_gabe_

Yes. Because it’s impossible to write a malicious program in Rust, Python and Java, or pick up bad programming habits in any of the above languages /s

This is why I stopped using PayPal. My credit card company allows me to issue chargebacks with typically very little friction because of my credit history. PayPal once put me through the wringer for an order I cancelled and never received a refund for. After that I deleted my PayPal account and decided to never use it again. In this case, I would take my site off Netlify and never use it again.

Go type in:

  <p>Hello
  <br></br>
  World!

And see the errors that now show up because of the wisdom we gained… wait, it still renders alright? I guess we still have much to learn then. Or, there might be something to gracefully handling certain classes of errors while crashing on exceptional cases.

You’re getting downvoted for some reason, but OpenGL is absolutely easier. It abstracts so much (and for beginners there’s still a ton even with all the abstraction!). No need to think about how to prep pipelines, optimally upload your data, manually synchronize your rendering, and more with OpenGL, unlike Vulkan. The low level nature of Vulkan allows you to eek out every bit of performance, but for indie game developers and the majority of graphics development that doesn’t depend on realtime PBR with giant amounts of data, OpenGL is still immensely useful.

If anything, an OpenGL-like API will naturally be developed on top of Vulkan for the users that don’t care about all that stuff. And once again, I can’t stress this enough, OpenGL is still a lot for beginners. Shaders, geometric transformations, the fixed function pipeline, vertex layouts, shader buffer objects, textures, mip maps, instancing, buffers in general, there’s sooo much to learn and these foundations transcend OpenGL and apply to all graphics rendering. As a beginner, OpenGL allowing me to focus on the higher level details was immensely beneficial for me getting started on my graphics programming journey.

The engineers at Apple aren’t somehow imbued with any sort of special intellect that the engineers at Meta lack to do the same thing. And to be clear here, I’m no fan of Meta. But, in echoing @laserlight here, let’s not pretend that the engineers at Meta are any less capable than the engineers at Apple. There are plenty of brilliant engineers in both companies.

> We all know that Meta is capable of neither designing nor manufacturing Apple Vision Pro

According to what? What limitation is there that stops Meta engineers from being able to do this?

> “context matters and programmer cycles are more important than CPU cycles in the majority of contexts”. I think this is something we could all agree on, no?

I don’t think people agree on this (I don’t at least). I like the story falsely attributed to Steve Jobs about how saving a user 1 second will save hundreds of years or whatever. From that perspective, programmer cycles are way less important than CPU cycles because every CPU cycle you save has a multiplicative effect depending on how many users you serve. And how true is that today when you have thousands of large business apps depending on one cloud service provider. The compounding effects of saving CPU cycles in every level of the stack has never been higher than it is today.

> can move existing "learned the hard way special cases" byzantine business code to something that can run on a web server and be accessed by the companies employees rather than passing around scripts for them to run

Or… you could just use Django. The framework built for running python on a web server.

You’re being overly pedantic to a fault. Here’s the definition Wikipedia gives for UI:

> a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur[0]

Further, Wikipedia lists a ton of different kinds of user interfaces. Included among those is:

> Batch interfaces are non-interactive user interfaces

And further, here’s a better explanation describing how a programming language is a user interface then I can provide here[1]. It really is as simple as the programming language being an interface to the machine, and the programmer being the user of that interface. I don’t understand why you’re arguing so much against a widely accepted fact. When computers were first made, there was no such thing as a mouse or keyboard, there were punch cards. The only way for a user to interface with the machine would be to insert a program with punch cards. Nowadays we have all sorts of input devices to give us new ways to interface with machines, but the most basic way we can interface with a machine is by writing a program with our intent for it.

And if you want to be so pedantic then is a pure HTML/CSS website a UI? There’s no program there just markup. The only program that runs is the browser. So then is the website nothing and the browser the only user interface? Or how about the steering and brakes/accelerator in a car? Those are purely mechanical, are they a user interface because they don’t have a program? Or how about the original arcade games like pong? They were directly soldered onto the board. There was no program just a circuit. There were no instructions being executed. So does that make those games a non user interface?

[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_interface

[1]: https://faculty.washington.edu/ajko/books/user-interface-sof...

A programming language is absolutely a user interface. The error messages and diagnostics emitted by the language are the feedback mechanisms. The syntax and semantics are the design of the interface. The documentation is the user manual. Text editors, IDEs, punch cards and AI copilot are all separate UIs on top of whatever programming language you happen to be using.

After all, TUIs are a thing and nobody debates that they are also user interfaces. Just because a programming language is all text doesn’t mean that usability metrics don’t exist for it.

I’m not joking.

> but you have to be delusional to think that someone taping their favorite show on their own or waiting for it until it ends is nearly the same as dropping all episodes at the same time on principle for every show and only offering that as an option for a long time

What? The only reason cable didn’t release seasons all at once was to maximize profits. They get to run more ads, to force a user to stay subscribed for longer to finish their favorite show, charge studios extra for prime time spots, and more. These big productions are usually done with the whole season by the time it would release on cable. It’s not like they would stagger the release out of the goodness of their hearts to help people avoid bingeing.

What does it matter if you watch 8 hours of the same show or 8 hours of different sitcoms? I never mentioned taping a show and bingeing it all at once. I mentioned the fact that some people will watch large amounts of television regardless of what’s actually on the screen.

> I know you're trying to be smart here, and failing, but are books built to be binged?

And I guess you’re trying to be smart and failing? What’s with the backhanded comment. Why not engage with the argument being made instead of making comments like this?

That’s beside the point. The argument I was making is people for some reason find bingeing a show for 8 hours morally reprehensible. But reading a book is fine. The same thought process has been applied to gaming for long sessions. My argument is why are these different mediums deserving of different moral judgments? What makes reading, doing math, playing video games, or watching tv for long periods of time more or less reprehensible? These all serve one purpose: activities meant to entertain (maybe not math). Why does the medium the entertainment is delivered through make it any better or worse?

It isn’t. I think the thing people have a problem with, rightly so, is the lack of balance. It’s unhealthy to obsessively engage in one activity for long periods of time. But that’s a different argument altogether.

All in all, you didn’t really refute anything I said or try to show how any of these things are unique to Netflix. I agree with you by the way, but you’re framing your argument poorly in my opinion.

> terrible shows being greenlit, homogeneity of camerawork, casting, identity-politics pandering that nobody asked for, oversaturation of the market with streaming services that is almost as bad as cable etc. … Binge-tv model is also not a good thing

None of this is unique to Netflix. Terrible shows have been greenlit since the dawn of television. Shows are incredibly homogenous because they’re largely produced by a select few people. If anything, Netflix has broken that homogeneity by allowing more indie film/tv creators to breakthrough (like squid game).

Casting and identity politics shenanigans are definitely not unique to Netflix and started way before Netflix started producing content. The oversaturation problem only became a problem when all the other networks wanted their own slice of the pie. It was actually great for awhile when Netflix was the only big player in town.

And finally, binge-tv has always been possible. My grandmother would sit in front of cable television sun-up to sun-down watching whatever was on. 24 hour marathons of mythbusters and other shows like that were very common. Reruns of all your favorite sitcoms play all night on all major cable channels. Bingeing isn’t a unique problem to Netflix. Netflix just allows you to do it with new shows instead of waiting arbitrary amounts of time.

Also, is binge-reading a novel unhealthy? I’ve had 8 hour reading sessions when I’m gripped by a great book, like the last book in the Wheel of Time series. If that’s acceptable, why isn’t watching a show for 8 hours acceptable? I don’t think the medium really has that much of a tangible effect. Now if you’re bingeing shows everyday, then it’s unhealthy. But once a quarter when a new show you like comes out? Idk, that seems fine to me.

The difference is that in that review there were plenty of remarks like:

> Fortunately, we can report that on the whole, the touchscreen and software interface are easier to use than expected. What's more, we didn't miss a stylus in the least. Despite a lack of tactile feedback on the keypad, we had no trouble tapping our fingers to activate functions and interact with the main menu.

What I’m seeing in the reviews of AVP say the opposite about many aspects:

> There is a built-in virtual keyboard so you can type in thin air. But it will drive you mad for anything longer than a short message. And selecting smaller buttons with a pinch should be a carnival game. I started getting real work done once I paired the Vision Pro with a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse.

I agree it’s still too early to tell, but the best thing that I see being mentioned is movie watching which is something all the other headsets already do as well. The AR aspect seems to be a unique aspect, but I wonder if there will be safety issues that prevent things like cooking and doing other tasks assisted with AR from truly taking off.

> Better, IME to make it clear that while you may have some agreed guidelines, moderation isn't going to be according to a legal code.

Yes. Some would say, it’s almost like using the spirit of the rules ;)

In all seriousness, your theoretical example of why code of conduct can be harmful to a community has nothing to do with the code of conduct. It sounds like it’s just an unhealthy community with unhealthy moderators. Remove the code of conduct and the same scenario would play out. The only difference would be members crying out about how one member was banned for such a reason and another member who did the same thing wasn’t banned.

And lastly, in my community at least, it doesn’t come down to personal judgment. Unless a user is spamming or spewing racial slurs, the moderators meet and discuss whether or not the behavior of the user is ban-worthy, temp ban-worthy, or inconsequential (in the former case, the moderator who notices such abrasive action can take immediate action). This way we can at least remove some level of bias by ensuring that there’s consensus.

Who knows, my community might just be small enough and inactive enough that I haven’t run into the flaws of the code of conduct. This is all off topic anyways though, so I’ll leave it at that.

I don’t know if you’re actually looking for an answer, but after having managed a small 1,000 person community I think the “spirt of the law” makes a lot of sense. You’ll get a few community members that are great, but then they want to be helpful and will start trying to micromanage other community members. They’ll see a rule like “Please keep discussions on topic for the channel”. And then if somebody asks a question about C++ in the programming channel (instead of the C++ channel) the “helpful” member will tell the person that they’re posting their question in the wrong channel.

As the manager/moderator of a community, I appreciate that this person is just trying to help. However, having somebody disregard your question and then tell you you’re doing stuff wrong can be a major turnoff to newcomers. In this specific case, it’s against the spirit of the rules because it’s a one off scenario. Now, this rule is helpful for the members that like to post memes everywhere, or talk about school or politics or religion in random channels. For these repeat offenders, I can point to the rule and politely ask them to move the discussions to a more appropriate channel. As with all laws in even real life, the rules are great for the black and white areas, but the majority of situations are gray. And it’s in those gray situations where we can operate within the spirit of the rules rather than the letter of the law.

Edit: also, to respond to your last statement. The code of conduct is there so that moderators have something to reference to repeat offenders. It’s much easier to tell somebody they’re banned because they repeatedly broke a specific rule rather than ban somebody because of personal distaste. I don’t see how having a code of conduct could ever be harmful to a community? How would that harm a community in any way?

I understand everyone has a different situation. OP literally said that it’s impossible for anyone to review their finances in 10 minutes, and I provided a counterclaim. Additionally, my point was that in this day and age, the majority of people that are able to subscribe to these things have the tools at their disposal to find and cancel the subscriptions while taking a shit. Just hop on your phone, it really is that easy.

You calling me names because you can’t formulate a valid argument does not dispute that fact. It weakens your argument and goes against the nature of this site.

I pay through the apps. I have a password manager. There were a couple transactions that took me a couple seconds to recall. I’m single, but this whole thread is about _personal_ responsibility. I would trust my spouse to also keep up with her expenses. I also wouldn’t give my kids credit cards. Cash works fine when it’s needed, that’s what my parents did and I was just fine.

I never put any sort of subscription on ACH. All subscriptions go onto credit cards. There were gradually increasing amounts from Netflix, which I got emails about, which I cancelled once I got the emails telling me the price was increasing once again. I waited 6 months because I already had an idea of what I was paying for, when I checked, it turned out there was nothing unexpected.

It’s really not though. Seeing all these comments concerned me a bit. So, I opened up my credit card apps and scrolled through the last six months of transactions to make sure there was nothing unexpected. It took 5 minutes while I was sitting on the toilet. And that 5 minutes normally would’ve been spent browsing instagram or hacker news, so it’s not like it’s 5 minutes that I lost.

> There’s a reason they’re able to charge 30%, have a dominant market position in the US, and people continue to release apps for iOS (and prioritize launching there over Android).

I keep seeing this line of thinking in the comments (some may say these comments are conforming to a specific line of thought). When is the last time you used a modern android (Galaxy, Pixel, etc)? And really used it, not just tried to use your friend’s Android for a few minutes and then gave up?

I kept reading all these comments about how superior iPhones are on Hacker News. So after having used a MacBook (and being very happy with it over the past year) I bought an iPhone 14 to see if the iPhone also lived up to the hype. It doesn’t. It’s literally the same as an Android. There are no significant differences.

The gestures are a difference, but I kind of hate that about iPhones. You’re just supposed to somehow know these from tribal knowledge or reading something from some random thread (just violently shake the phone to undo typing, very intuitive!). After a couple months of use, I’m finally almost as good at using an iPhone as I was at using my Android. And once again, there are no significant differences. Of course, there’s a learning curve when you switch. But that should be expected. Give it 2 months, and then the devices will feel identical. They’re different, but in the end, they’re pretty much the same.

Edit: and btw, the same exact line of thinking can be used for Android. There’s a reason Google sets their App Store fee at 30%, and Android leads the market globally, and people continue to launch apps on Android.

> But they’re simply gaming the admission systems by studying rather than spending all their waking hours on TikTok and Fortnite.

That is the point, is it not? The whole reason for higher education is to study and research. The point of higher education is not to spend all your waking hours on TikTok and Fortnite. Shouldn’t the people dedicated to studying get in? I’m unsure how that’s gaming the system. It seems like the system is working as intended.

> The particular problem is they made up a whole bunch of shit and when the sciences in general came around, people when "wow, religion is a bunch of controlling bullshit".

I think you have your history a bit backwards.

Galileo is considered the father of modern science, and he was one of the people that believed those goat herders. He argued that his views were in accordance with the Bible, not that the Bible was a bunch of random shit that was made up. Here’s his words on the matter:

>> Holy Scripture and nature both equally derive from the divine Word, the former as the dictation of the Holy Spirit, the latter as the most obedient executrix of God’s commands.[0]

The reading the rest of that letter also seems to indicate that he was pretty heavily invested in his beliefs of religion and science being supportive of one another. The father of modern science believing and arguing for religion kind of makes your whole argument a moot point.

[0]: https://web.stanford.edu/~jsabol/certainty/readings/Galileo-...

This isn’t true. I’m reminded of this interview with some women who lived through Victorian era England (before any phones existed)[0]. Towards the middle of the interview she talks about the mud in the streets and how they spent hours brushing mud off their dresses. She even makes a quip and says, “of course now those hours are spent looking at the television”. If the interview happened today, I’m sure she would have said cell phone instead of television.

I think many of us romanticize the past.

[0]: https://www.upworthy.com/amp/unearthed-bbc-interview-feature...

This is also beside the point. I think both of you are trying to warn against the dangers that lie on both sides of this coin: people can invest too heavily in a specification and waste an enormous amount of time, and people can immediately jump into coding and code something that does not do what it was intended to do. Like with all things in life, there’s a balance between these two extremes that’s correct.

You need some level of specification so you know what you’re building, but you have to keep in mind that the final code defines what the behavior truly is. Sometimes, that behavior unintentionally becomes part of the specification because users begin to rely on it.

I do like the fact that you both used hyperbole to succinctly illustrate the dangers of veering too far in either direction though :)

My point about metrics is why I think the research is inconclusive. It’s very difficult to get a metric that’s meaningful in this context. If you said: this code base on average has 1 bug per 100 lines of code, that doesn’t say anything meaningful. If that code is assembly, that’s not very good because of how terse the code is. Whereas, if that code is Python or Ruby, that’s much better because of how concise those languages are.

Because of this, I feel like the only way to truly measure whether or not static typing has a significant effect would be to create two equivalent projects. Say you created stack overflow in Python and in C#. Then you could compare the quantity of bugs and see if it differs. But even this has problems because who knows how many bugs haven’t been caught? Is the code truly equivalent? Did the people who wrote the two codebases have slightly different experience resulting in differing number of bugs?

There’s too many variables in an experiment like this to conclusively determine whether or not static typing reduces the bugs. But, I don’t think that means that we can’t infer that eliminating a whole class of bugs is helpful.

Edit: the more I try to think about my reasoning the more I’m thinking it’s flawed. I think the answer to whether or not static typing reduces bugs is unknowable, but I strongly believe that it helps. Maybe we’ll get a study that isolates this metric one day :)

Why would you need an empirical study for this? It’s trivially provable. Runtime exceptions in a language like JavaScript can arise from type mismatches. That’s impossible to do in a language like Java, because the compiler catches it before you ever run the program. This eliminates an entire class of bugs.

What you’re proposing here sounds like somebody saying “How do we know Rust results in less bugs than C++ without an empirical study?”. Even though, we _know_ Rust eliminates an entire class of memory related bugs. I say this as a C++ advocate too. Anytime I run into a memory bug, that’s a bug that would not have happened in Rust. Likewise, any time you run into a runtime exception due to a type mismatch (for example: expected an int not an object), that is a bug that would not have happened with a type safe language.

Edit: I also want to add that the metric is important. Is it number of bugs per line of code? What does that even mean? Assembly programs consist of many more lines of code because it’s more terse, but the number of bugs in assembly will probably be greater than a higher level language. Even though the large number of lines of code would probably push the metric down and make it seem like assembly has a low number of bugs per line of code. Because of this, bugs per line of code isn’t a useful metric.

The only way I could think of measuring this would be to have two feature for feature equivalent projects in two different languages and compare the number of bugs in each. But even that probably has a bunch of flaws.

And here I was thinking the author must have been using a higher level language. I remembered reading this blog[0] where the author stated that the worst case scenario for an insertion at the beginning of a 2mb file only took 2ms on an old laptop while using an array as the data structure. I believe the author was using Zig here.

[0]: https://www.scattered-thoughts.net/writing/focus-text/

You’ve just shifted the goalpost twice here. I never learned about Paxos, but I did learn about consensus algorithms. Second, learning about something, and implementing something are completely different. Most CS graduates have an idea of how syntax parsing works. How many can implement a parser? What about a syntax highlighter? Most graduates have an idea of how an OS works. How many can build an OS?

I guess if you’re always using libraries though, you may mistakenly be thinking that these libraries are just doing trivial work. Once you dive in and try to implement the low level stuff, then you realize how big of a disconnect there is between a fuzzy idea in your head and the lines of code that constitute that idea in reality.

Ah sorry for the confusion! I chose atheism because it seems diametrically opposed to Christianity in the US, but my intention wasn’t to single out atheists :) . The same sentiment I voiced in my first comment could be said about any religion or belief system: I won’t close an article with Buddhist, relativist, Muslim, etc views just because they mention their belief system.

Because the second sentence mentions the Bible? Or some other reason?

If it’s the former, I’m a Christian but I don’t just close out articles if they’re written by Richard Dawkins or quickly proclaim that they’re an atheist. There’s still a very real chance that they have some wisdom to share. Just because people share a different religious view than me doesn’t mean I can’t learn from them.

> Considering both iPhones and Macs represent minority positions in their respective markets in the US

A 54% market share, compared to Google’s 46% market share doesn’t seem like a minority to me. It’s not a large majority, but it’s definitely not a minority market share in the US. And just for context, the Justice department filed an Antitrust suit against Google in 2020 for controlling 80% of the market share in search[1].

[0]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/266572/market-share-held...

[1]: https://www.investopedia.com/the-u-s-dept-of-justice-to-file...