GeneralMaximus

I think @mock-possum was responding negatively to the tone of your post, not the content of it. The division of labor within your relationship is nobody's business but your own. If it works for you and your partner, nobody has a right to question it. However, when you say this:

> At work, I use my calendar. At home, I have a wife.

Then you're talking about your partner as if they were an appliance of piece of software rather than a person. You're objectifying them, even if in jest. This is the sort of language that makes many people feel unwelcome on HN.

To be clear, I don't believe you meant for your remark to be malicious! I just wanted to point out why it might make some people feel like outsiders in this community.

The M2 iPad Pro with Apple Pencil and Magic Keyboard.

I got it so that I could do some writing and note-taking away from my main work computer. Forum posters and tech reviewers assured me the device was up to the task. But the reality is that while iPadOS can do about 60-70% of what macOS can do, the remaining 30% is entirely impossible to accomplish unless you have access to a computer.

I learned this the hard way when I was traveling with just my iPad and somebody sent me a ZIP file that had a hidden file in it (in the UNIX sense, i.e, with a name starting with a period). At the time, there was no way to view or open this file using the iPad Files app. I could pay for a third-party file manager, or I could use iSH to edit it in Vim. Why make it impossible to see dotfiles at all?! Why not give me a checkbox I can enable to temporarily view those files? I understand that it's rare to receive a dotfile over email, but it's not an impossible event.

At some point I discovered you can't install custom fonts on an iPad. Apps can bundle their own fonts, but installing a font globally requires a nasty workaround: use a third-party app to embed your font files inside a security profile, then install that security profile via the Settings app. For a device that targets designers, video editors, and musicians, not being able to install your own fonts is such a bizarre choice.

There were other weird papercuts too. When exporting tracks from Logic, I couldn't put the app in the background. I had to sit there and wait for it to finish. Many apps had iPhone and Mac versions, but no iPad versions. For a while the Magic Keyboard's trackpad cursor didn't send hover events to web pages in Safari, which meant some webapps were unusable. The Apple Pencil could send hover events, though, which meant I had a fun week navigating the WordPress admin interface using the Pencil instead of the trackpad. They eventually fixed this issue.

You can't play more than one sound source at a time. A one second looping sound on a webpage can permanently stop playback in Spotify or Apple Music. This behavior might be fine for a phone, but for a tablet that claims to be a computer replacement? Weird choice.

I could go on and on about this. After all these years, the iPad is still pretty much a consumption device unless you're a digital artist who relies on the Apple Pencil for work. Besides digital drawing and handwriting, there is very little you can accomplish on an iPad that you can't accomplish far more easily on a Mac.

My iPad Pro is basically a Kindle now. Sometimes I use it to watch YouTube, but only sometimes. The YouTube app on iPad is far worse than the website, and it's easier to just reach for my Mac.

I watched somebody on YouTube solve some AoC problems in Excel, so I’m going to try that this year. Not sure how far I’m going to get, but it’ll be a fun challenge!

Yep. I’m currently working for a client who build software for the insurance industry, and we have a whole pipeline to parse and generate Excel files. The industry mostly runs on Excel and email. Without support for parsing those spreadsheets, my client would never have been able to convince their customers to use the rest of their software.

> In this modern age of .md and similar files why not try for "blue water sailing" and instead create an office suite which specifically plays to only open standards?

Because your publisher, professor, employer, collaborators, and book club members all want an Office file. Full stop. They will not accept anything else, and they will refuse to work with you unless you have the clout to force them to use your new format. And then they will be unhappy.

That’s what this article is getting at. If you want to replace Office, you need to have full compatibility with Office files. There’s no way around it. Most people don’t want more open, faster, more features, or better. They want Office (or increasingly, Google Docs).

> ... either people accept the fact that some neighbourhoods are served worse than others, or the take the car and make the travel up to the nice asian shop they read about on the internet, because that’s apparently worth it.

What's better: having to do a few minutes of research to find a good sofa repair shop in your city or having to buy a new sofa every 5 years?

Further: what's better for you personally, and what's better for the planet? Are they compatible?

> But, surprise, this second option doesn't scale.

Why is it important for every type of business to scale? Is "scale" a virtue we must judge every business by?

Would it be accurate to say that Krita is a Procreate alternative?

For context: I work on large-scale browser apps that are closer in complexity to something like Linear or Obsidian than to your standard WordPress blog with some forms. E.g I'm currently working on a browser-based GIS tool for the financial sector.

I started my career as a full-stack developer, but went all-in on frontend because I felt I was spreading myself too thin. At one point I found that I could choose to be almost good enough at doing two different things or extremely good at one thing. I chose the latter option.

Modern browser apps are complex beasts, at least if you want to do them right. You obviously have to worry about all the technical bits --- HTML, CSS, JavaScript, your view library of choice, platform APIs like <canvas> and WebAudio, cross browser testing, bundle sizes, performance optimizations, techniques like optimistic rendering, all that good stuff.

On top of that, you also need to work closely with designers to make sure they know the features and limitations of the platform(s) they're designing for. More often than not, you end up being a sort of bridge between the backend devs, designers, and product managers.

A lot of times you end up doing design too, whether you like it or not. I've learned a lot about UI/UX design just because I often have to fill in the gaps where a designer forgot to include a certain error state, or didn't test their design on tablet screens, or didn't account for cases where a certain API might not be available.

I tried for many years to learn as much as I could about Django as well as React and friends. But it eventually got too much. I found that I wasn't able to keep up with both ecosystems, and I was producing code that wasn't very good. I could certainly build things quickly because I was familiar with all parts of the stack, but it came at the cost of code quality, security, stability, and robustness. I eventually decided to hang up my backend developer hat and focus exclusively on what goes on inside the browser (which can be a lot by itself these days!)

It's probably possible for a single individual to build a high-quality server-rendered MPA with some forms without making a mess of it. But that says more about how good Rails/Django/Laravel are than about the capabilities of any single individual. I don't think a single person could build a product like Linear end-to-end without cutting corners.

If your entire team is in the same location, then you should certainly have your meetings in person. It'd be silly to force everyone to join a Meet/Zoom. I'm proposing a solution for situations when that's NOT the case (e.g everyone is fully remote or you have a hybrid team).

What makes you think it'll have better performance if it was rewritten as a native app? All the underlying code that handles audio and network communication is already built using fast C++/Rust code. This includes things like WebRTC, audio and video capture, compression, the WebAudio API, etc.

In products like Meet, JavaScript just acts as a glue language that sticks all these APIs together. All the heavy lifting is actually done by the browser, and modern browsers are some of the most efficient language runtimes humanity has ever built.

I sometimes work out of a WeWork here in Bangalore, and they have these tiny one-person soundproof cubicles for taking calls. All they have inside is a cushioned bench to sit on and a table large enough to hold a 15" laptop.

It's a great idea, IMO. You can fit 10-12 of these in the same space as a regular conference room. This solves exactly the problem you're describing.

There are a ton of little macOS apps I love. Part of the reason I’m married to the Apple ecosystem, despite wanting to switch out of it.

I’ve written hundreds of thousands of words in iA Writer over the years. It’s the only way I can get any writing done, I find every other writing app too distracting. Somebody on HN called it an “overpriced minimalist lifestyle app” in a reply to one of my comments, not realizing that the minimalism is a real feature for those of us who have brains that work differently.

In the same vein, the only task management app I can use without tearing out my hair is Things. It makes a distinction between the start date for a task and the deadline, which very few other apps do. I might want to start working on my presentation on Monday, but it might not be due for another two weeks. Those two dates are different! I don’t understand why few other apps allow you to do this. I feel a sense of physical anxiety when all my tasks in Apple Reminders show up in red because that app is just the worst.

MindNode and Bike Outliner are great “tools for thought”, if you like to brainstorm digitally. I’ve tried infinite canvas apps like Freeform and Muse for this, but I personally prefer the structure of an outliner or mind map. MindNode is my favorite app to fire up when I need to break down a big idea into smaller chunks, or when I need to drill down into the specifics of a problem, or when I want to impose some structure on the chaos of the problems I’m dealing with at work.

These are the apps I miss when I use Windows or Linux. If I ever switch to a non-Apple computer as my primary machine, I might get irritated enough with what’s on offer to build clones of these apps. Nothing like them exists on Windows or Linux, despite my attempts to look for equivalents every few months.

You might have played some (most?) of these games already, but I'd like to offer some suggestions in case you haven't.

- The Disgaea series is hilarious, infinitely replayable, and allows you to pull off some very satisfying game-breaking maneuvers. Disgaea 1, 4, and 5 are considered the best in the series. Disgaea 7, the newest release, has good reviews on Steam too. If you want to pick just one, get Disgaea 5.

- Tiny Metal is inspired by Advance Wars and improves on many aspects of the game.

- Wargroove is also inspired by Advance Wars. It's very good, but a single level can sometimes take a long time to beat (45 mins to an hour). Comes with a scenario editor so you can design your own levels (or download other people's creations).

- Into the Breach is one of my favorite games. The design is simple with very few rules, but it lends itself to emergent behavior that can be a lot of fun to discover.

- Deckbuilders give me the same kind of satisfaction as turn-based strategy games. The current genre darling is Balatro, and its popularity is well deserved. One of the best games to come out in recent years. I've been recommending it to everybody.

- And of course, the Fire Emblem series is still alive and well. The games are 3D now, but the gameplay is still the same as it always was (with slight variations between versions). Fire Emblem: Three Houses might be my most played game ever. That said, Fire Emblem has never been as challenging as Advance Wars in my experience, so you might not enjoy it as much unless you play on higher difficulty levels. I play these games for the story, so I usually play on easier modes.

- EDIT: oh, how could I forget Triangle Strategy and Unicorn Overlord? I haven't played these yet, but they're well reviewed and come with some very interesting mechanics.

Hope there's something new in that list for you to enjoy :)

I switched to Kagi a few months ago and I’m generally happy with it. However, I still need to occasionally use Google for some very specific searches that Kagi doesn’t handle (or handles incorrectly).

E.g I can’t do timezone conversions with Kagi. I know I could just use an app for this, but it’s far quicker to type “10:30am EST to IST” into my browser’s address bar than to reach for yet another app.

Another thing Kagi doesn’t do yet is currency conversion. Once again, it might be easier/more accurate to use an app for this, but I usually just need a ballpark conversion and searching Google is quicker than using an app.

I live in India but my clients are often in the US. I also have a lot of friends/family living across the world. I suspect I do timezone/currency conversions roughly 8-10 times during a regular work day. This is why I still end up on Google Search despite not liking that company or their software one bit.

> The purpose of unions is to extract as much as possible from the employer on the behalf of its members [...]

This is such a weird take. Why would employees do that? Employees benefit when the company benefits. If the company increases profits by 10%, that's 10% more that could potentially go to employee benefits, salaries, etc.

I want my employer to make as much profit as possible, because that guarantees my long-term employment and allows me to ask for a higher salary. If the company folds, the union folds, and everybody loses their jobs. Nobody wants that to happen.

> Welcome to being old!

This has nothing to do with age. I have an iPad Pro that I barely use because it has been designed for use cases that I just don't have.

I don't do any digital art, don't take handwritten notes, and don't need to scan and/or mark up documents very often. I don't edit photos or videos often enough to need a completely separate device for the task.

I mostly use my computers for software development, which is impossible on an iPad. I tried running my dev tools inside an iSH session, and also on a remote Linux box that I could SSH into. It wasn't a great experience. Why do this when I could just run VS Code or WebStorm on a Mac?

I also write a lot -- fiction, blog posts, journal entries, reading notes -- which should technically be possible to do well on the iPad. In practice there just aren't enough powerful apps for serious long-form writing on a tablet. Microsoft Word on iPad lacks most of the features of its desktop counterpart, Scrivener doesn't support cloud sync properly, iA Writer is too limited if you're writing anything over a few thousand words, and Obsidian's UI just doesn't work well on a touch device. The only viable app is Ulysses, which is ... okay, I guess? If it floats your boat.

I sometimes do music production. This is now possible on the iPad via Logic Pro. I suppose I could give it a try, but what does that get me? I already own an Ableton license and a couple of nice VSTs, none of which transfers over to the iPad. I can also download random third-party apps to manipulate audio on my Mac, or mess around with Max4Live, or use my Push 2 to make music. Again, this stuff doesn't work on an iPad and it never will, because the APIs to enable these things simply don't exist.

There are tons of people who use Windows because they need to use proprietary Windows-based CAD software. Or people who need the full desktop version of Excel to do their jobs. Or academics and researchers who need Python/R to crunch data. All of these people might LOVE to use something like these new iPads, but they can't because iPadOS just can't meet their use cases.

I really like the idea of a convertible tablet that can support touch, stylus, keyboard, and pointer input. The iPad does a great job at being this device as far as hardware and system software is concerned. But unfortunately, it's too limited for a the kinds of workflows people using laptops/desktops need to do.

This checks out. I'm a software developer who took math all through high school and my first three years of college. I barely scraped through my calculus exams, but I excelled at combinatorics, probability, matrix math, etc. (as long as it didn't veer into calculus for some reason).

I guess I just enjoy things more when I can count them.

I’m a macOS/Linux person, but I feel this is a bit of a hot take.

I see Linux users copy and paste commands into their terminals all the time, sometimes without understanding what they’re doing. How is that different from clicking “next, next, next” in a GUI?

Interacting with a computer using ZSH instead of a GUI isn’t inherently better. It’s just different. Knowing how to run basic shell commands doesn’t tell you anything about a person’s understanding of how computers work.

Plenty of non-technical people can run basic shell commands. It doesn’t mean they understand how virtual memory works, or what DNS is, or how computers store files on disk.

> And then they move on to the next topic, without making any argument why the thing they just discussed is important, or what implications it might actually have.

There are so many articles on the Internet that dive into the implications of datasets that amplify certain voices over others. I personally liked this analysis because it actually shows you what such a lopsided database looks like on the inside. And it looks like this breakdown might actually help the creators of LAION-5B fix some of the issues. I saw this as a pretty constructive and useful article.

But to your point about the implications of datasets like this one, allow me to share my personal experiences with generative AI.

(I want to make it clear that I'm not personally offended by any of the things I'm going to say below in this comment. I see all of the following as well-understood issues that can be solved if researchers/AI vendors have the will.)

I speak three languages, but I can only reliably interact with generative AI models using one of them. I'm forced to effectively erase two thirds of my culture and upbringing when I talk to ChatGPT. That severely limits what I can do with LLMs and leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Generative AI is marketed as this giant forward leap for humanity, on par with smartphones and the Word Wide Web. But that marketing rings hollow when most people in my country can't use these tools merely because they don't speak English.

Unlike smartphones and the Web, getting the models to speak non-English languages is not such an easy task. Want to translate every single app on the iPhone into Hindi? Just hire an experienced team of translators (sidenote: the Hindi localization on iOS is excellent). But how do you create the terabytes of Hindi language content required to make ChatGPT understand Hindi as well as it understands English? I don't know what the solution is, but it's definitely a problem that needs to be solved if we want AI to be useful to as many people as possible.

Beyond LLMs, other generative models also reflect their training data in a way that favors certain cultures over others. E.g when I ask ChatGPT to "generate an image of a girl sitting on a bench, eating an apple", it generates an image of a person who is clearly white, dressed in blue jeans and sneakers. Why does it make that assumption when, in 2024, there are more brown people on the planet than white people?

If I refine that prompt to "generate an image of an indian girl sitting on a bench, eating an apple", it makes the person look more Indian but keeps the jeans and sneakers. Once again, why does the model assume that all humans wear jeans and sneakers by default? Why do I have to prompt it to generate other kinds of clothing?

AI is unlike any other technology we've built so far. We talk to it as if we're addressing a human being, and it talks back to us. This makes it difficult to treat it as merely a tool, even though all of us on this website know that's what it is. And when this anthropomorphized genie in a box refuses to speak my language or treats my culture as a second-class citizen, it stings. It's this sort of stuff that can make people feel like there's something wrong with their culture, their ethnicity, their language.

I'm sure we'll iron out all these issues eventually. But we have to keep making noise and keep demanding better from AI researchers and companies. And articles like this one really contribute a lot towards that goal.

JavaFX programs needed the Java runtime too, and they were still just Java apps. How is the JRE different from Safari or Edge?

Or is my understanding of JavaFX incorrect, and it somehow turned applets into native binaries when you dragged them out of the browser?

> I don't see how "owning" has to include updates for life.

Oh, I never meant to imply that. Apologies if it came off that way.

I just meant to say that if UpfrontPayment.app wants you pay $60 to upgrade to a new major version every year and SubscriptionPayment.app costs $5/month, you end up paying the same amount every year regardless of which one you use.

Sure, you can always refuse to upgrade to new versions of UpfrontPayment.app and keep using the version you already own, but that's not always possible in 2024. Changes in OS APIs, file formats, processor architectures, etc. can make it difficult. Outside of Windows, most platforms aren't shy about breaking existing software.

I've had mixed experiences with apps that I technically "own".

On one hand there's iA Writer. I don't even remember when I bought the app -- five years ago? seven? ten? -- and I'm still getting regular updates for it. It has maintained and iterated on its core feature set while keeping up with macOS updates. The dev team even added thoughtful new features -- like Wikilinks, frontmatter support, and authorship tracking -- without turning the app into something it's not. At its core, iA Writer remains a fast, bare-bones, distraction-free Markdown editor with beautiful typography that feels as Mac-native as you can get.

This is the sort of experience people are looking for when they say they want to "own" an app.

On the other hand there's Scrivener. I bought this app during the pandemic, and almost immediately regretted the purchase. The UI looks dated in a bad way, like an old Mac OS X app from 2010. It's full of a million chunky buttons and colors and gradients, creating a ton of visual noise. It's updated maybe once or twice per year, mostly to fix bugs and maintain compatibility with newer macOS versions. Their aging file format doesn't work properly with any cloud storage service except Dropbox, and they refuse to do anything about it. Even if you use Dropbox, it's very easy to corrupt your projects if you forget to manually sync them before opening them on a different device. The iPad app looks like it was built in the early days of the device, and has bizarre implementations of basic controls (like tree views) that behave differently from how you'd expect. It's clear that the dev team behind Scrivener has given up on the app and are keeping it on life support.

I think there are more Scriveners in this world than iA Writers. Or you have apps like Sublime Text, where every new version requires you to pay for a fresh license. At that point, you might as well turn it into subscription software.

If you want, it's possible to wire it up too! I use the included USB-C cable to connect it directly to my MacBook. It's much more reliable that way, especially if you're on a flaky WiFi connection.

SEEKING WORK | Bangalore, India | local or remote with worldwide availability

I'm an independent frontend engineer with over a decade of experience building complex browser apps. In recent years, I've delivered projects using React, Next.js, and vanilla JavaScript.

You can see my previous work at: https://ankursethi.in/work/

Outside of JavaScript-based view libraries, I have a strong understanding of the Web platform itself. I know how to write clean, semantic HTML and maintainable CSS. This allows me to leverage built-in browser features wherever possible, as opposed to building fragile JavaScript-based solutions.

I can help you in the following ways:

  - Build new browser applications using React, Vue, or Svelte (I prefer React/Next.js, since that's my main area of expertise)
  - Help improve and add features to existing browser applications
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  - Help you interview and hire a frontend team
  - Help you build a reusable design system for your company

Contact me at: contact@ankursethi.in

Technologies I enjoy using: JavaScript, TypeScript, Next.js, Tailwind, Supabase/Firebase, Netlify/Vercel

My online writing lives at: https://ankursethi.in

You can also reach out to me on Mastodon at: https://fantastic.earth/@s3thi

I've been using GitHub Copilot since it was in early preview. I still have it turned on in VS Code. Sometimes I have a spotty Internet connection and it fails to return any completions. I barely notice when that happens.

If my text editor stopped doing syntax highlighting or communicating with my language server, I'd notice right away. It would seriously impact my productivity to a point that I'd be looking for a new editor. But the completions I get from Copilot don't have that much value, and I don't consider them an essential part of my programming life. They help with reducing the amount of text I need to input manually, but rarely do they help me solve any real problems or generate novel insights.

The article is correct. Most of the time, Copilot is just replacing Google search or StackOverflow for me. And even then, the information it returns is sometimes outdated and doesn't cover programming languages that aren't very popular (e.g Raku).

> Personal sites still exist in the west, but nobody really seeks them out.

The IndieWeb movement, standards like WebMention, services like Neocities, and a growing Fediverse have made it so that there is at least some interest in personal websites in the Anglosphere again. I follow a lot of people in my RSS reader, and there’s a growing community of people regularly writing blog posts, having conversations via their blogs, maintaining digital gardens, and generally building small, niche, non-commercial websites for fun. Not to mention people writing email newsletters.

It only appears as if the web today is dominated by corporate interests. It’s true that most people stay within those walled gardens, but there are many people still building things outside of them. A more human web still exists, but you need to specifically go looking for it.

I recommend starting with https://ooh.directory. If your city has an IndieWebCamp or Homebrew Website Club, you might have good luck there.

I have far too many subscriptions, and I should probably cancel some of those. I'm only going to list the ones I like and regularly in this comment.

Git Tower. I don't like git and I don't like interacting with it from the command line. Most of the time, I use either Tower or Magit to dull the pain a bit.

Spotify. All streaming services are more or less the same. IME, Spotify is the least bad of them all in terms of UI, performance, app quality, responsiveness, and compatibility. It's also the main streaming service everyone uses in my circles, so not having an account means I don't get to see my friends' playlists.

YouTube Premium. I don't like ads, but I also don't like playing what-a-mole with Google. It helps that Premium costs only $16/year in India.

Readwise Reader. It's an RSS reader, read-later service, and email newsletter inbox all rolled into one. It also lets you highlight parts of what you read, and surfaces them using a spaced-repetition algorithm. Worth every last rupee if you read a lot online.

Fastmail. Gotta have email, and I don't like Google.

Switch Online. I only have this for cloud backups of my saved games.

I don't mind subscribing to apps and services. It often ends up being cheaper than buying something upfront. My only issue with subscriptions is that there's no central place where I can manage all of them, so I'm forced to use external tools to keep track of them.

Oh, that’s very cool. Do you think it’s possible that Squeak and/or Pharo will ever want to build upon the UI work done by the GToolkit developers?

Would Automerge be a good choice for a non-realtime single-user app that just needs to have reliable offline support?

E.g a personal note-taking app where the user will never have any collaborators, but where they expect the app to work fully offline on multiple devices and reliably sync up when they come online.

I personally make liberal use of parens to make the precedence of operators as clear as possible. Then I run formatting tools like Prettier or rustfmt on my code, which remove any parens that are not strictly required. This way, I end up with an expression that is clear as well as concise. Best of both worlds.