nocman

> No point looking at old crusty codebases written in C.

I understand why someone might not want to start there, but I think that could be a bit short-sighted. I think people are far too quick to dismiss code that's old. Yeah, it may have a lot of warts (for a lot of reasons, some more valid than others), but that doe not negate the value of understanding how something was implemented.

I'm also not suggesting this would be easy. There are some very complicated C codebases out there. I'm just saying that I disagree that there's no point in examining them.

I disagree. I use Linux (including Ubuntu), Windows and Android apps regularly, on fairly decent hardware. Most apps I would describe as having "OK" to "tolerable" performance. Some I would call "draggy", and a few I would call outright pigs.

Again, off the top of my head I can't think of a single application I would describe as "snappy". Or, put another way, I can't think of an application that, in recent memory, really impressed me by how well it performed.

> and now things are back to mostly snappy.

This is the inverse of my experience. There are few applications that have a UI that I would refer to as 'snappy'. In fact, I am trying to come up with a single example, and atm I can't even think of one.

Just pulled up "Don't Stop Believing" as a test.

Even on crappy old junk headphones, still an awesome song that I don't think I'll ever get tired of.

Granted, I don't generally let services make a playlist for me, and I don't beat the old songs to death. I like more variety than that.

I have however, rolled my eyes when listening to services that have an "80's rock" or "top 90's songs" only to have them play the exact same dozen-or-so songs that they did the last time I visited that channel. No thanks!

That's also probably one of the reasons I rarely listen using a service-generated playlist/channel. I think they are maximized for the service's profit, not for the listener's enjoyment.

I would venture to guess that is not true in the US overall. I expect more people have no filter on their tap water than those who have one.

> I never wrote software for OS/2, aside some playing with the C compiler whose name I can't recall now...

Was it Watcom C++? I may actually still have a CD with that on it somewhere.

> If I always guess incorrectly, then I'm correctly guessing the incorrect choice.

No, you aren't, because you aren't saying that it is the incorrect choice. You are saying it is the correct one.

> Consider: the Library of Congress has (literally) a copy of every work that has ever been in print in the U.S.

This is not true. The Library of Congress has a copy of works that have been registered for copyright with them. I am sure millions of works are created in the US every year that never get registered with the Library of Congress.

While a registration with the LOC isn't a bad idea, in the USA at least authors of written works automatically have copyright of their work, regardless of whether they have registered it for copyright with the LOC.

On a computer I can easily rewrite the same phrase 10 times, reorganize a sentence for the best sounding flow, move or remove whole paragraphs multiple times, until I am satisfied I have said what I wanted to say in the best way I know how.

I can save off any number of possibilities and compare them side by side.

Also, none of this prevents me from spending 30 minutes beforehand thinking about what I am about to write. Although, I will admit, even if I do that I am likely to have at least a text editor open to jot down a few notes as I think about it.

I do agree, however, that the up-front thinking is a very good idea.

Yeah, writing on a word processor is a million times better (at least it is for me).

Don't get me wrong, I do think it's bad that writing things by hand is becoming more and more rare all the time. In particular, handwritten letters and notes have an extra bit of "personal touch" to them that can make them very valuable to the recipient.

However, from the time I was in High School to today I would never want to be required to write a paper, well, strictly on paper (from the beginning). I want all of that ability to quickly edit at my fingertips.

Count Rugen sees no problem with this.

I would not say it is meaningless.

I have found this site helpful in the past, but I have decades of experience with multiple programming languages. The site is useful for reminding you of some basic differences, and I think that's pretty much the purpose of the site. No one should think "a whirlwind tour" is for deep learning.

For many people, it's because the choices for an IDE are all dog slow, and configuring a few plugins for their editor of choice provides a close-enough experience to strike the balance they are looking for.

So, no, an IDE is not a better choice for everyone who want's "IDE like features". It is for some, but not everyone.

Been busy and didn't see the response...

So... you meant 'ossified' in a good way?? If so, I guess I would have used a different term that didn't have such a negative connotation.

Might be worth changing the title to "no-GIL". My first thought was "What is nogil CPython?" - thinking it was some specialized fork of CPython. I guess you could say that is technically true. I was previously aware of the GIL in Python, yet it still didn't occur to me immediately.

I'm genuinely curious. What about the language do you feel is "ossified"? I am interpreting that as being a negative description.

Stability is extremely valuable. A lack of change to the core language over extended periods of time can be a very good thing, especially if certain changes would break existing code. Rich has made it clear that he is indeed targeting this kind of stability.

Again, I would be very interested to hear what specific changes you think need to be made to 'Clojure "the language"'.

That might be true if you already don't like writing Perl, but I have many years of experience writing system administration scripts in Perl, and I'd pick it for that task over Python any day.

I can understand why someone who prefers Python would go that route, but it is definitely not more capable than Perl in that domain.

> Native too, not like cygwin bash.

Are you suggesting that cygwin's bash is not "native"? It isn't installed by default, obviously, but it is a native Windows executable, as are the other command-line tools generally installed with it.

While I can see why you might take that as "talking down the youngest generation of adults", I don't think that is necessarily the author's intention.

All three of those examples are things that many people from Gen Z often don't ever do. They are also all still valuable skills that I believe are still worth knowing.

I agree that it is bad to talk down to people just because they are young. It is also bad to dismiss people because they are significantly older than you are. Both parties miss out when those things happen. Younger people often have more energy and free time, and their excitement about what they are learning can be energizing. Older people often have experience that is tremendously valuable. You can learn a great deal from someone with years of experience in a field in which you have interest.

I think one of the unfortunate things about the internet is it is far too easy to default to being combative, and assume the worst about what others are saying. And yes, I include myself in that as well as others.

I would be interested to hear a concrete list of things SQL Server is "so much better than Postgres" in. It's difficult to draw any meaningful conclusions otherwise.

Which is a very long way of saying -- "no".

> actually I'm seeing the AI write much better comments (i.e. some) than most devs (none).

Some comments are far worse than no comments at all. I would agree that even semi-decent comments are far better than nothing. However, "no-new-information" comments are just noise, and misleading comments have a huge negative effect. I would not be surprised if an AI produced a large number of the former, and perhaps some of the latter.

Yes, as I recall, when Rackspace ruined Slicehost, a lot of people moved to Linode. I am guessing the same thing is likely to happen to Linode now. I'm just not sure if there is as clear a choice for a new company as it seemed to be when a lot of people moved from Slicehost to Linode.

I think you may have missed the 'jk' (just kidding) at the end of my post.

I think that's a lot of the point here. They won't be starting with that customer base if most of that customer base leaves because of these changes (which I think a significant portion of them may).

I thought about doing some work on Clojure itself, but, alas, my last name isn't Miller. :-(

jk

Rich Hickey said it best:

"ORM's provide 'OH MY GOD' complexity"

(from his "Simple Made Easy" talk - I might have the quote only 90% correct, but it's pretty darn close to that).

The popularity of a single development tool in a particular category does not make all other tools in the same (or a similar) category non-viable.

Webmail is a nice option to have if you want it. Email should continue to be a separate set of protocols targeted at that one application. I'd much rather see webmail disappear as an option than standard email servers and clients.

Seems odd to me to describe using a Chromium-based toolkit as a way to break the Chrome monoculture. Yeah, I know it is open source, but the ties are still obvious.