Hacker News Reader

open-source-uxon Programming with Unicon [pdf]

This is the first time Unicon has made it to the HN front page. I find it interesting a language with more than 20 years of history is barely mentioned in HN discussions over the years. (Try a HN search to see yourself). Just an observation how some languages struggle with visibility.

One of the creator's of Unicon is Clint Jeffery who has published a recent book: Build Your Own Programming Language (Dec 2021)

https://www.packtpub.com/product/build-your-own-programming-...

open-source-uxon Ask HN: Similar books to “Raytracing in one Weekend”?

The Sam's Teach Yourself in 24 hours is a series of computing-related books:

https://www.pearson.com/us/higher-education/series/Sams-Teac...

open-source-uxon Startups are building with the Julia Programming Language

Julia scientific apps and libraries continue to grow and see momentum. Is there interest in Julia outside the scientifc sphere? I'd be interested to hear of non-scientific projects implemented in Julia (for example, business apps or web-related projects.)

Related: I think Julia is an excellent starting language (compared to Python). Is anyone teaching Julia to new programmers with success?

open-source-uxon 2022 Design Tools Survey

I didn't expect Figma to be so ahead of their competitors (as represented by this survey):

Survey respondents: 4,260

Most Popular UI Design Tools (Which software do they primarily use for UI design?)

- Figma: 3105

- Adobe XD: 263

- Sketch (Mac only): 241

Most Popular Digital Whiteboarding Tools (Which software do they primarily use for Digital Whiteboarding?)

- Miro: 1327

- FigJam: 1137

- Figma: 487

- Mural: 136

- Whimsical: 87

- Adobe XD: 56

- Sketch: 35

open-source-uxon Moog dancers prove that TV was more adventurous in the 70s

Hmm, I'm not sure I call this more 'adventurous' than TV today - definitely cool. Did 70s TV (in the UK) offer greater variety of programming? Performances of dance (including contemporary dance) have a long history on UK TV.

It’s hard to imagine where you might see something like this today

Ironically, you are more likely to see something like this on YouTube than on TV (I mean not just viewing old TV clips).

Aside: The BBC Archive channel on YouTube is a great dip into some of the BBC archives.

https://www.youtube.com/@BBCArchive/videos

open-source-uxon Designing for people with dyscalculia and low numeracy

...always try to round values up to a whole number, and get rid of decimal places unless it’s money

With money, I think rounding prices to the nearest 5 pence (cent) would make sums easier for everyone. Getting rid of 1 pence and 2 pence coins is overdue (in UK).

open-source-uxon Instagram Is Over

There are different segments on Instagram. Perhaps the "lifestyle blogger" or "influencer" has lost it's popularity. However, other audiences are still following different interests on Instagram. There are still thousands of artists (maybe millions) posting their art and illustrations, and still popular on Instagram.

open-source-uxon Brexit added £210 to UK household food bills, new research finds

The report from the London School of Economics (LSE)

Non-tariff barriers and consumer prices: evidence from Brexit https://cep.lse.ac.uk/_NEW/PUBLICATIONS/abstract.asp?index=9...

open-source-uxon Crystal for Rubyists

Crystal is a lovely language. The language community is small though, and learning resources are also small. The story for Crystal is the same story for many programming languages: grow the interest of users, and find generous funding.

My impression is that not many Ruby programmers have switched to Crystal. The slow(ish) Crystal compilation will not please Ruby users. And Crystal for Windows is still in beta.

Despite these factors, Crystal is a pleasure to use - fast, readable, and a well-featured standard libary.

open-source-uxon Fantasy Jodorowsky Tron visualisations

I could easily imagine this as the first step in an art director's creative process

I had a similar thought. What will AI-generated images means for production designers in film? Will the easy availability of AI images redefine a whole class of design or artist roles? Only time will tell, but I suspect it will happen quickly.

open-source-uxon Improving the design of subtopic pages

Summary:

A/B test on subtopic pages was performed for a few months.

- Existing subtopic pages with expanding sections ('show or hide' or accordion control)

- Alternative subtopic flat list with subheadings and dividers to organise the content

Half of the people who visited the subtopic pages saw the accordion design, while the other half saw the newer list design.

The data showed quite clearly that the list design performed better, for both desktop and mobile users.

open-source-uxon An interactive guide to Flexbox

Grid and Flex serve different purposes for layout. Also Grid has many of the same keywords as flex, but is more complex.

I find CSS Grid easier to understand than Flex. I also think it's easier (arguably more logical) to start with Grid and then understand Flexbox and how fits in your Grid.

The problem is that popular frameworks like Bootstrap and Bulma still don't support CSS Grid (they use flexbox only for layout, although Bootstrap 5 has opt-in CSS Grid). You could argue that CSS Grid makes frameworks redundant for layouts only.

Developers have rightly complained how cumbersome CSS layout has been in the past. It's ironic CSS Grid is available in all modern browsers but developers still aren't using it.

open-source-uxon The Kalevala (Crawford Translation, 1888)

The radio series The Forum from the BBC discussed the The Kalevala in a 2021 episode (it's free to download). Three experts discuss The Kalevala with a stimulating discussion.

The Kalevala: the Finnish epic that inspired a nation: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3cszjws

Description:

"When the Kalevala was published in 1835, Finland had a distinct cultural and linguistic identity but it had always been part of either the Swedish or the Russian empire. Neither did Finland have much of a literary tradition, but as the 19th-century progressed the Kalevala took on a symbolic role as the representation of a Finnish identity that fed into the movement for Finnish independence. Rooted in the folk culture of the Karelia region, a travelling doctor shaped the song texts into a story in a way which is still being debated today."

open-source-uxon As bird flu spreads, is it time to rethink farming poultry?

Statistics from European countries from September 2022:

"The 2021–2022 highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) epidemic season is the largest HPAI epidemic so far observed in Europe, with a total of 2,467 outbreaks in poultry, 47.7 million birds culled in the affected establishments"

Source: European Food Safety Authority (EFSA): https://efsa.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.2903/j.efsa.2022...

open-source-uxon Codecademy vs. FreeCodeCamp vs. DataCamp vs. Udemy vs. Coursera [video]

And don't forget "Every programming tutorial"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAlSjtxy5ak

open-source-uxon A cost model for Nim

I agree, but a counterpoint: Dart from Google. Despite the resources poured into Dart, it does not enjoy Go-levels of popularity. Flutter + Dart is now the focus, but it's too early to see if the language will grow in adoption.

open-source-uxon Is success down to the quality of your work? (2017)

Quick summary: One of the biggest fallacies of our industry is that good work speaks for itself. It is a self-delusional lie that those with a good reputation tell themselves to explain their success. I will let you in on a secret; I am not that amazing at my job. Don’t get me wrong; I am good. But I am not a leading mind in our industry or anything. But, people often talk as if I am.

open-source-uxon Affinity 2

If you have the version 1 of the Affinty apps, here's a list of the new v2 features:

What's new: https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/whats-new/

FAQ for version 2 (including answers for v1 users): https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/affinity-2-faq/

open-source-uxon UK grocery price inflation hits record 14.7%

Apologies for the wrong URL, the correct URL is:

https://www.kantar.com/uki/inspiration/fmcg/2022-wp-uk-groce...

open-source-uxon 37signals' two co-founders discuss a Basecamp pricing experiment [video]

Background: Basecamp used to have a flat monthly $99 price. New pricing is now charged per seat.

The old rationale for flat monthly pricing was explained in a 2017 blog post: Why we never sold Basecamp by the seat (2017) https://m.signalvnoise.com/why-we-never-sold-basecamp-by-the...

open-source-uxon Britons now have the worst access to healthcare in Europe, and it shows

Non-paywall link: https://archive.ph/fmcce

Extract:

"The international perspective is striking. Over the past year, one in six UK adults has had a pressing need for medical examination or treatment and been unable to get access, with almost half of these cases due to the length of waiting lists. This is the highest figure out of 36 European countries and almost triple the EU average."

open-source-uxon Ask HN: How can techies influence companies to stop implementing SMS/phone 2FA

It was Google that championed 2-step verification a decade ago (2011), including SMS message as an option. I presume few people anticipanted sim-swap attacks at the time.

"After entering your password, Google will call you with the code, send you an SMS message or give you the choice to generate the code for yourself using a mobile application on your Android, BlackBerry or iPhone device." [1]

Until someone comes up with a SMS 2FA alternative that is simpler and easier than all the SMS alternatives, then SMS 2FA will continue.

[1] Advanced sign-in security for your Google account (2011) https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/advanced-sign-in-sec...

open-source-uxon Google has most of my email because it has all of yours (2014)

The popularity of ChromeOS in US schools means millions of kids require Gmail accounts (since ChromeOS requires sign-in the OS to full use).

It's probably true to say that almost every school kid in the US has been captured by Google's embrace.

The 'tech community' have little to say on the matter. In fact, developers are more likely to defend Google rather than question unprecedented levels of data collection.

open-source-uxon Ask HN: Do you miss one time payment software licenses?

Sketch no longer offers a perpetual license. They have moved to a subscription model.

Here are some other desktop apps where the software does not expire. (Updates or upgrades can be paid for new features).

- Affinity apps: Designer, Photo, Publisher

- Sublime text

- Fontlab (Lifetime license, type design app)

- Glyphs (Mac-only, type design app)

open-source-uxon Does SharePoint destroy intranet design? (2010)

Related: A free guide on the usability of intranet design:

Intranet Portals: UX Design Experience from Real-Life Projects https://www.nngroup.com/reports/intranet-portals-experiences...

A small usability lapse: no publication date on the page, or in the report (presumably intentional). The report states:

"The research for this report was done in 2013, but the majority of the advice may still be applicable today, because people and principles of good design change much more slowly than computer technology does."

open-source-uxon Brexit update (August 2022) [video]

For a more in-depth look at Brexit, watch this excellent documentary from the Financial Times (FT):

The Brexit effect: how leaving the EU hit the UK https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wO2lWmgEK1Y

open-source-uxon FT documentary: The Brexit effect – how leaving the EU hit the UK [video]

This is an excellent - and depressing - analysis of Brexit. An important factor in the video is only fleetingly mentioned: the UK's nasty national press mostly in support of Brexit.

The length of the FT report is 30 minutes, but if that's too long, here's a 3 min video summary of the dishonesty of many Brexit politicans:

Brexit: an update (Aug 2022): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUiJxH2pclM

open-source-uxon Privacy respecting weather app for Android

If you're in the UK, the BBC has a ad-free weather app for Android and iOS. It included forecasts for locations worldwide. However, I don't know if it is ad-free for international users. Perhaps someone can confirm?

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=bbc.mobile.wea...

open-source-uxon UK defies climate warnings with new oil and gas licences

Also related: The current UK government has lifted the ban on fracking (reversing a promise to stop fracking). The science hasn't changed (i.e. deemed unsuitable for the UK) and local opposition remains.

Here's Prime Minister Liz Truss on BBC Radio Lancashire as she struggles to answer questions about fracking during an interview: https://youtu.be/_q0rlT-5oxE?t=56 (0:56 to 2:58)

open-source-uxon Ask HN: What programming language do you think is the best for Web Applications?

As other posters say: there is no best language for web applications. However, some languages have richer options for web programming - libraries and frameworks. Popularity also makes it's easier to find answers and tutorials. Other things to consider: ease of deployment, performance.

It's fine to use a programming language not normally known for web programming. Just remember if web-related libraries and documentation doesn't exist, you will need to write them yourself.