dabeaz

dabeaz, 3 months ago to random

Thought: I'd bet a lot of projects would have fewer dependencies if pip was 100x slower. Maybe we should try to do that.

dabeaz, 4 months ago to random

Hello Raft, we meet again.

dabeaz, 5 days ago to random

If you're not writing bad code, you're not learning anything.

dabeaz, 8 months ago to random

As Python continues its ascendance, I sometimes wonder if I even have a place in that world. I'm not so sure.

dabeaz, 1 month ago to random

Welp, kid managed to get a drone stuck about 50ft up in a tree. Thus, further reconfirming my earlier claim (prior to him wasting his money on it) that drones are, in fact, the worst toy in the whole toy universe.

dabeaz, 2 months ago to random

Current annoyance:

>>> @dataclass
... class Point:
... x : int
... y : int
...
>>> p = Point("two", "three")
>>> match p:
... case Point(x):
... print("Yep:", x)
...
Yep: two
>>>

Actually, there are multiple annoyances.

dabeaz, 9 months ago to random

Meanwhile, I finally made it through the "The Early History of Smalltalk" (https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/155360.155364).

I must say, Alan Kay is a master of throwing shade. For example, this quote: "Smalltalk-76 was a great improvement on its successors!" 🤔

Also, some neat connections to liberal arts.

I think the most interesting part is the motivation of OO being a way to control/eliminate assignment operations. I'm not sure I've ever seen OO described quite like that before.

dabeaz, 7 months ago to random

Wondering if I should move to a different mastodon instance. I've had a number of cases where I've responded to someone I know, but then I just never hear back. Makes me wonder if my response even got to them. Is it being blocked somewhere along the way?

dabeaz, 10 months ago to random

So, I've decided to drop this giant non-enshittified Python course out there for your ongoing amusement. https://github.com/dabeaz-course/python-mastery.

It's the same course I took on a decade-long world tour of corporate training. Some people who took it went on to do dumb things like land rovers on other planets and stuff. Anyways, enjoy!

dabeaz, 10 months ago to random

Is there actually any good non-enshitified email provider that one can just pay for and have it work? Asking for a spouse.

dabeaz, 8 months ago to random

It's been awhile since I've been in a Barnes and Noble. I wander around and see no signs of a "computer" section at all. After about 10 minutes of searching, I make a comment to an employee. "Oh, we have it."

Behold the entirety of it in this one photo. I hope the parents buying the "coding for kids" book take stock of the rest of it and think "hey, how about a ball instead?"

dabeaz, 9 months ago to random

You really don't need most of Python's "advanced features." Oh wait, was that one of the quiet parts?

dabeaz, 7 months ago to random

Waiting for the movers. Enjoying a final hour.

dabeaz, 7 months ago to random

As someone who recently attempted to write a small coherent book on Python, it was neat to meet Doug Crockford ("JavaScript: The Good Parts") at yesterday's RacketCon. We then had a conversation about async/await...

dabeaz, 1 month ago to random

Pondering whether or not I should do more work on my Curio project (mainly simplification and removal of features). In hindsight, I think my main mistake with this project was assuming that the "community" might have something meaningful to contribute to it. So, if anything, I'd mostly reclaim it as something that scratches a personal itch and not anything more than that.

dabeaz, 7 months ago to random

IDEs reduce code complexity much in the same way that a highway reduces traffic.

dabeaz, 8 days ago to random

I sometimes wonder if I should teach a project course (like raft or compilers) where you don't even know what programming language will be used until you show up. That would certainly be one way to make things even more exciting.

dabeaz, 8 days ago to random

As far as I can tell, the primary use of RAII is to sound smart.

dabeaz, 6 months ago to random

Today's dilemma: work on my lazy evaluation lecture for tomorrow or not.

dabeaz, 4 months ago to random

How did it actually get to this?

Looking at you enum module.

dabeaz, 1 month ago to random

A few weeks back, I showed kid the insides of an Apple 2 and then a box of similarly looking electronic components. He picks out a 7-segment LED and says I want to do something with this.

I'm not sure he knew what he was getting into because all I've got are NAND gates. Figuring out how to represent decimal numbers in binary and displaying a corresponding decimal digit from scratch has proven to be much more involved than it looks. It's actually been a pretty awesome project.

dabeaz, 3 months ago to random

Coulda been a Python influencer...

dabeaz, 3 months ago to random

Does anyone actually write graphics libraries anymore? I mean, for fun or just for learning?

dabeaz, 1 month ago to random

I sometimes wonder if the biggest drawback to inheritance in programming is thinking about it. Stop thinking. Do. Don't think.

dabeaz, 10 days ago to random

Kid: "How do I play a blues solo?"

Me: "Play almost nothing."