Notices by webbureaucrat (webbureaucrat@floss.social)

oh no I came up with another app idea

oh no

"Two different functions that serve two different purposes have different return types? Outrageous!"

have you ever in your life seen anything so javascript-brained?

https://dev.to/codingnninja/why-i-wont-use-queryselector-again-3mod

inside me are two wolves.

one says, "maliciously comply with organizational installation policy"

the other says, `winget install -e --id GNU.Emacs`

You ever have a hobby like knitting or coloring books or something that you're like, "This is so fun. I could do this all day. I wish this were a real job."

That's how I feel about functional programming.

@alcinnz I guess I didn't phrase that very well.

By "lossless" here I mean `from_utf16` which parses into a `Result` as opposed to `from_utf16_lossy` which goes straight to a string. Obviously if there were a way to do this in a "lossless" way I would have fewer problems.

I am sleepy.

@alcinnz I'm building a JSON5 parser which supports escaping into UTF-16 which Rust doesn't really support natively in any meaningful way, so now I'm in analysis paralysis for how to handle that.

I think I'm going to allow the calling code to configure whether they want lossless or lossy conversion to Rust's UTF-8 strings, but which adds a good bit of complexity for both me and the user.

utf-16 makes me sad

this is as opposed to the other kind of static website

me: using nix will make everything run so much more smoothly 😇
javascript package maintainers: yeah why don't I just grab the system python in the install script and do what the hell ever

This is interesting.

Another interesting metric would be this but just for contributors to repositories *created in the last year*. Are people making interesting switches when they aren't constrained by legacy choices?

https://github.blog/news-insights/octoverse/octoverse-2024/#the-most-popular-programming-languages

Don't just be a code monkey! Build up your soft skills and get on the management track so you can be just like me, a person who dehumanizes individual contributors.

Grammarians and linguists should be descriptivist about language, but I believe strongly that domain experts should still be allowed to proscribe word usages that promote confusion and common misconceptions.

This is to say I will absolutely die mad about the popular misuse of the word "algorithm".

"Oh I was using the common meaning of the word algorithm, not the technical one."

Gonna blow your mind here: as a person who knows what an algorithm actually is I couldn't reliably give you a definition of the "common" meaning of the word "algorithm" because as far as I can tell it just means "bad".

Besides, the technical definition is the one you were introduced to in elementary school when your teacher introduced story problems, so you can use the word correctly. I believe in you.

idea: round robin merge request that marks as fully approved whenever the loop of "I'm fine with this but has so-and-so seen this?" closes.

Why is every single conversation about memory-safety like this?!

This article starts with "Does anyone want to tell Linus Torvalds? No? I didn't think so"

But, as the article itself points out, Torvalds does encourage the use of #RustLang in the #Linux kernel.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/the-us-government-wants-developers-to-stop-using-c-and-c/

Then it goes on to argue at length against swiftly overhauling all memory-unsafe codebases, which, for the billionth time, no one is advocating for. #CISA is only recommending making a long-term roadmap.

#rust

It's just very frustrating that we can't have any conversation at all about memory security without these sarcastic and overemotional men* saying, "Oh so you think we should replace every existing line of code with Rust next week? Delusional!"

We're living in the "We should improve society somewhat" comic.

---
*I don't know why they're always men.

#Rust #RustLang

I can't be fired where I am now, and I'm too unimportant to worry about my safety, but if the fascists ever decide to put my name on a list of employees who are reasons why my employer should be dismantled or brought under fascist control, that would do FAR more damage than any small-dollar donation ever could. If that list was going to be 1,000, it's now 999, and I think that's important.

Campaigns are an inefficient way to do good, anyway.

Hey #civicTech friends! If you're in or around government work or you ever have any aspirations to that end, I highly recommend reading this and making some decisions!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2024/11/02/federal-career-employees-watchlist-trump/

For myself, I've sworn off of using my real name in any of my political posting, and I've sworn off donations to candidates or parties, and I recommend you do the same.

#govTech

They don't teach you this in college but the hardest problem in computing is actually getting a boot menu.