Notices by Martijn Faassen (faassen@fosstodon.org)

@inthehands
This is not a kind comment and makes assumptions.

I have used the option type for a few years in Rust now and that's the first time I used them extensively. Don't mistake my awareness of their history as a pretense at hipster enlightenment.

If you are going to make a broad historical argument don't start lecturing people who quibble. You could thank them instead for helping you refine it.

I read the Swift docs during this discussion, which is the best I could at short notice.

@inthehands
I will hope though that you will come to understand why your comment is unfair and makes me feel sad. Evidently I made you angry enough for you to reach for such a rhetorical hammer. I am sorry I pissed you off; that was not my intent, I enjoyed thinking about this topic even if we disagree.

I will bow out of this thread.

@inthehands

@dpnash
iphone became successful on the back of Objective C.

Your argument about Swift optionals assumes Swift's optionals, which I have no experience with, is the implementation that finally made them usable. I think that hasn't been demonstrated. Other factors like massive backing by Apple may have played a part, say.

@inthehands

@dpnash

I also think that an important factor certain ideas didn't spread faster is not because the implementations weren't good enough but because programmers don't want to throw out everything for something new that they don't yet understand or might not want to understand. Plus big corp backing a new language ecosystem can make a huge difference in adoption.

But for me personally certain programming languages have been more empowering than llms.

https://blog.startifact.com/posts/empowering-languages/

@inthehands

@dpnash
Like was garbage collection only refined and mature enough for mainstream adoption when Java came among? Were option types really unusably cumbersome in Haskell until Swift came along?

@inthehands

@dpnash

Incremental improvement of language and ecosystem plays a part. I mean, of course the iphone is a product of cumulative improvement.

But the question is whether it's primarily a product of improvement to programming language and environments rather than hardware. And well, it became successful using Objective C, which goes back to the 80s. (but also refined from nextstep for a long time)

I do believe language innovation is empowering, for me personally more than llms

@dpnash

@inthehands
Smalltalk and Lisp existed in 1985. Important ML style languages like CAML and Miranda appeared in 1985.

It wasn't so much that the languages didn't exist but their ideas were not widely distributed. If the hardware was up to running them efficiently in this thought experiment, which it would have to be to be fair, and we ignore historical platform differences too as we can for an iphone, I totally think the languages would have been up to the job. But few people used them

@dpnash

@inthehands
What we have seen in the modern era to enable the iphone I would argue is far more capable hardware. But I think capable languages and, in part, libraries existed back then, just were not common on home computers.

(I think networking and i18n made great strides forward since then)

@skinnylatte
I always enjoy the ads for apartments in Singapore saying "gardens!!!!" and then it means you can go down from the 15th floor and walk around in a garden.

Meanwhile in the Netherlands I have a big allotment plot, a small back yard and I can actually walk into the woods from my home.

I've just published a blog post that I'm looking for new challenges. Give it a read, click around to my blog for a while, and see what I might be able to do for you!

https://blog.startifact.com/posts/new-challenges-2025/

#RustLang #GetFediHired

@skinnylatte
Food being so important is very Singaporean. The Netherlands is a country where food is often treated in a utilitarian way and I sometimes call it a benighted barbarian culture for that, half joking. Other cultures are so much better at the social aspects of food.

@skinnylatte
Traditionally the Singapore government is really not a fan of this kind of stuff, though?

@skinnylatte
The Netherlands has a similar climate I think. But we don't have any big cities just lots of smaller ones jam-packed together! Singaporeans might die of decompression but you're nonetheless welcome to visit.

@ahelwer
Oh I read it so long ago I didn't remember. This review is interesting:

https://goingrampant.blogspot.com/2010/06/childhoods-end-flawed-1950s-anti-racism.html

Apparently in the fictional universe apartheid was overthrown and this is supposed to be an anti racist message trying to make it palatable for a white audience. Which is still very flawed but at least makes it less terrible.

@tk
Oh interesting! I was looking into the history of rust resistant snapdragons a while back. Turns out first there was no snapdragon rust in Europe, then one strain of rust but in the middle of the 20th century there were cultivars of snapdragons entirely resistant to it. Then more strains emerged and no now snapdragons fully are resistant, despite some efforts over the years.

@tk
What the stuff that affects my garlic and kills my snapdragons

@lila_bliblu
@skinnylatte does analog photography

@skinnylatte
2024 right?

Things I do regularly online without ads, without a need to block them:

I read my mastodon feed

I read Wikipedia

I access various tech aggregators

I use my RSS / atom feed reader and read blogs

I go to archive.org

I read the new website of the dutch public broadcaster NOS

I use a few web applications

That's quite a lot of things without anyone serving me ads. This internet still exists.

Of course I don't know exactly who tries to serve me ads as I block those.

@BrodieOnLinux

@Rataunderground

> what makes Rust special has nothing to do with it being memory safe

> Memory safety with the borrow checker, rather than through garbage collection

Um. "Nothing to do" is demonstrably too strong in your own words