Notices by Axel Rauschmayer (rauschma@fosstodon.org)

Mastodon’s weaknesses and how to fix them
https://2ality.com/2024/11/mastodon-weaknesses.html

#2ality #Mastodon

@functionalscript I think the two can meet in the middle. I’ll explain more in the upcoming blog post.

I’m working on a blog post about Mastodon’s weaknesses and what is being done to fix them. During my research I was delighted by how much interesting work is happening in the Fediverse space—e.g.:

* Live Fediverse analytics: https://fedidb.org
* Fediverse info and directory (crawled automatically): https://fediverse.info
* List of Fediverse platforms: https://fediverse.party/en/miscellaneous/
* Interviews with people who work on the Fediverse and other decentralized networks: https://dot-social.simplecast.com/

How I make sense of .flatMap():
– .map(): Each input element corresponds to one output element.
– .flatMap(): Each input element corresponds to zero or more output elements.

More information, uses cases and examples: https://exploringjs.com/js/book/ch_arrays.html#Array.prototype.flatMap

#JavaScript

Just got the classic fraudulent SMS: “Hi Dad, can you send me a message on Whatsapp? I have a new number.”

I did a web search and you can report such SMSes to the Bundesnetzagentur (Federal Network Agency). Which I did.

The Social Web Foundation is “a non-profit organization dedicated to making connections between social platforms with the open standard protocol ActivityPub.”

Goals:
* Educating general and targeted audiences about the social web
* Informing policy-makers about issues on the social web
* Enhancing and extending the ActivityPub protocol
* Building tools and plumbing to make the social web easier and more engaging to use

https://socialwebfoundation.org/2024/09/24/launch/

#Mastodon #Fediverse

1/ Good blog post by @molily about an ongoing conflict in the web dev community. AFAICT, it’s fair to both sides.

“Client-side JavaScript and React criticism: What comes next?”
https://molily.de/javascript-criticism/

“You can kick the alpha tires on System76’s Cosmic, a new Linux desktop”
“A whole new desktop aims to appeal with tiling, themes, and a safer Rust core.”
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/08/you-can-kick-the-alpha-tires-on-system76s-cosmic-a-new-linux-desktop/

Behold, “Diablo” is fully playable in your browser
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2024/08/behold-diablo-is-fully-playable-in-your-browser/

Neat #TypeScript trick: If we create a Set with a `const` Array, then the type of its elements is the union of the Array element types. In other words: The Set behaves a little like a tuple.

const packStatus = new Set([
'draft',
'approved',
'shipped',
] as const);
// const packStatus: Set<"draft" | "approved" | "shipped">

packStatus.has('abc'); // type error!
// Auto-completion works for the arguments of .has(), .delete(), etc.

Source: Matt Pocock. https://x.com/mattpocockuk/status/1823284205763121573

“Verso is a web browser built on top of the Servo web engine. We aim to explore embedding solutions for Servo while growing it into a mature browser in one day. This means we want to experiment with multi-view and multi-window first and then build UI elements entirely from Servo itself.”

Caveat: “At the moment, Servoshell should provide a better user experience.”

https://github.com/versotile-org/verso (h/t @bkardell)

The term “syntactic sugar” is tricky. Common definition: shorter syntax with a simple transformation to a longer version. Think syntax-aware search-and-replace or macros.

Examples:

a += b // sugar
a = a + b // long

{prop} // sugar
{prop: prop} // long

(x) => x + x // sugar
(x) => { return x } // long

With this definition, async/await is not syntactic sugar for Promises: An async function is executed similarly to a generator (pausing, resuming, …). So no simple transformation from .then().

My books on #JavaScript and #TypeScript are free to read online:

– Exploring JavaScript (ES2024 edition)
– Deep JavaScript
– Tackling TypeScript
– Shell scripting with Node.js

:mastodon: Boosts appreciated!

https://exploringjs.com

@functionalscript You would have to write it (my knowledge is limited here). I’d be happy to review!

I’ve always found discrete mathematics (*) much easier to understand than, e.g., calculus or statistics – because it is so similar to programming. Relations, orders, graphs are all part of discrete mathematics.

If you think you don’t like math, you may actually enjoy discrete math.

(*) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discrete_mathematics

Math topics that keep being useful for programming: relations, orders, graphs.

Example: You have plugins with conditions such as “plugin A must run before plugin B“.

– These conditions define a partial order: In general, not every plugin can be “compared” with every other plugin.
– If we want to sort an Array with plugins, we need a total order.
– One algorithm that works with a partial order is topological sorting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topological_sorting

Announcing the Web Platform Dashboard:

“For the first time you'll have a way to see the entire web platform mapped as a set of features, along with their support in browsers.”

“The Dashboard isn't intended as a replacement for Can I Use or the browser compatibility data on MDN. In your day to day life as a developer, it's likely to be less useful than these places. However, showing the platform in this way creates some interesting possibilities.“

https://web.dev/blog/web-platform-dashboard

Web apps—topics I’d like to be discussed more:
– Offline capability
– Peer-to-peer operation (syncing etc.)

It’s a shame that most web apps cease to work properly whenever the internet connection is flaky or gone. For me, that happens whenever I travel (train, plane, etc.).

Native apps are better at offline (but not much).

#TypeScript: Arrow functions help with partial evaluation [1] – e.g. a factory for functions for which there already is a type. Then they are more elegant than using .bind() [2]

const functionFactory = (factoryArg: string): FunctionType => (functionArg) => { … }

Note that the type of `functionArg` and the result type of the second arrow function are provided by `FunctionType`.

[1] https://2ality.com/2011/09/currying-vs-part-eval.html
[2] https://2ality.com/2016/02/arrow-functions-vs-bind.html

EOL—'\n' vs. '\r\n':
– With files and strings read from files, you can detect the EOL and use it when writing files.
– On Node.js, you can use os.EOL.

But what about multi-line strings in error messages that must work in browsers and Node.js? Always '\n'?