@dabeaz@mastodon.social avatar

dabeaz

@dabeaz@mastodon.social

Free-range computer scientist living in Evanston, Illinois. Former academic. I teach computer science courses, but you'll probably find me yapping on about bikes, dogs, and other random stuff here. I wrote the Python Cookbook, 3rd Ed (O'Reilly) and Python Distilled (Addison-Wesley). Teaching CSCI 1730, Design and Implementation of Programming Languages at Brown.edu in Fall 2023!

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marick, to random
@marick@mstdn.social avatar

I’ve been feeling guilty about being crushingly unmotivated, and let me tell you, the recent conviction of a gentleman for making more than 12,000 harassing phone calls to Congress over an 18 month period hasn’t helped. That’s well over 20 per day! And here I started feeling “oh, what’s the point” about about a new project within an hour of gh repo create and mix new.

dabeaz,
@dabeaz@mastodon.social avatar

@marick You managed to create the repo?

dabeaz, to random
@dabeaz@mastodon.social avatar

Trying to think about why I rather enjoyed the Furiosa Mad Max movie as opposed to all of the hate I had towards the Dune movie. Maybe it's the fact that Mad Max just leaned into it and said "let's actually not explain the insanity of what's happening by making it even more insane" whereas Dune tried to explain what was happening with a bunch of inaudible whispering and mystical mumble jumble. Should have just had war rigs battling sandworms or something...

dabeaz,
@dabeaz@mastodon.social avatar

@palendae perhaps I'm just juvenille, but I'd describe the Mad Max stuff more like a crazy comic book. Maybe that's why it works for me.

faassen, to programming
@faassen@fosstodon.org avatar

A new blog post.

Tool maven versus language maven. Do modern development environments enable you to be both? How does this affect languages?

https://blog.startifact.com/posts/the-tooling-shift/

#programming

dabeaz,
@dabeaz@mastodon.social avatar

@faassen I often feel that the tooling divide is the source of much friction for me in the Python world. I think in terms of the language, not tools.

I sort see the same thing in my music. I'm much more able to think in terms of the music itself instead of tools related to music.

dabeaz,
@dabeaz@mastodon.social avatar

@faassen Honestly, a big part of my Python frustration is in tooling fragmentation. There are too many type checkers, too many package managers, too many linters, and so on.

To pick on types, I'd like it a whole lot more if it were just part of the core language, not a tool add-on.

dabeaz,
@dabeaz@mastodon.social avatar

@faassen The only way to win is to not play. In choosing between the language or tools, I choose to work on the problem I'm trying to solve instead.

dabeaz,
@dabeaz@mastodon.social avatar

@faassen As the prayer goes... "please give me the strength to respect other people's opinions wrong though they may be."

dabeaz, to random
@dabeaz@mastodon.social avatar

Sure there are live demos, but then there's the thing I witnessed at David Kwong's "The Enigmatist" last night. Mind completely shattered.

dabeaz, to random
@dabeaz@mastodon.social avatar

Thought: It'd be kind of interesting if your editor made some kind of droning sound, the intensity of which was proportional to the number of bugs present.

brohrer, to random
@brohrer@recsys.social avatar

The worst thing about writing your own tools is sending frustrated bug reports to your own inbox.

dabeaz,
@dabeaz@mastodon.social avatar

@brohrer That sounds like something that could be a handy tool.

dabeaz, to random
@dabeaz@mastodon.social avatar

Clearly I should stop digging.

dabeaz,
@dabeaz@mastodon.social avatar

@vy No, but I just looked it up and it seems interesting.

dabeaz,
@dabeaz@mastodon.social avatar

@vy Getting an answer? You mean like with awk or something?

robpike, to random
@robpike@hachyderm.io avatar

Also, today's good code is likely tomorrow's bad code.

https://mastodon.social/@dabeaz/112507379669620422

dabeaz,
@dabeaz@mastodon.social avatar

@robpike But maybe, just maybe, the bad code your wrote today is part of learning tomorrow's good code.

dabeaz, to random
@dabeaz@mastodon.social avatar

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

dabeaz,
@dabeaz@mastodon.social avatar

@vy The people writing that code think that it's good.

dabeaz, (edited )
@dabeaz@mastodon.social avatar

Did I say that you should do be doing this with "production" at work? I did not. I said learning. As in learning something new. Which by definition means you're probably not that good at it yet (because if you were, what's the point?). If you're writing bad code at work, then that's just bad. Maybe you should spend more time learning....

Edit: ... and hopefully have your employer pay for it.

dabeaz,
@dabeaz@mastodon.social avatar

@gvwilson Do we expect doctors to be learning a new surgical procedure while they are doing the same surgical procedure on someone? We do not.

Yes, musicians rehearse. And it might sound bad at first. Because they're learning.

Not sure where you're getting this "unpaid" part of it. I'm talking about learning. When you're learning something, you're going to be bad at it at first. That's all I'm talking about.

dabeaz,
@dabeaz@mastodon.social avatar

@glitzersachen @gvwilson What I'm saying is that learning probably should be separate from "production" whatever that might mean in the context of work. You're not going to go tinker with production on some kind of experimental learning project (nor would most employers want you to).

On the other hand, there's basic competence called being "good enough" to do your job. That's fine. But if you're telling me that being bad at that is somehow "learning", then I'm going to disagree.

dabeaz,
@dabeaz@mastodon.social avatar

@bignose My comment on "spending more time learning" did not specify where. If you're employer won't support it, then yeah, that's a bad employer.

dabeaz,
@dabeaz@mastodon.social avatar

@onelson Nah, you're just good enough. Which is good.

dabeaz,
@dabeaz@mastodon.social avatar

@PeterLudemann Reflection upon past mistakes is almost certainly part of learning. But, it assumes mistakes. If you never make mistakes at all, maybe that's admirable, but it doesn't sound like much growth going on either.

dabeaz,
@dabeaz@mastodon.social avatar

@vy Well, at least it's formatted correctly.

dabeaz,
@dabeaz@mastodon.social avatar

@bignose I think part of the problem is that I'm not thinking about work at all. And especially not what I would call job-related "training."

What I am thinking about is the fact that my time on this fine planet is measured in decades and that over that time, I might not want to do the same thing over and over again. I might want to improve my skills by challenging myself with things I'm curious about, but not so good at (yet). That's on me.

dabeaz, to random
@dabeaz@mastodon.social avatar

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

dabeaz,
@dabeaz@mastodon.social avatar

@vy @PeterLudemann But aren't you worried about preserving semicommutative transitivity?

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