Notices by Dana Fried (tess@mastodon.social)

I think French is hilarious because there's like fifty guys who get to say what the language is.

Nobody can say what English is. We literally don't know. Stick out your gyatt for the rizzler? Sure, whatever. Nobody gives a shit.

You can just make up words in English. You can wordiate. See, I just did it right there. I wordiated.

More importantly, you understood me - and therefore it's English.

Isn't language cool?

This is an experiment in using fedi for broad mentorship.

I am throwing the floor open to questions!

I expect that you will engage seriously with the intention of learning, and not to tell me I'm wrong or why e.g. I should throw this all away and write everything in rust.

I will attempt to answer all sincere engagement. I'll update this post when the exercise closes.

Clinic time!

I know OO programming is slightly out of fashion but in my experience it's the only good way to build flexible, extensible systems, especially in large, complex software projects.

Here are some of the best pieces of advice I can give based on decades of experience:
- think conceptually, not functionally
- decompose and encapsulate
- small abstract APIs at touch points
- mock, isolate, and unit test the shit out of all your little components
- always put readability above all

@tedmielczarek okay here are my general recommendations for APIs:

1. don't leak implementation details; APIs should be conceptual and well-named; using an API should be like writing English

2. fewer methods is always better

3. if the client has to call multiple methods in a specific order with specific parameters for the subsequent calls to work, no they don't (my wife named this the "no spellcasting" rule)

4. any output object that holds resources should be scoped

@tedmielczarek the whole of the law is, "don't leak implementation details" - the rest is just elaboration

@mekkaokereke this is exactly the takeaway - if you want people to use fedi they're not going to do it out of some kind of personal virtue or moral obligation; they're going to do it because it brings them value in their lives.

We now have a really informative A/B test of what features people want in a social media platform. We should look at the results and prioritize making changes based on what we've learned.

I prefer a lot of things about fedi, but I'd *love* to bring in things like algo feeds, starter packs, and algo moderation lists.

And there is really no technical reason we couldn't have those things here. I imagine we could use a lot of the same code, with an abstraction layer for how posts and profiles are retrieved.

Back on bsky; observations:
- the dunking and posing has markedly decreased (still the clout chasing site tho)
- there's still a lot of unreasonable political pontification
- since most folks use non-algo feeds first (including myself) following a lot of people is just as important as on fedi
- the option of opt-in algorithmic feeds for specific goals/interests is actually fabulous (the fact that BlackSky exists is genuinely amazing)
- algorithmic blocklists are *revolutionary*

@alex I don't think either of those things are surprising.

The kinds of people who would have been immediately put out by the ownership change are the same kind of people who would prefer fedi.

The kinds of people with reasons to stick around until the receipts fully came in and the political costs became too high are going to be more at home on bsky.

Coming up for air to say:

USAmericans, if you do anything today, *please vote*.

And if you care for your fellow LGBT and immigrant fedi users, I beg you, even if you are in a "safe" state, *please consider voting for Kamala Harris*.

We may need commanding popular and electoral college wins in order to quell potential violence from election deniers, even after this is all settled.

Okay, gonna submerge and go silent again. Take care of yourselves, and if you haven't voted yet, godspeed.

A funny #linguistics thing:

We come up with onomatopoeias for sounds we make that often don't line up with the phonology or phonotactics of our languages. After seeing the onomatopoeia repeated enough times in print, we will then performatively pronounce the word in situations where we want to express the same sentiment.

For example, "whew" or "phew" just represents an exhalation through pursed lips, maybe with some vocalization. But we routinely also *say* these words to express relief.

@inthehands @GottaLaff gonna have to invoke Poe's Law on this one

@mekkaokereke didn't Amazon try this - and immediately shut it down for the same reason - like a decade ago?

On one hand, having a cartel of two or three megacorps handling all retail in the US is bad.

On the other hand, replacing a bunch of people driving to Wal-Mart in their gas-guzzling SUVs with a handful of electric delivery vans is kinda good.

https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/31/24284580/chevy-brightdrop-walmart-electric-delivery-van

Posted without comment.

It's me.

Hi.

I'm the solution, it's me.

When I described the meme I intended to create, my wife pointed out that my code still generates the boilerplate, but deterministically, in the compiler.

Which I am 100% okay with.

My wife, just now: "Our child is an independent, but they caucus with the girls."

@mcc I tried looking up the man pages for that command and I swear none of those words were in the Bible

I honestly *still* don't understand what it does.