My "production stuff" is listed at https://github.com/alexpdp7/alexpdp7/blob/master/README.md#other-usable-projects-of-mine
@datarama heh, I got "koala" as my nickname in university. Lately I'm more into capybaras, but a critter that sleeps seems so much more intelligent than us.
To make it fair, maybe you should have included in the list animals that hurt severely their peers, if there are any...
My favourite optimisation trick is to just hit 'break' in the debugger. It's more likely to stop where the program's spending more of its time. It seems like you should have to do it multiple times and gather stats or something, but so often it just goes straight to the heart of the matter.
@bremner I don't think it's close to what you need, but I liked reading:
https://xogium.me/the-text-mode-lie-why-modern-tuis-are-a-nightmare-for-accessibility
30 years coding and this is the first time I pay to verify some code I wrote.
I wrote a Klondike solver and I couldn't find a better way to test it than reproduce two solutions with a physical deck, so I had to buy one.
Theoretically, about 80% of starting positions are solvable. My solver only does about 50%, but I can only to 14%, so I guess I'm happy.
Fun how I wrote a Sokoban solver that beat me easily on a set of mazes. (Another popular set of mazes is better for humans- I won there.)
Somehow I missed this in 2014:
In memory and honor of Margaret Hamilton (1936–2026), American hero. https://news.mit.edu/2026/margaret-hamilton-computing-pioneer-dies-1007
@thomasfuchs @david_chisnall I know I'm likely looking past with rose-tinted glasses and claiming a golden age, but I don't think we're really making that much "impactful" progress.
I have computers from 2016-2017 that are still quite good! (Except with bloated Electron apps.)
@david_chisnall @thomasfuchs I normally mark XP, Mac OS X, "usable" Linux as another milestone. IMHO those were the first "workstation-worthy" OSes that you could get at home. They also required more resources (prior NT was not really used at home due to expensive RAM requirements?).
IMHO, after "Internet at home", the other major innovation was "Internet all the time in our pockets", and increasingly people believe that was a mistake...
The Digital Markets Act is a nice idea but it's ignoring how these platforms became so powerful. The problem is that other big entities use them as their sole (or primary) means of communication.
How about defining a set of rules that apply to:
- All governments
- All companies over a certain EU turnover.
- All companies providing essential services (e.g. banking, utilities).
Where the rules are, by the end of 2027:
- They may not require customers to create an account or share data with a third party to communicate with them.
- If they distribute an application for any platform, they must do so via two independent channels.
- Applications must not depend on anything other than the core platform.
Where 'independent' means: does not depend on any approvals from the same vendor.
This would mean that no big organisation in these places would be able to ship apps via the Apple App Store. None of them would be able to ship Android apps that depended on Google Play Services and none of them would be able to ship Android apps at all with Google's proposed lock down mechanism.
And then, suddenly, you have compliance departments in a bunch of companies with deep pockets lobbying Google and Apple to provide an alternative mechanism for distribution.
Note: These are exactly the same as the rules I proposed 20 years ago. If they had been enacted back then, I suspect the DMA would not have been necessary.
@david_chisnall there was a fair attempt by the AsciiDoctor guy to write a *good* parser with a *good* AST, which would have improved things a lot. However, I think it stalled at some point:
https://github.com/opendevise/asciidoc-parsing-lab
BTW, their Zulip was very helpful back when I was messing in those things. (I started to write a parser in Prolog.)
@david_chisnall I'm quite curious about how you landed in AsciiDoc... after all, I added a project of yours to my list about document formats:
https://alex.corcoles.net/notes/tech/document-formats
... which has a major focus on ASTs...
Two quick articles I just wrote about recent obsessions that I type about repeatedly:
https://alex.corcoles.net/notes/tech/customizable-external-storage-for-applications
(It would be cool if applications could use cloud storage in a nicer way.)
https://alex.corcoles.net/notes/tech/gemini-protocol-feeds
(The Gemini protocol ecosystem has a fascinating take on feeds.)
@alexhall if something you are running under Docker Compose is not providing useful logs, there's very little that Docker Compose (or any other tool) can do to improve the situation.
I would focus on the service and see if you can improve the logging configuration. What is the service?
@datarama so LLM slop to me is code that revolts me because I would hate to maintain so much useless code. It's funny how I think I've seen that prior to LLMs, but very few times. (Someone I mentored commented how much code I would remove when I reviewed his code. But, as he was a smart human, he learned fast.)
In a way, slop fascinates me. Either it says a lot about the code we make public, or it puzzles me how LLMs gravitate towards a specific peculiar defect.
@datarama I worked with two guys whose LLM-generated code I could not distinguish from the code they wrote before LLMs. They were top-notch programmers in my opinion.
Funnily enough, I worked with two guys that produced aberrations with LLMs. Unfortunately, I couldn't examine their earlier work.
For me the defining characteristic of slop is that it's anti-minimalistic. Either because the human thinks it's cheap or because the LLM defaults to producing in that style.
Sodium Citrate is the secret ingredient to make any cheese into smooth, creamy nacho cheese sauce.
Coincidentally, Sodium Citrate's chemical formula is ...
Na₃C₆H₅O₇
Unfortunately, it's just a post on Twitter, but the Associated Press stylebook account says:
> Artificial intelligence systems do not think, feel, want or understand. Avoid language that gives them human characteristics. This is called anthropomorphizing, when we ascribe human traits, emotions or behaviors to non-human things, such as animals or inanimate objects.
> Instead, explain what a system does, how well it performs, who built it and who could be affected by it.
from my link log —
Shaman: evaluate the numerical accuracy of a C++ application and locate sources of error.
https://gitlab.com/numerical_shaman/shaman
saved 2021-02-20 https://dotat.at/:/KW294.html
I thought 32gb on my desktop was excessive. Today I tried to use DuckDB in a way that required compiling it. With 32gb, my computer keeps killing Firefox to free RAM so that the compilation can finish.
(I think in general compiling DuckDB is not necessary, but I'm weird.)
GitHub lacks support for repositories using sha256 instead of the classic sha1. Problem or opportunity?
@datarama @david_chisnall but your story adds to my belief that good translators are worth their weight in gold (edit: and horribly undervalued in the real world).
@david_chisnall @datarama I was unlucky; my writing was translated to my mother language, but a) I think they picked a cheap translation provider b) it was translated to an "averaged American Spanish", which feels foreign to me (as a mainland Spain speaker who avoids reading Spanish technical writing).
I think we had some translation process were authors participated, but I was never invited. I think I would not have been useful anyway.