I still can't decide whether M-x ielm fits into an optimal elisp workflow.
The 'strict Emacs' view is that it's better to use buffers for everything, so you can edit and build up expressions there.
The 'tailored UI' view is that ielm is better, because it's a dedicated REPL.
miniblog.
@azure@pleroma.site Agreed, just-so stories often sound plausible and then some releases a great Free software implementation of $THING.
I do suspect there are some domains where the incentives don't work for FOSS though. Projects needs to be fun to work on (for small hobbyist/side projects) or valuable for corporations to publish (so they hire someone to work on it).
AAA games or tax software probably won't become FOSS. Am I too pessimistic?
It's weird how smartphone game design has converged on certain features. I downloaded Tetris (Blitz) and I could spend money on in-game currency, it had daily challenges, and even XP!
I'm not sure how much this relates to revenue vs users just preferring this design.
ADSL works on two metres of wet string (if the water is salty), giving 3.5Mb/s downlink! https://www.revk.uk/2017/12/its-official-adsl-works-over-wet-string.html?m=1
It's oddly frustrating writing tests for a test library. You want better testing features (hence writing the library), but you have to write tests without them (due to bootstrapping.
I used to hear debates over whether proprietary software or open source was higher quality, but I haven't in some time now.
Perhaps it's because virtually all software stacks are partly open source now?
Gerbil Scheme has a great looking website with a friendly overview: https://cons.io/
How does Rust allow different language versions ("epochs") to interoperate? https://stackoverflow.com/q/57332016/509706
The SO answer even includes the relevant source code from the compiler!
163 million Americans don't use the broadband speed internet according to Microsoft survey data: https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2019/04/08/its-time-for-a-new-approach-for-mapping-broadband-data-to-better-serve-americans/
Thoughtful post on the merits of Emacs as a creation oriented computing platform, rather than consumption: https://www.fugue.co/blog/2018-08-09-two-years-with-emacs-as-a-cto.html
It always makes me smile that lispers use the term "earmuffs" to refer to variables named *foo*.
https://lisp-lang.org/style-guide/#variables
As far as I'm aware this particular name isn't used in other communities. Paired * is rare elsewhere, but lisp programmers are no stranger to paired syntax!
Google will prevent news websites treating incognito mode browsers differently, which may make paywalls harder: https://whatsnewinpublishing.com/google-unlocks-33-of-publisher-paywalls-on-july-30-this-is-what-happens-next/
Perhaps the best approach is to provide some free/indexable content to build your brand, but charge for the rest (like Stratechery or LWN)?
Extremely cute project building a miniature train display (with real, useful train times) using a raspberry pi! https://www.balena.io/blog/build-a-raspberry-pi-powered-train-station-oled-sign-for-your-desk/
This is incredibly impressive: bootstrapping rustc from only a C++ compiler! https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2018/bootstrapping-rust/
A neat dictionary of programming terminology, with a urban dictionary approach to definitions: https://www.hackterms.com/
Dealing with merge conflicts is an important skill that I've seen many experienced developers struggle with.
My experience might be biased from helping teams migrate from svn to git, but I've seen problems with all VCS.
Remarkable, sobering discussion of how hard it is to write bytes to a file robustly: https://danluu.com/deconstruct-files/
APIs are subtle, filesystems have different safety modes, they sometimes discard errors, not everyone complies with POSIX, and sometimes hardware doesn't meet its spec!
An ARM engineer has written an interesting critique of instruction and encoding choices in RISC-V, and how those decisions can impact implementations: https://gist.github.com/erincandescent/8a10eeeea1918ee4f9d9982f7618ef68
A critique of RISC design, and why CPUs end up with custom instructions: https://blackhole12.com/blog/risc-is-fundamentally-unscalable/
(RISC-V has explicit support for extensions, so I think it will be less of an issue there. The idea that webassembly will make programs more portable is interesting.)
Docker is rather nice for throwaway shells. If I need a shell with a command that I don't have on my server, I can install it, perform the task, then throw away everything.
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