HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

doubletgl

127 karma · joined January 27, 2014

submissionscomments
doubletgl··on Are we on the road to civilisation collapse? (2019)
The status quo, globally, is inequality and suffering for many. What a pathetic way of thinking that this must be defended with violence. It's unthinkable for you that this could be balanced out a bit more?
doubletgl··on Unsettling capital letters
I'm very glad most of the HN content does indeed satisfy more narrow criteria than "it could be interesting to someone".
doubletgl··on Unsettling capital letters
Agreed. Someone made a weird font, congrats. Artistic curiosity maybe, but putting this on HN really is a big stretch.
doubletgl··on Why is it so hard to see code from 5 minutes ago?
Thought the same, copy-pasting valuable blocks as a reference into a comment worked fine. If it exceeds a one block rewrite, make small dirty commits to keep track of things.

On one hand it's nice that there are tools to support devs who get lost in their undo-redo history, on the other I feel like it's a matter of good habits to not even have this problem.

of course changing habits is hard, so maybe tooling is justified in this case. I'm just happy I don't have nother "history" type mental model to deal with.

doubletgl··on Always Bet on Text (2014)
When breathing, always bet on air..
doubletgl··on Linus Torvalds' good taste argument for linked lists, explained
Agreed for map, filter etc. but reduce is the exception. There has been a fad of overusing it, until that article popped up which called it out.
doubletgl··on Why I Love Tailwind
Been through this process. Thing is, when you have a <Heading> component, you might as well simply write a css module for that component. Tailwind is great for "fast prototyping" and quickly styling a bunch of static HTML though. Wouldn't use it for a larger single page app.
doubletgl··on 40 Milliseconds of latency that just would not go away
The network kind.
doubletgl··on Prefer Fakes over Mocks
Ok, so the implementation-awareness lies in the fake itself, not the code setting up mocks. But creating the fake is part of testing, if you follow this approach. So you're still doing implementation-aware testing in the end. Don't get me wrong, fakes are a cool idea. But the article is overselling their advantages a bit I think.
doubletgl··on Prefer Fakes over Mocks
> why should anyone care about someone else’s test architecture, of all things. As long as you neither under- or over-testing, why on earth does it matter?

If you have to maintain tests written by other devs you might start to care. Devs apply different patterns to writing tests and show different amounts of discipline doing so. Some produce lots of duplication ("it doesn't matter, it's just a unit test"), others prefer a complete setup and tear-down before and after every little assertion. I've seen things..

doubletgl··on Prefer Fakes over Mocks
How are fakes, as described in this article, not also implementation-aware testing?
doubletgl··on Why books don't work (2019)
Yeah of course, if I'm already in the process of acquiring some skill, willing to do all the exercises, look up what I don't understand somewhere else, etc., I will learn that skill and the book will help and be a good foundation or guideline.

But the point remains: Just reading the book, as in consuming page after page, is not enough.

doubletgl··on Why books don't work (2019)
Some books explicitly claim to teach you a specific skill. And some people have that general expectation towards books. This is what the author criticizes, as I understood their points.
doubletgl··on We Can Do Better Than SQL
> Only if you are familiar with programing language that has that same syntax does any of it make sense.

I'd argue that most relational DB users are familiar with a programming language, and therefore most likely familiar with the C-style syntax. It's better to build on something that most of the potentials users are familiar with already.

> There is no distinction between noun "users" and verb "find".

There is no such distinction in natural language either (if you see words purely as sequences of characters), you have to know what is what and infer it from the context.

> even educated non-programmers are gonna be able to read the SQL as SELECT "these things" FROM "this table" WHERE "these conditions are true".

Yeah SQL looks a bit more like natural language at first glance, but that's about it. That familiarity is a false friend, it doesn't really help with the learning curve.

This kind of thinking reminds me of the ruby community trend a decade ago when DSLs were created to look beautiful and like written language. It's useless and confusing for long-term, practical purposes. Same with BDD style testing languages. The promise that non-technical people will feel right at home and can start contributing rarely lives up to reality.

doubletgl··on 62% of Americans Say They Have Political Views They’re Afraid to Share
It's not really all that grey currently. The contrast has in fact gone way up.
doubletgl··on Psychological effects of coding style (2016)
Post title raises an expectation that is hardly met. So what are the psychological effects? Oh I don't know, here's some random thoughts about C++ code style.
doubletgl··on Gresham’s Law: Bad Drives Out Good as Time Passes (2009)
This rather sounds like short term vs. long term decision making, or accumulating debt. What are the "coins" of Greshams's law in your example?
doubletgl··on Server-Side Only React with Next
Yes, and it's nonsense.

"I needed something to convert markdown to html", "I like the component mental model", "I wanted to use Node libraries for date formatting etc.", "Next has a great developer experience"

None of these justify using React. It all boils down to "I'm doing it because I can and I'm familiar with those tools".

doubletgl··on Tailwind UI
We ended up painfully removing it from a large frontend project because the custom classes sprinkled everywhere got out of hand and the design started to look more and more inconsistent in a lot of places. Switched to CSS modules (and React components using them) and never looked back.
doubletgl··on Higher social class predicts increased unethical behavior (2012)
For the study with cars at an intersection, they simply used the model and make of the cars, so an old toyota vs. a new mercedes for example would be on opposite ends of the spectrum.
doubletgl··on React Table is a “headless” UI library
You're aware we have IntersectionObserver now?
doubletgl··on Apple told some Apple TV+ show developers not to anger China
Agree with your general point, but I think you're generalizing a bit too much. There's plenty of movies that aren't Top Gun-level propaganda. The Hurt Locker, Jarhead, all the ones commented below.
doubletgl··on A German word for:“It only works when I try to show you how it does not work”?
Yep
doubletgl··on A German word for:“It only works when I try to show you how it does not work”?
Parent comment is wrong, as you just demonstrated with your statement about the bug not occurring.
doubletgl··on A German word for:“It only works when I try to show you how it does not work”?
No. Vorführeffekt is used for anything that suddenly behaves differently when an audience is present. Be that features that suddenly don't work when observed, or bugs that suddenly don't reproduce anymore, etc.
doubletgl··on Art's sale value? Zero. The tax bill? $29M
True, but then you're taxing someone for a crime they haven't commited yet and might never commit.
doubletgl··on The Reason Fans Hate the Last Season of Game of Thrones
You can rationalize this all you want, it felt out of character and rushed to most people.
doubletgl··on The Sunset HTTP Header Field
Terribly vague naming. As a non-native speaker I would've never guessed the purpose, and I've been in the English speaking tech sphere for many years. Does anybody actually say "this website will sunset in 5 years"?
doubletgl··on Facebook Asking for Some New Users' Email Passwords
React and other JS projects gave them a largely positive reputation as tech employer in that field.
doubletgl··on Twitter forces all new users to enter a valid phone number
At least not on iOS, it needs to ask for permission first.
Page 1 of 2Next →