Recent submissions

Comment · 18 days ago
I thought I was the only one! I figured I was either crazy or getting old and stuck in my ways. The first I'm I saw a font with them, I thought it was cool and tried it out. I almost immediately hated it. I've tried a few more times for varying lengths of time, and I've decided that I really do hate them.
Comment · 1 month ago
Is not accepting contributions the only/biggest issue you have with the project? I'm honestly becoming more and more okay with the "cathedral" style of open source. Depending on the project, catering to "the community" can lead a loss of focus, lack of a cohesive "vision" or scope, and just generally trying to be everything to everyone without the resources to maintain a giant beast.

With something like a browser (engine), I'm totally okay with someone saying "I'm an expert and I'm trying something with my own vision/priorities. I don't want input from random people that I have to spend time evaluating."

Comment · 1 month ago
I hate that. It will also leave code comments explaining what it didn't do or what the code used to do and why it doesn't do that thing anymore. I don't have a huge global CLAUDE.md, but probably half of it is instructing it on how not to write irrelevant and verbose code comments.
Comment · 2 months ago
Nah, it's just the standard enshitification playbook. It'll start out nice, open, useful, fun; then once they have enough users and the network effect kicks in, they'll lock it down and turn it into a weapon against its users. Happens every time.
Comment · 2 months ago
So you're saying that the current management of Twitter does not favor politically-right messaging? Otherwise, your message is a non-sequitur.

The comment you replied to made no statement about the effectiveness of the project. It's like saying that George Soros is engaged in trying to elect left-wing leadership; nobody denies that.

Comment · 2 months ago
I always cringed at that framing anyway, for two reasons. First, it was obvious to me that it was a private, centralized, closed-source, piece of software whose owner(s) could always manipulate or take away from people they didn't like. Second, it's genuinely depressing to think that the modern marketplace of ideas was supposed to take place in 180 (or whatever the hell it is now) characters or fewer. Yeah, sure- let's hash out the complexities and nuances of life and society in single-sentence messages. And we wonder why everything has become "polarized" and rage-bait-y. When all you have room to write is "This thing is bad", what the hell else are you supposed to do?

What a stupid platform. I can't believe it's still so popular.

Comment · 2 months ago
Why wouldn't a bank sell debit data just the same as credit data? For that matter, I would expect them to be selling everything they can: credit, debit, written checks, ACH transfers, etc.

What incentive is there for them to not do that? Laws? I'm asking sincerely, not rhetorically.

Comment · 2 months ago
The comment you replied to doesn't imply the users are immoral, but the creators. They're saying that we shouldn't build such systems. I, personally, also believe we should resist using them as much as possible, instead of rewarding them by using them. But, obviously, that may be easier or harder for any given individual situation. So be it; just avoid as much as you can tolerate if you agree that these things shouldn't exist the way they are.
Comment · 2 months ago
Good explanation. Just one correction: John Thune is the Senate majority leader (so, the "head" of the Senate). Steve Scalise is in the House and he's the head of the Republican party in the House, whereas Mike Johnson (who is also a Republican) is the House majority leader (so the head of the whole House, not just his party).

So, it's Mike Johnson for the House and John Thune for the Senate.

Comment · 4 months ago
Unfortunately, yes. It's a backward looking metric, like how economists can only call a recession/depression after it's been X months of bad metrics, even if everyone living in the first month of one feels the economy going poorly. We'll only know if these tools are "boring but work" at some point in the future.

The hope is always that "this time will be different". Maybe these tools are so awesome that they'll become a de facto standard and, therefore, "boring". It's JavaScript, so I'm not holding my breath, though.

Comment · 4 months ago
That's not a charitable reading of their comment. Granted, I also don't think articulated their point very well with that example. I can't speak for the commenter, and I'm genuinely not sure about the point they were attempting to make. But, I think the point was more so that things are moving so fast in the field that it's basically impossible to become the level of expert that has a truly deep understanding of all the parts and layers.

If you're an expert as a particular programming language, for example, you may have a good mental model for what optimizations the compiler and/or runtime are able to do, and the way you write code in that language may be influenced by that deep knowledge. You may have written so much code in that language that you know all of the corner cases and foot-guns, and how to deal with them--or better yet, how to avoid them in the first place. You may even develop new/uncommon patterns or idioms that other people end up adopting.

But, if that programming language totally changes its own semantics and compiler toolchain every few months, nobody would have time to build deep intuition and expertise like that.

I think that was the point.

Comment · 5 months ago
When I read it, I assumed it meant like network communication in your program. File and network I/O having/being a "tax" makes sense to me.
Comment · 6 months ago
Yep. I've learned that lesson more than once. Maybe one of these days it'll stick... :p

Specifically, I'm not a "designer", but I regularly end up making/changing UIs (mobile apps, web apps/pages, etc). When it comes to design, it really matters who the target audience is.

If you're creating a UI for "mass market", you have to design to a lowest-common-denominator that balances what your average user expects, generally, from UI/UX, and the more you ask them to "invest", the worse you're going to do. On the other hand, if you're making a tool for a B2B (business-to-business) product, you have more freedom to set baseline expectations of what the end user needs to be able to do and understand. You can also expose more powerful options, etc. You can sometimes end up going in very different directions. Even error handling and logging can sometimes be handled differently, depending on the context.

Comment · 6 months ago
Yes! That's exactly how you should do it while working with a language that doesn't have a compiler that will aggressively analyze, and rewrite and optimize your code for you. (So, most languages with "heavy runtimes" that support a bunch of dynamic stuff and JITs)

There are basically two points to programming with immutable-first data. One, eliminate certain classes of data race concurrency bugs. Two, less mutable state in a given context makes it easier to reason about.

So, if you're inside a function scope and you aren't launching any concurrent operations from inside that function, you don't have to worry about benefit #1. If you're inside a function (and you're not reaching out for global mutable state), then the context you need to keep in your working memory is likely fairly small, so a few local mutable variables doesn't significantly harm "understandability" of the implementation (in most cases). So, you really don't have to worry about #2, either. Make your functions black boxes with solid "APIs" (type signatures), and let the inside do whatever it needs to make it work the best.

Just because premature optimization is the root of all evil, it doesn't mean we need to jump right to premature pessimization...

Comment · 6 months ago
Since it's obviously written in a casual, conversational, tone we should not expect the language to be perfectly precise. So, given that and the fact that the author felt the need to call out "vibe coding" or AI at all, and then double down by adding the almost-redundant "classic development style", I would be willing to bet they did not use any AI for anything at all related to this project.

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