@andrew_chou@toot.cafe
@andrew_chou@toot.cafe avatar

andrew_chou

@andrew_chou@toot.cafe

Senior dev at Digital Democracy 🌎 • Former core dev at Manyverse • occasionally none too happy 🐝

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andrew_chou, to accessibility
@andrew_chou@toot.cafe avatar

Been doing a lot of looking around different (graphic) user interface projects over the past year and I'm starting to build a better understanding of first things I think about or look for, mostly from a technical standpoint...

#gui #accessibility #i18n

andrew_chou,
@andrew_chou@toot.cafe avatar

  • Accessibility: does it provide primitives that allow implementers to improve functionality with tools like assistive technologies, physical limitations, etc?

  • Internationalization: does it have mechanisms for integrating language preferences? e.g. how hard would it be to switch between RTL and LTR languages?

  • Portability: if it supports cross-platform, how does it approach it? Does it try to maintain visual consistency or does it prefer to adhere to platform-specific conventions?

andrew_chou,
@andrew_chou@toot.cafe avatar

See other thread of replies for living list of criteria. My soft conclusion is that Electron is actually way ahead in the current landscape when you take the things I list into account, whether you like it or not 😄

andrew_chou,
@andrew_chou@toot.cafe avatar

@matt I'm pretty intrigued by @accesskit ! Curious if you have a list of various GUI projects and the state of their accessibility capabilities. My impression from perusing is that most fall really short or just entirely lack any way to hook into the native system's accessibility primitives.

andrew_chou,
@andrew_chou@toot.cafe avatar

I've noticed the following approaches when it comes to rendering:

  • fully native (via system native toolkit)
  • web-based (via system's webview)
  • canvas-based (have no idea how this is derived tbh 😅)

I see the benefits of the first two quite clearly. The canvas-based approach has never appealed to me, or at least I haven't seen any approaches that excite me

andrew_chou, to random
@andrew_chou@toot.cafe avatar

Today's random wikipedia page:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-English-based_programming_languages

stemming from recent thoughts I've had wondering what makes a programming language more "internationalizable". I consider myself very grateful that English is my first language and thus the barrier to entry and progression is much lower, but what about the rest of the world?

andrew_chou,
@andrew_chou@toot.cafe avatar

if I had more knowledge and time to build a language, this would be one of core areas I'd eventually explore

andrew_chou,
@andrew_chou@toot.cafe avatar

and no, I don't think the answer is "avoid keywords and only use symbols". personally, it's much easier to work with a language that has a balance

andrew_chou,
@andrew_chou@toot.cafe avatar

this thought first came to me after I had a brief discussion with a colleague who's from a Polynesian island and has ties to communities with their own less common languages. We talked about autonomy and how some of these communities want to learn to program computers and develop technology by themselves, for themselves.

The first question I thought to myself was "do they know English?". To me, that's the reality of mainstream programming languages and the ecosystem, which is unfortunate.

andrew_chou,
@andrew_chou@toot.cafe avatar

@jalcine I think it can be done! Just missing the right combination of people to make it happen.

Also, time+skill is the bane of my existence 🥲

andrew_chou,
@andrew_chou@toot.cafe avatar

@jalcine but yes, will agree and confirm that making things that can be culturally agnostic is incredibly tough 😬

andrew_chou,
@andrew_chou@toot.cafe avatar

@dolfsquare from your perspective, what was the mistake? why didn't it work for you?

genuinely curious, as I personally wouldn't be surprised if other written languages are somehow less ergonomic

andrew_chou, to random
@andrew_chou@toot.cafe avatar

In Berlin next month (May 19-26). anyone to meet, things to see, places to eat?? 👀

andrew_chou,
@andrew_chou@toot.cafe avatar

@sapegin staying very close to the southeast corner of Tempelhofer Feld :)

I love walking in general - usually go to different neighborhoods to sight see, check out some parks, shops, or cafes. Also very big on food in general 😄

Not a huge museum person, but would be open to it.

andrew_chou, to elixir
@andrew_chou@toot.cafe avatar

Stumbled upon this ElixirConf talk from 2018:

"Introducing Scenic A Functional UI Framework" (Boyd Multerer)

https://youtu.be/1QNxLNMq3Uw

It's one of the best talks I've ever watched! The first 10 minutes resonate so strongly with what I've been exploring recently. This guy just Gets It™️ (has quite the technical background too 😉).

Everything about this was so engaging and exciting. Really has me itching to look into it, years later.

https://github.com/ScenicFramework/scenic

andrew_chou,
@andrew_chou@toot.cafe avatar

The technical architecture is fascinating too! Seeing the supervision tree in action was really neat.

I was particularly happy to see him want to emulate some aspects of web development (and HTML), but gave himself room to innovate under well-defined constraints and goals.

And yet another reminder of the following wisdom: never bet against the BEAM 😁

#BEAM

andrew_chou,
@andrew_chou@toot.cafe avatar

subsequent talk that dives deeper into the technical aspects of Scenic. Really interesting stuff! (especially when framed with his bigger picture project)

https://youtu.be/tej-SyhZrqk

andrew_chou, to random
@andrew_chou@toot.cafe avatar

tool/product request: a curriculum builder that's based on URLs that you provide it.

I do a lot of self-learning and jump around various topics. Most of my consumption is via browser tab groups that are meticulously organized by the topic. I usually have to put a lot of effort into thinking about the ordering based on what makes sense in terms of progression of knowledge, which can be a lot of work.

andrew_chou,
@andrew_chou@toot.cafe avatar

A rough version of this tool is basically a spreadsheet that accepts the URL, the category, and maybe some option representing an oversimplification of the level of content (e.g. beginner, advanced, or somewhere in between). No extraction or synthesis of the content. Ordering just based on level and added by date.

Ideally, could just put in the URL and the tool takes care of categorization and ordering based on content analysis. This may be the one time A.I could be useful to me 😬

andrew_chou,
@andrew_chou@toot.cafe avatar

So: does this tool already exist? If not, is there anyone who's working on this or also thinking about this?

andrew_chou,
@andrew_chou@toot.cafe avatar

tangent, but A.I is best advertised when it's not advertised i.e. it's used to power a feature. Advertise the feature, not the fact that you use A.I.

Too many companies/products do the opposite (for the Hype ™️ I guess)

andrew_chou,
@andrew_chou@toot.cafe avatar

More importantly, the fundamental question for me is how to take a bunch of disjoint sources of information and build a system that allows me to coherently learn from them?

It's why I've recently become more keen on buying books. It's why I love people who write an ordered "series" of posts about a topic.

tmcw, to random
@tmcw@mastodon.social avatar

Hawbuck wallets https://macwright.com/2024/04/13/hawbuck-wallets.html

andrew_chou,
@andrew_chou@toot.cafe avatar

@tmcw been looking for a replacement for mine - will have to keep this in mind when I'm ready. Thanks for posting!

andrew_chou, (edited ) to FreeBSD
@andrew_chou@toot.cafe avatar

no idea how far this will reach but let's try:

if I were to start learning more about one of the listed BSD operating systems, which would you recommend? Guessing the answer could be different if we're talking about daily desktop usage vs server, so maybe clarify your answer via a reply if you can (fwiw, probably more interested in daily desktop usage, but open to whatever too).

andrew_chou,
@andrew_chou@toot.cafe avatar

@JdeBP yeah learning is probably the most realistic in the near term, given I don't really have a machine to spare for daily use (could dual boot I guess but I'm a newb 🤷‍♂️). probably would be living in Virtualbox/QEMU for a bit so I can easily explore them all 😄

andrew_chou,
@andrew_chou@toot.cafe avatar

really happy with the turnout on this! lots of good input and things to explore :)

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