Say you have anywhere from 1-3 skittles in a mouthful and there are 5 different flavors. Assuming you bite into all the skittles in your mouth at once, how many unique flavors can you experience? At what point, how many skittles do I have to put in my mouth at once, to conceivably taste a skittle combo never before tasted?
Something I've noticed already about the IT world is that the trend and the focus seems to be on having fewer, larger, discrete systems to control the flow of information and those systems are becoming more centralized. Contrast that with the software design principles of modularity and least information, which state that simpler systems interacting by sharing only necessary information will make the entire architecture more maintainable and comprehendable.
Contrast that with the software design principles of modularity and least information,
The so called Unix philosophy? Just the other day I wrote a toot showing that fully following this philosophy would deprive you of wonderful programs like Gimp, LibreOffice, Emacs, Gimp, LaTeX, Blender, the Linux kernel etc.
My philosophy is: don't blindly follow such a "small is beautiful" philosophy and instead use or develop the right tool for the job.
Personally I don't even fully buy the "easier to maintain" statement. To a degree it might be correct. But it is oblivious to things like combinatory explosion: sometimes you cannot anticipate (and test) all possible interactions of your small modules. Then funny things may happen ... often after it got to end-users / customers.
Ok I have a confession: I don't really write good when talking about a project I truly care about or have invested a lot of time in. How I got by in literature class was always choosing topics I couldn't care less about.
One such project I can't be eloquent about is objed.
I've simply invested too much time and gotten too little appreciation for my work for my not to let my emotion through. I spent countless hours developing not only a tutorial game but also additional commands and documentation.
Don't get me wrong, I use it and rely on it every single day and that is its own reward. But stupid shit like my Chromecast package will get 10x the recognition.
I honestly worked so hard to make objed more accessible. Give it a shot. Go through the tutorial game. Tell me it sucks, or it's awesome, or it's useless, or it's groundbreaking.
@grinn When I heard of it, I assumed it was just another modal editing system. And I dislike modal editing - I tend to always be in the wrong mode to do what I currently want.
So I just passed by, not looking into it.
It now occurred to me that perhaps I was wrong, thatt Emacs bindings stay Emacs bindings and I just call objed when needed, like Embark.
@holgerschurig if you dislike modal editing in general, you might dislike objed. Then again, I had the same reason for disliking other modal editing packages: I would always be 3 or 4 letters into typing before realizing I'm in the wrong mode. I also hate the escape key, way up in the corner and all.
Objed tries to be smart about putting you into and out of the modal editing state; depending on the last command it will automatically enter or exit objed. There is an ESC key equivalent for objed, but it's bound to C-g so it's really natural and easy to reach.
It also has indicators like changing your cursor and modifying the mode line so it's pretty clear which state you are in.
Regarding Emacs bindings: you are correct they stay Emacs bindings. Objed has very few key sequences that require control or meta. Everything else will work regardless of modal editing state.
Thank you for giving it some thought, I really do appreciate you trying it out!
Sometimes I get overwhelmed by having a free day and end up not accomplishing much. This morning it was processing my feelings toward my family's political views. I think it was valuable to come to some conclusions about why their views bothered me so much, but it took time.
I'm sitting on some patches and email drafts waiting for the fsf to update my copyright assignment record.
I'm going to work on objed for a while, then my blog. For objed I want to translate the test runner from a Makefile to an elisp eldev command. For the blog I want to do the opposite: translate the elisp build script into a Makefile.
Both are attempts at simplifying the development process though, just choosing the right tool for each job.
@holgerschurig@grinn I do not mean it flippantly: I have reached the age where I genuinely recognize the healthy "productivity" of a day where my concrete accomplishments are "did a load of laundry" and "pet the cats."
If you are using clang-format in any of your projects, this might be useful to apply complex .clang-format rules as you type rather than after-the-fact.
@chandlerc thank you! And no, I'm not aware of any similar efforts unfortunately. That doesn't mean they don't exist though! Which editor were you hoping for?
Does anyone know how I can influence politics most effectively? Preferably without knocking on doors. Can I program my state representative out of office? Which language would I use for that? The primary is in August.
I don't have specific beef with my current representation, I'm just interested in politics.
@grinn When you are genuinely interested in politics, the most effective way would be to participate in it. Find a party that aligns with most of your values, engage in local meetings, volunteer, write suggestions for legislative changes. Ultimately, make yourself available for an office. Even on a local level you might have a greater impact on the people than you think. A democracy can only work when people actively participate. 🌸
@louis I'm always genuine! And those are very good tips. I'll see what my local parties are up to.
Ok I checked it out and there's an event for the county-level party I think I'm most aligned with this week! I'll just try to see what they think is important. I probably won't contribute much right away.
I'm also not crazy far from the capitol and there's a few events there in April.
If you want to be notified of scheduled and deadlined tasks in Org mode, there is no better way than with org-yaap. It has zero dependencies other than Emacs 27.1 and it works great on Android with termux.
I've been using it for two years without issue. The documentation and options are superbly setup to fit most uses of Org:
"""
By default, you will be notified for all scheduled headings (org-yaap-include-scheduled') and headings with a deadline (org-yaap-include-deadline') within your agenda files. If a heading only includes the date, you will be notified at 9am on the day of the heading (org-yaap-daily-alert'). If you don't mark a heading as done, you will be repeatedly notified every 30 minutes after the heading was due (org-yaap-overdue-alerts').
"""
@grinn Cool! Have you written anything about how you use Emacs with Termux? I find that it works surprisingly well but I haven't done much to integrate it better with the phone experience
Does anyone know an better way to get org noweb to not interfere with syntax highlighting in a shell script?
The noweb syntax is treated like a heredoc. Even this hack doesn't work all the time: I'll often have to press return at the end of the "firewall-safe-mode" line and undo in order to correct the highlighting.
Some might've noticed my personal blog has been down. Full disclosure: it was running on a Windows server that wasn't really mine but was being stored in my home. I am planning on moving to gitlab pages for a more permanent home.
At the same time, my laptop screen broke. That's unfortunate, of course, but I also see it as an opportunity to convert the laptop into a home server and learn more about networking.
It's been slow, cuz I have a day job and I've been doing most of the configuration on my phone and tablet. But it's given me a lot more stuff to write about in the future.
For one thing, I'd like to update my article on how to use Emacs on the remarkable tablet with a Bluetooth keyboard. It's still possible! Even with the latest xochitl.
But I'm also really excited about this tiny bit of elisp I wrote to interactively execute and log system commands using org babel. I'm hoping most or all of the server configuration will be detangled into a single literate config.
I'd also like to write about my experiences setting up DNS filtering and OpenVPN, as well as dealing with a limited and sometimes 'creepy' router through all of it.
In the end, I realize that no one is entitled to be able to access my blog and I would like to apologize for the delay in getting it back up and running. It's going to be a little longer! But technical blogging is something that still gives me a lot of joy.
I can vote for that, I do also log requests in Postgres and even complex queries are very easy to make, compared to a file-based or external logging service with a proprietary QL. Postgres offers "UNLOGGED" tables, which are not part of the backup, so the recovery process is not burdened by big log tables. I'm sure MySQL has something similar?
@louis that's a deep cut! Lol thanks for the compliments and the suggestion. I don't think MySQL has anything similar though unfortunately. I just kept the table small through a pruning event run once a day.
I have an announcement: I'm upgrading my name to Amy. This change is something I've been looking forward to for a long time. I'm still the same ebullient Emacs enthusiast as ever, just a little improved in every way!