tef

tef, 9 months ago to random

today on cohost i argue "simple" and "complex" are useless ways to think about software https://cohost.org/tef/post/2503472-complex-simple-good

tef, 27 days ago to random

yesterday i said that building a whole app in rust reminded me of "let's build the entire plane out of the black box"

and like, i know my poetic license is still being renewed but at least one person decided to interpret it as literally as possible

rather than "aiming to build large pieces software in the most expensive way possible is not the most efficient use of engineering"

tef, 7 months ago to random

it's been a while but i wrote some flamebait

"enshittification is what happens when a disney adult learns about captialism"

https://cohost.org/tef/post/3175066-enshittification-is

tef, 4 months ago to random

every time someone tells me about using llms for codegen, all i can think about is that old adage

"debugging software is twice as hard as writing it, so if you write to the best of your ability, you're not qualified to debug it"

sure enough i know several "don't call me a programmer" friends who find it easier to get starter projects off the ground, and these tools have helped a whole bunch

but they're the first to admit "if it doesn't work i don't know how to begin fixing it"

tef, 8 months ago to random

people say companies don’t innovate but here we are and GitHub is doing terrible things sourceforge could only dream of

tef, 27 days ago to random

this is going to rustle a few people's jimmies but it is a very earnest, very thoughtful post about the conflicting goals of rust and gamedev

https://loglog.games/blog/leaving-rust-gamedev/

it really echos a lot of the problems i've faced with static languages

tef, 3 months ago to random

got told i’m “weird” for not using syntax highlightin, but really i’m just old and too lazy to configure software

tef, 4 months ago to random

there's a very convincing anonymous post from an alleged boeing engineer, talking about how a "quality escape" can happen

https://leehamnews.com/2024/01/15/unplanned-removal-installation-inspection-procedure-at-boeing/#comment-509962

tef, 10 months ago to random

nerd question: are there any off the shelf fancy distributed things that actually use chain replication

or does everyone just badly reimplement paxos and/or start implementing raft and reinventing view stamped replication

tef, 9 months ago to random

discovering that FUSE-crimes are possible

tef, 2 months ago to random

thoughts without context: realising that with forced perspective and a wide depth of field, i wouldn't have to make a very big puppet

tef, 7 months ago to random

still think about being made to chant "public static void main" at university

tef, 6 months ago to random

leaving a very long message on slack to someone who asked for a daily update

but like, yesterday my day was 7am thurs-7am friday, and my friday only started a few hours ago

i am willing to give daily status updates but only if people are willing to work on looser definitions of "days"

tef, 2 months ago to random

[absolute demo code klaxon] https://github.com/tef/clgi

i've mentioned this on and off before, but i wrote some code to explore "what if we wrote command line apps like web apps" and i finally got around to making a better README

tef, 8 months ago to random

watching friends on irc reverse engineer a hardware protocol and being all "i putta the json int the databass"

tef, 6 months ago to random

i think the best fact i know is “make gear ratios coprime so they evenly wear”

tef, 1 month ago to random

big day ahead, made pasta sauce, gotta extrude some pasta later

tef, 4 months ago to random

sorry to tech post but i have seen a "when to use microservices" post and it's kinda got the whole cause and effect mixed up

"you can use it to decouple things" isn't how it works, things aren't less decoupled by virtue of sending a packet

the point is, you start out with decoupled things, and decide to keep them that way

it's not so much mono vs micro, it's "things that get changed at the same time, should be in the same place"

tef, 9 months ago to random

kitten

tef, 2 months ago to random

it's a reasonably well known trick to make reference counting concurrent, but i learnt a cute little trick to handle reclamation safely

the well known trick? instead of immediately applying increments/decrements, record them in a buffer and hand them off to a singular thread to apply the changes. you don't have to do expensive atomic operations except to pass around the buffer

the cute trick? apply all the increments first, then the decrements, and if it's zero you know it's definitely free

tef, 3 months ago to random

i miss my cats

tef, 2 months ago to random

thinking about the game “stray” and how disappointing i found it

it was the moment where the cat was given a flashlight to see in the dark, then typing in a key code, that’s when i gave up

yes, the player character is a cat, but like a fortnite skin, with no impact on gameplay or mechanics

again they gave the cat a flashlight

tef, 1 month ago to random

quietly: although state actors have the means and opportunity to slip a back door into open source projects, usually things are a lot more targeted

it would not surprise me if the motive turned out to be farming crypto, especially since the backdoor was noisy enough to show up in performance tests

tef, 1 month ago to random

turned down a ticket to an invite only conference

the big reason? i am an anxious wreck, spending a weekend wondering if i'm cool enough to be allowed back is the opposite of a good time

the other reason? it skews very old. i don't really want to spend a weekend around retired californian libertarians, even if some of them worked on cool software back in 1993

tef, 1 month ago to random

taking programming advice from people who use ruby should come with a warning

like "i use a language designed to make three line examples look good in a slide deck. this idea might not look as great without sugar."

or "this person took bdd seriously and belived running a eula though a regex to interpret tests was the height of engineering. beware of solutions in search of problems"