denvaar

I first saw Tom Scott on Computerphile. He’s so good at explaining topics with excitement and enthusiasm. It’s amazing he’s been so consistent with a video every week for the last 10 years. Not only “a video”, but videos that go above and beyond the norm in quality. He’s an inspiration.

> extremely mechanical 4Runner

Same sentiment for my washer/dryer. Bought an older (used) set for $300, They have lasted 7 years so far, which is in addition to however long they were in use before: I would guess at least 7 more.

Seems like lots of people lament how things like cars, refrigerators, washers, etc. are becoming less mechanical and more electronic. Maybe there's a market for "bespoke" mechanical items.

Awesome, I ended up purchasing your app, which is saying a lot because I hardly ever do stuff like that. It's been helpful in weighing out different financial decisions recently.

Not surprised if you're right, but I don't think that heat map takes any sort of timeframe into account, so it's just the history of all users who have recorded walks ever, from what I understand.

I made it a point to walk 3 or more miles every day this year. Haven't missed a day this whole year so far (knock on wood). It's been a great decision, although it is hard to compare it to what I would have felt like if I didn't walk, though.

It's funny because I did the opposite - switched from a Herman Miller Aeron to some crappy chair that looks like a couch - and that has cleared up my pain.

Here's a few

- Book called Compact Data Structures by Gonzalo Navarro https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/compact-data-structures...

- Ben Langmead's YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@BenLangmead

- MIT Open Courseware https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/6-02-introduction-to-eecs-ii-dig...

- Stanford lectures https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLv_7iO_xlL0Kz2nU05COp...

Learning about Information Theory.

It’s pushing me out of my comfort zone. For example, leading me to improve my math skills in order to understand some of the concepts and notations that are used in research papers. Also gives me some context into learning C, a language which I consider low-level as a web developer, and it’s been fun to have to think about things like memory management, along with other things I don’t generally need to consider. It gives me an appreciation for when I’m writing high level code like Elixir or JS, etc.

Compression, which I’d say is an application of information theory is just really interesting to learn about for some reason.

I don't know if it technically qualifies as a REPL[1], but I really enjoy Elixir's interactive console, IEx. What I like about it:

- Tab completion (obviously). Not only for functions/modules/bindings that are in scope, but also when you're in a string and begin typing a path, it will complete the directory names and stuff.

- You can type "h" before a module or function name to read the docs. Similarly, you can do the same with "t" to see type information.

- History of what you've executed, and also a reverse history search feature.

- Not fully "readline compatible", but some basic, standard key bindings work.

- Plenty of handy helper functions.[2]

[1] https://ferd.ca/repl-a-bit-more-and-less-than-that.html

[2] https://hexdocs.pm/iex/1.13/IEx.Helpers.html

I ended up with pulmonary embolism as a young (early 30s), healthy guy. Still not sure what caused it, but the doctor thought it may be COVID. The strange thing is that I never tested positive or had symptoms, though my spouse had it just before that happened. I have noticed an uptick in people having all sorts of "out of the blue" health problems shortly after COVID. It's hard to know what's related and what's not, because, while I'm sure there are many lasting effects we don't understand yet, it's always easy to just chalk up the bad things to being due to COVID.

I'm like my cat, in that I like to be near people, but not necessarily engaging. Sitting in a coffee shop doing my own thing is really nice sometimes.

I am the same way, and I enjoy YT Music as well.

I know, right? I just bought it.

Any Cancer-related news is exciting, but at the same time, I feel like knowing that I'm at an increased risk will make me obsess over it, and end up being a net-negative for me.

Mind sharing a specific example of what made it difficult to come back to? Was it control flow, a specific library like Ecto, no types, etc?

Curious what you got stuck on

Knowing the context and history definitely makes it more interesting and usually helps in learning too.

What makes it so that you can only resolve the host wifi.delta.com during a flight?

I think what makes a programming language easy to use is largely due to the constraints that it imposes, through carefully thought-out design decisions.

At first the constraints may be difficult to grasp. You may feel like a feature is missing, but that's part of learning a language. Once you have learned them, the constraints actually become helpful.

One thing I dislike about JS is that it's like the wild west. You have a mash-up of all different paradigms that are possible, so you get libraries like this. No, I wouldn't say this makes code more readable, though I'm a fan of the pipe in other languages. It just makes yet another way to do the same thing.

I don't mean to be rude or ranty, so with that said, it's cool that you were able to make this. Kudos for that.

It’s fun to make your own SSG tool, and this is a great example of keeping it simple.

It’s also interesting to read so many comments of people doing similar things.

For my own site, I find that I want an SSG tool that is simple, intuitive, and stays out of the way. With these goals in mind, I have been able to slowly improve my tool over and over. It’s been awesome to be able to do more using less.

> Grouped aliases/imports/requires are a mis-feature in my view. They save a few characters when typing but they complicate searching for module uses and refactoring.

Totally agree with this. I prefer to not use aliases most of the time, or to explicitly list out each module path separately if they are too long to fit inline. All preferences though.

> Similarly, I don’t like comprehensions as everything they do can be achieved with functions, and they are not composable.

I don't use comprehensions too often, but I would miss them if they vanished. Some things are just plain easier with them. They are also valuable in unit tests to show better error messages[1]:

# Don't do... assert Enum.all?(posts, fn post -> %Post{} == post end)

# Do... for post <- posts, do: assert %Post{} == post

EDIT: Although I suppose you could just use Enum.each as well.

[1] https://keathley.io/blog/good-and-bad-elixir.html

A little margin/padding would go a long way

My dad ran his own business, and I remember his answering machine recording well, because my room was right next to his office at home: "Hi, this is Dennis, I'm sorry that I can't come to the phone right now, but it's a jungle out there, and I'm trying to make a living. So please leave your name [...]"

I'll admit I only skimmed this article, but I think that I have noticed this sentiment as a boon during software development: Sometimes I will find myself in a position where I need some level of sign-off or approval from the team about something I'm trying to do. If I ask for opinions without showing anything concrete it's often crickets. However, if I make a pull request (or even a couple pull requests show casing different options) then it's much easier to find out people's thoughts. It may be more work for me, but it's better than the paralysis feeling of not being able to move forward, and it also helps me really understand some of the options at hand.

The Mythical Man Month

Never heard of Threads until seeing this post. Not sure if the home page is broken, or if it is just utterly unhelpful in learning more about this app. It seems like the goal is to get you to install the app to find out. I'm giving it a shot, so I guess it worked.

Love the detail and thought that has been put into this post, along with the other blog posts as well. Visualizations and animations go along way. A very ascetically pleasing site that is informative as well.

I like Basecamp’s “Shape Up” guide https://basecamp.com/shapeup

> The first step involves yet another clever strategy for identifying repetition and thereby compressing message size, but the second step is to take the resulting compressed message and run it through the Huffman process.

I wonder if this "first step" is Burrows-Wheeler Transform?

Side note: In Silicon Valley (the show), I'm pretty sure that Richard has a picture of David Huffman by his bedside.