@faassen@fosstodon.org
@faassen@fosstodon.org avatar

faassen

@faassen@fosstodon.org

Me grok write code. Python, Rust, Typescript, JavaScript. Created: Morepath, lxml. Also: gardener, science & history fan, living life fan. Husband & father.

I post a lot about programming as well as gardening pictures. If you come for just the gardening pictures the programming talk may baffle you. If you're a programmer, I invite you to enjoy the flowers!

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alice_i_cecile, to opensource
@alice_i_cecile@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar

Hi! I'm back from RustNL! Taking it light today (definitely still exhausted) but I'm feeling ready for another . Let's take a look at the PRs that our community has made and reviewed for us this week :) There was a request to check the website repo, so let's start there! 9 PRs are ready, so that's a great call: https://github.com/bevyengine/bevy-website/pulls?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Apr+label%3AS-Ready-For-Final-Review

faassen,
@faassen@fosstodon.org avatar

@alice_i_cecile
I know from experience how frustrating PR reviews can be. The procedure adds value but also increases the process and psychological burden. I like how the merge train is one mechanism to help counter some of the negatives. The comment "we could improve x and y but do that later, merge now" is one I enjoy seeing. I think some have the impression PR review needs to be an infinity gauntlet towards perfection.

faassen, to random
@faassen@fosstodon.org avatar

Does anyone else have the impulse to want to be the best version of yourself online, sometimes? Even if anonymous? More generous, accepting, warm, less argumentative, more constructive?

Not for reputation afaik, at least not consciously, but just to make everything a bit better? I don't always get this impulse (no saint here) but I have felt that.

Since so much discourse is about how the internet brings out one's dark side, I thought I would mention the opposite.

futurebird, to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

Currently sowing a tiny garden for my field ants. I've kept field ants before and they didn't really thrive. I'm hoping if I can arrange for them to tend a heard of aphids they will be happier.

They colony is about 15 strong, and the queen is lovely shiny and black. They are also very nervous and freak out at every new sound and vibration. Will a box of green plants calm them? We shall see!

faassen,
@faassen@fosstodon.org avatar

@futurebird

@kmmich

Is there a special way you obtain the aphids? I had them on my indoor seedlings once and hated it.

faassen,
@faassen@fosstodon.org avatar

@futurebird
There is an ant colony that caters to the aphids in my redcurrant bush. There are so many aphids the leaves curl, yet the plant keeps producing currants. I hate picking them as the ants sting me.

faassen,
@faassen@fosstodon.org avatar

@futurebird
Good question about the species. I don't consider them big enemies so have done less research!

They are black ones you see in gardens a lot in the Netherlands. Possibly Lasius niger? I shall try to stare at them more to figure it out this summer. I think the same species also likes making colonies in the bag of compost I keep in the greenhouse.

faassen,
@faassen@fosstodon.org avatar

@futurebird
Oh could well be a bite sorry. It just stings when they do so, but I don't think they use their hind part. It's not extremely painful and passes quickly. Is formic acid involved in an ant bite?

vicki, to LLMs
@vicki@jawns.club avatar

The most interesting stuff in right now (to me) is:

  • figuring out how to do it small
  • figuring out how to do it on CPU
  • figuring out how to do it well for specific tasks
faassen,
@faassen@fosstodon.org avatar

@janriemer

@vicki

That's funny!

Nonetheless LLMs can do things with language that are interesting that other algorithms struggle with. And getting that behavior smaller and more reliable is useful - even though the small & reliable of classic algorithms may never be equalled

faassen, to rust
@faassen@fosstodon.org avatar

I go to

I figure doing XML in Rust is rather obscure. I queue for lunch, mention it to someone, someone else just ahead of me in the queue says "oh I am working on that too!"

I also chatted to two different speakers at the conference who worked on a different XSLT engine in the past (way before Rust)

faassen, to programming
@faassen@fosstodon.org avatar

Lukewarm take: we need more lukewarm takes in programming

faassen,
@faassen@fosstodon.org avatar

@dabeaz
No, types should be cold as ice, unyielding, but really I don't want them to melt or shatter either. Maybe this take is too hot

faassen,
@faassen@fosstodon.org avatar

@dabeaz
Lukewarm types: "Maybe this is an int, could be a string though, well let's accept either and not bother to ask how you want them to be, could be someone's city too though"

faassen, to rust
@faassen@fosstodon.org avatar

In the last year and a half I have written a lot of Rust code, only some of which is open source at the moment: Xot, the capable XML tree library.

I have also most of a XPath 3.1 implementation and part of an XSLT 3.0 implementation. And a structural human readable diffing library for XML documents.

I happen to have a (revived) background in established tech like XML and I can write Rust, which makes for an interesting combination.

faassen, to random
@faassen@fosstodon.org avatar

I am nearsighted. I am not a fan of dark mode; give me dark text on a light background. I have read my preference gives better readability but it's far from clear.

I just found this:

"Therefore, reading white text from a black screen or tablet may be a way to inhibit myopia, while conventional black text on white background may stimulate myopia."

So nearsightedness may be caused by my preferred light mode, and dark mode may counter it? Intriguing thought!

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-28904-x

futurebird, to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

A single-board command-line computer using the esp32. Look at it! It's cute. Can't buy it yet the creator is starting some kind of online commune for single-board computer freaks. I bet some of you are around here, go say hi at his forum it only has like two posts and its making me sad.

https://a.singleboard.computer/

faassen,
@faassen@fosstodon.org avatar

@futurebird
I read twostopbits partially for this reason: simple systems that can be understood. The other reason is nostalgia.

http://twostopbits.com/

faassen, to programming
@faassen@fosstodon.org avatar

It's interesting that programming languages introduce limited postfix notation all the time for convenience: method calls (and chaining) in a variety of languages, type declarations after the variable, .await in Rust.

Yet general postfix languages like Forth are quite uncommon.

mariatta, to python
@mariatta@fosstodon.org avatar

Will it ever be possible to have a kind of formatter / type-checker tool that instead of just saying that I broke mypy, it could just automatically add/fix the type annotations for me? Or is this a stupid question?

faassen,
@faassen@fosstodon.org avatar

@mariatta
There are languages that can do type inference on a whole program basis so in theory you don't need to annotate.
Haskell and Ocaml come to mind. But there are drawbacks - it may infer types for you that are formally correct but not expressing intent. This is why it is common practice in Haskell to specify types for function parameters and return values anyway.

Here is a recent opinionated article which complains about whole program inference:

https://borretti.me/article/type-inference-was-a-mistake

faassen, to random
@faassen@fosstodon.org avatar

LLMs make up plausible stuff based on training data. That may seem like a more damning indictment of them than it is.

The complicating factor is that human brains are also making up plausible stuff. Human memory recall for instance is a plausible reconstruction based on experiences and knowledge, not a recording.

We have reasoning too, but it's well known there are many flaws in our reasoning ability, which is why invented writing, math, science and computers to supplement it

faassen, to programming
@faassen@fosstodon.org avatar

Dependencies are a risk. You don't understand them. Write the code yourself.

Don't reimplement code badly that has a superior implementation elsewhere.

Idioms are good. You can recognize patterns easily.

Boilerplate is bad.

Don't copy code from the web.

Don't use LLMs for generating code.

Learn by reading code.

LLMs are handy!

See the tension? All of these things are true and false, sometimes. Programming is about managing trade-offs, not following rules.

faassen, to random
@faassen@fosstodon.org avatar

I don't know enough about ECS or datalog (or egglog, even) but I wonder whether they would go together well.

Maybe @alice_i_cecile would be kind enough to venture a comment; is this a new thought, and is it a useful one?

faassen,
@faassen@fosstodon.org avatar

@alice_i_cecile

I am not the only one with that thought:

https://www.reddit.com/r/roguelikedev/s/c2Q9ONp8w8

I am also reminded of the egg Rust library people

https://github.com/egraphs-good/egg

who moved to datalog as they found it easier to work with than Rust APIs for this use case:

https://github.com/egraphs-good/egglog

On my todo list to play with is datalog, someday.

faassen,
@faassen@fosstodon.org avatar

@alice_i_cecile
I like how ideas from logic programming merged with relational algebra to form datalog and then people who are trying to create better compiler optimizations with egraphs built on that and it might just be applicable to ECS.

gregorni, to programming
@gregorni@fosstodon.org avatar

What does your development environment look like right now?

(IDE/Text Editor? Terminal Multiplexer? Package Manager? Shell? Programming Language? Containerization? Command Runner? Terminal Emulator?)

faassen,
@faassen@fosstodon.org avatar

@gregorni

  • Editor: VS Code
  • Terminal emulator: Alacritty
  • Shell: Bash
  • Linux: Fedora
  • Window manager: i3
  • Package manager: dnf with a bit of flatpak
  • Programming language: Rust
  • Keyboard: Dygma Raise
  • Command runner: a Makefile, sometimes

I avoid containerization.

A mix of boring defaults and more exciting stuff. A mixture of both keeps me in the zone. I am not very good at being a power user, sticking to basics of each thing mostly, though in time that may become a wide selection.

faassen, to opensource
@faassen@fosstodon.org avatar

I handed over maintainership of an open source project of mine years ago,the new maintainer did a much better job than I can and has been doing it for almost two decades now. Everyone benefited. It's tragic that malicious actors exploit this trust and sharing of responsibility as it's what is at the heart of successful open source.

faassen,
@faassen@fosstodon.org avatar

@xahteiwi
Tragic because of the inherent problem it exposes. We need to trust each other to function but people abuse that trust. It's an ancient problem, but we are dealing with at different levels of scale and risk (low for the threat actors, high for the rest of us)

Tragedies caused by malicious actors are inherently infuriating.

faassen, to programming
@faassen@fosstodon.org avatar

So what you would an infinitely fast CPU for?

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