Yeah, this is also a step too far for me. The EU has also done good things, like GDPR, right to repair, fining big tech again and again ... but it rarely follows up as much as it needs to.

The problem is though, that countries in the EU by themselves are economically not powerful enough, to hold up any ethical values against the giants US and China. So we need some alternative to the EU, some other union, that at least contains the economically most powerful EU countries, so that we have enough economical weight, that the other big players cannot simply push us around. Currently, the EU seems to be hellbent on losing its support. But how to prevent that other union to go down the same road?

Anyway, it seems clear, that we can no longer allow EU decision makers to make rules for us. They are not to be trusted.

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US is now allied with Russia though. Or at least its president acts as if it was.

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If reading messages that are not for ones eyes is OK, then it is a much smaller step to the next level, which is to also being able to read encrypted messages. Slowly boiling the frog.

3 วันที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

In the EU surely not worth it. You probably at most get the money back for a new car. Just like when somehow it turns out someone was mistakenly put in jail and later it is found out, they only get money they would have earned working back, and their freedom and their forever tarnished reputation is valued at zero.

3 วันที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

Wait until they mandate a panel of warning LEDs on your bike or a cam on your bike recording your face.

4 วันที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

My surprise level is at approximately... zero. Next we will see some news, that MS was compelled to share that info with some three letters. - Oh wait, that is exactly what has already happened, according to the article.

MS is just like that person, who drives a dagger into your back.

5 วันที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

In my experience from years ago, OsmAnd was always very slow when searching and also didn't find much, as if it required a 100 percent match for anything one searches. Really annoying. Then I discovered Organic Maps, which behaved better, and more recently switched CoMaps, due to ideological reasons.

6 วันที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

I find even standard HTML5 player better than YouTube's player. So many issues with YouTube's player. Sometimes not even the play button works properly.

6 วันที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

By now there seem to be unfortunately more careless careerist programmers on the job, than dedicated engineers. In a proper CS degree we do learn about engineering methods. It is up to us to also make use of them. Someone who graduated from a bootcamp likely will not have the tools to actually engineer this stuff, unless they got some prior experience in engineering.

6 วันที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

That's why trains work, but Google's shitty YouTube often does not: Terrible, terrible video player, tons of crap on the page, broken buffering all the time, huge memory and CPU hog, need to log in to even watch a video if using a VPN, insane key bindings that are switched around depending on full screen mode or not, stupid and manipulative ads that only the uninformed or simple minded can tolerate, and the list goes on. Found a bug? Keep it! You won't reach another human at Google being to tell them about it anyway!

6 วันที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

Just the other day I wrote a blog post about how one can easily provide a fallback for not executing JS [1]. If only web developers cared about the web, instead of developing fancy bling bling, then maybe the web wouldn't be in such a sad state.

[1]: https://web.xiaolong-hosting.com/blog/post/truly-accessible-...

7 วันที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

Sounds like one of the things where Python's broken/stunted lambdas would really hurt.

7 วันที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

Stripping him of his titles doesn't do much good to be honest. In the history books he will still simply be someone who won and became world champion, whether stripped of the title or not. What would do us good, is to realize, that even someone in that position is not necessarily a saint or even a good person. To realize that supposed contrast and keep it in mind would be better for us than stripping him of titles, that he did in fact truly earn. Also it would only give him more ammunition.

8 วันที่ผ่านมาdiscuss

Well, they can't have it both ways. They can either have the more open platform, and continue to get techies to use them as simple convenience tools, serving as advertisers of Google indirectly, or they can be more closed and not even have that initial trust.

Google could only grow like it did, because they did things differently.

Other tech giants pay fines for other crimes. For example Facebook once had to pay a record high 5 billion for violating consumers' privacy. It is not surprising, that different companies with different products pay fines for different things.