Does 'Backus–Naur form' meet your interest? It is a formal way of describing the syntax of a programming language, but I suspect it is not used much for modern programming languages:
12,450 karma · joined September 15, 2015
Although I can't advise you how to think more optimistically, I can recommend this 30min podcast/programme on the topic. It is very informative and will give you lots of food for thought:
Which is better: Optimism or pessimism? https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct1prd
Some points discussed in the programme:
- The optimism outlook is a u-curve shape: high in young ages, drops in mid-life (the bottom of the U shape), then climbs again in older populations. How do we explain this? We don't know, but there are some theories e.g. mid-life can be a stressful time for many people.
- An optimism bias is good for people's mental health and physical health; optimists live longer.
- Pessimism can make some people work through lots of scenarios as a way of anticipating events and preparing for them i.e. stop those events from happening, manage the associated anxiety and take effective action. Also referred as 'defensive pessimism'.
- The Pessimist is less likely to be surprised or disappointed when things go wrong (because they anticipated different scenarios).
- There are nuances in different outlooks and it's too simplistic to say optimists do better.
- Are there cultural differences between countries? Can cultural norms particular to a country change our outlook? More research is needed, but the programme features a person's anecdotal experience from USA and Germany.
There is much more in the programme - it's a very stimulating listen.
The Marvel Symphonic Universe (2016): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vfqkvwW2fs
You don't have to have seen any Marvel movies, the insights are universal.
(Also worth watching the follow-up video: Hollywood Scores & Soundtracks: What Do They Sound Like? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEfQ_9DIItI)
One can only imagine the many security breaches that are never revealed (from any company).
What is avian flu? https://ukhsa.blog.gov.uk/2021/11/26/what-is-avian-flu/
Some key points from the article:
- Avian influenza also poses a very low food safety risk to consumers. Properly cooked poultry and poultry products, including eggs, are safe to eat.
- Year-round avian influenza surveillance of dead wild birds is submitted via public reports and warden patrols.
- There are 5 strains that have caused public health concern in in recent years: H7N9, H9N2, H5N6, H5N8 and a type of H5N1 strain more common in Asia
- In the UK there have been both findings in wild birds and confirmed cases in poultry and captive birds of the ‘Eurasian’ H5N1 strain of avian influenza.
- The H5N1 strain of avian influenza is highly pathogenic to poultry and other birds, but the risk to human health is considered very low.
My question is about nutrition and taste: does cultivated meat contain the same nutrition as animal meat?
For example, farm animals may be pasture-fed and reared outside. The meat will probably be expensive but of excellent quality. Or the farm animals may be reared in a industrial-scale farming process that produces cheap supermarket meat (i.e. what many of us buy and eat in the Western World). Given the nutrition and taste profile of these animals is different, how do you cultivate the meat to taste excellent and contain good nutrition? Thank you.
There isn't anything really. It's pretty amazing that in 2022 there isn't anything for creating Windows GUI desktop apps that matches your description: easily create a GUI and attach scripts and events to its controls?
Another poster (wdurden) mentioned Delphi - a cross-platform tool with a drag-and-drop GUI builder. However, the free "community edition" of Delphi comes which restrictions. Read the restrictions here:
https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi/starter/free-dow...
The open source version of Delphi is called Lazurus (built with FreePascal). It also features a GUI builder but the documentation is uneven and scattered. If you get stuck, the forums are the main source of getting help.
"I'm leaving Rails core and I'm not interested in being in the alumni": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30600192
On Linux, you have GIMP (for photo editing and digital painting), Inkscape (for vector drawing), Krita (for digital painting). These apps are not meant to emulate all the features of similar Adobe apps. You will have to learn new apps on Linux with no connection between them. The resources for learning these apps are small compared to the colossal number of learning resources and tips for Adobe apps. And don’t forget the massive number of brushes, actions, scripts, filters, LUTs etc.
If you decide to stay on Windows, you have the Affinity apps as possible options: Designer (Vector), Photo (Raster), and Publisher (DTP). These are professional-grade apps and have excellent integration with each other. However, the Affinity apps do not try to match Adobe apps feature-for-feature (intentionally so). That means you may find some Adobe features missing in the Affinity suite of apps. Also, expect different ways of completing tasks and different shortcuts (sometimes).
I don't believe a keynote speech has to be delivered by the founder of the language or framework. The founder can still deliver their speech elsewhere in the schedule.
When the Crystal programming language Conference was held in 2021, the organisers asked the Ruby creator ("Matz") to give the keynote speech. I thought that was a lovely gesture from the conference organisers.
Having a different keynote speech (not from the founder) might give the audience an unusual, suprising and even inspirational presentation.
Two made-up examples:
1. Keynote speech: Ruby on Rails: From zero to hero?
Lynsey, a cafe worker, lost her job during the pandemic. During lockdown, she began to learn RoR with no idea where it might lead her. She had never programmed before and found the process complex and maddeningly frustrating - punctured with occasional moments of joy. What did Lynsey learn as a beginner to RoR? And what happened next for Lynsey?
2. Keynote speech from our founder [insert name]
A look back to our successes and progress over the past year. And a look forward to the future.
---
I know which one I would rather listen to.
If you're wondering "what can you do in 1kb of RAM?", how about a complete computer game of chess? The YouTube channel Nostalgia Nerd compares the 1981 '1K ZX Chess' program with a more modern chess engine. How do they stack up?
A game of Chess: 1981 1KB Computer vs. Modern PC https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3By_rdwxSg
As they delve into the topic, researchers reveals their observations and findings. It's pretty amazing. The programme/podcast is well worth a listen:
Do animals use medicine? (March 2021) https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3cszv77
> Presenter Anand Jagatia speaks with the primate researcher who stumbled across a chimp chewing on a bitter leaf 35 years ago, Professor Mike Huffman, whose observations opened up a whole new field of research. We discover why plants contain the medicinal compounds they do, and how butterflies with brains no bigger than a pin-head are still able to select and use medicine to protect their young.
> We think of medicine as a human invention - but it turns out that we’ve learnt a lot of what we know from copying the birds, bugs and beasts.
From a different domain, here is an excellent blog post from 2019 on how to write clear health information for people with varying levels of literacy. (And no, it doesn't mean "dumbing down" your writing.)
Pee and poo and the language of health: https://digital.nhs.uk/blog/transformation-blog/2019/pee-and...
Also, the language descriptions are too brief to be helpful (Java and C# for being enterprisey, C++ and Rust for pointers and other system constructs)
I think this is an important distinction for evaluating oils. For example, you mention avocado oil and coconut oil. Are these processed with heat (and possibly solvents)? Or are they cold-pressed with no other chemicals used to aid extraction?
In the UK, it is very common to find cold-pressed rapeseed oil (canola oil) in supermarkets. The canola oil sold in US supermarkets is highly processed. Is the cold-pressed version still bad?
The problem is that when seed oils are demonised, no distinction is made of the method of extraction. There are hundreds of researchers (and YouTubers) repeating the mantra 'seed oil = bad' without further distinction between heat-pressed and cold-press oil extraction. If extraction methods don't matter, then researchers need to provide evidence to confirm this.
That's interesting, I'm the opposite to you. I much prefer to reading books using an e-ink screen.
I have a Kobo Clara HD e-ink reader. It has a 300 PPI screen which is very comfortable to read from. I can read for long periods without getting fatigued. I can't do that using IPS colour monitors or tablets, even the high-resolution screens. With an e-ink screen I can read properly, not skim-read like I do on a monitor or tablet.
My thoughts on whether an e-ink reader is suitable or not:
- Small e-ink screens (e.g. 6 inch) are only suitable for paperback-sized, text-only books (fiction or non-fiction)
- Small e-ink screens are not suitable for reading PDFs
- A general rule of thumb when deciding whether to purchase an e-book: If the physical book is larger than a paperback size, then it is unlikely to be suitable for an e-ink screen (unless the book is text-only).
- Small e-ink readers are not suitable for any books with complex layouts, layouts designed for larger books, or books with colour graphics: charts, diagrams, photos, etc. Amazon, in particular, encourage publishers to convert as many books as possible to Kindle format regardless of whether those books are suitable for e-ink screens.
I agree. This topic was discussed recently on a HN thread and I'll repeat what I said then.
Some of the most popular languages are the least performative. But if a program runs slowly, many developers will simply throw more hardware at the problem. The "hardware is cheap" attitude is widespread among developers and is frankly embarrassing.
Compare that to other industries that strive to improve energy efficiency. Imagine if a manufacturer said that they were going to make fridges/washing machines or other appliances without regard to energy-efficiency because "hardware is cheap". It sounds ridiculous.
A typed, compiled language can give you good performance and smaller memory footprint for free with the reduced computing resources that implies - no premature optimisation required.
Among developers, there is also a double-standard in attitudes and practice. Developers complain loudly when they are at the receiving end of slow or memory-hungry apps (or websites). But when it's their turn to build apps or sites, they will prioritise languages or technologies that suit their own ease and comfort above all else. The user-experience, performance, memory footprint - all take a back seat.
"For limited use cases, like blog posts of simple rich text with images and links, markdown will get the job done."
I'd argue it's even less suitable than that. Developers never look beyond Markdown when writing documentation or articles and are thus blissly unaware of the much richer writing possibilties of using HTML (which is simple to learn, unlike CSS).
Full HTML also gives readers a much better reading experience. In Markdown, even a simple image caption is not possible.
Some of the most popular languages are the least performative (we all know which ones), but they make life easier for developers.
Thankfully, newer languages take performance seriously: Rust, Go, Nim, Crystal. A typed, compiled language gives you good performance for free and a smaller memory footprint (and the reduced computing resources that implies). When you consider the millions of servers in use, that additional language efficiency adds up to a substantial saving in electricity use.
In the computing field, we readily encourage throwing cheap hardware at a performance problem until a program runs fast. It's embarrassing that the "hardware is cheap" attitude is so widespread among developers. Imagine if a manufacturer said that they were going to make energy-guzzling fridges/washing machines or other appliances without regard to energy-efficiency.
In programming, everything is for the ease and comfort of the programmer and anything else takes a back seat - the user, energy use and ultimately the environment.
Aside - If you think programming language energy usage a ridiculous topic, consider the follow:
The creator of PHP, Rasmus Lerdorf, calculated potential CO2 savings due to speed improvements in PHP 7: fewer servers, smaller memory use and reduced CPU activity. (And remember this is an interpreted language.) You can watch a segment from his presentation below where he talks about the calculations he made of potential CO2 savings:
Rasmus Lerdorf – "PHP in 2018" (extract from the 15 min mark): https://youtu.be/umxGUWYmiSw?t=15m16s
Consider using WordPress. There are many hosting providers who offer a managed WordPress option. They manage the installation, hosting and back-ups. The non-technical users simply sign-in to WordPress via their browser to write posts using a browser-based editor. Local installation on user machines is simply not required.
Static Site Generators (SSGs) like Hugo are supposedly 'simple' compared to the complexity of dynamic blog engines. However, the Hugo setup discussed in this thread is much too complicated and defies the meanings of simplicity or easy. SSGs lack comments and even a simple contact form is impossible without a third-party service or plug-in.
Here are two excellent examples of computer-related writing:
Usborne 1980s Computer Books
These books have been discussed a few times before here on Hacker News. Children's publisher Usborne have made available for free some classic computer books from the 1980s aimed at kids. The books use illustrations extensively to explain concepts. Not only are these books well written with clear, concise explanations, they are also more readable and enjoyable than many programming and computing books published for adults today. Anyone writing a technical guide (of any kind) would benefit from reading these as a source of ideas and inspiration:
https://usborne.com/gb/books/computer-and-coding-books
Visual Basic 3.0 Language Reference manual (1993)
Every entry in the Language Reference manual is formatted in a clear structured form. It still stands as an excellent template for any programming language reference:
Property name
- Applies to
- Description
- Usage
- Remarks
- Data type
- See also
- Example
Scanned PDF (16mb): http://win16.info/files/vb/3/Reference.pdf
> Trying to cancel some online accounts can be a maze of searches and false hopes, multiple clicks through a puzzle of seemingly unrelated destinations.
> This is what has become known as a 'dark pattern'; complex web design that makes it hard for you to do something the website does not want you to do, and employs behavioural psychology to make you do things it does want you to do. It is just one of the techniques used to make us click, buy or subscribe.
> Journalist and broadcaster Darryl Morris digs into the methods being used to grip your attention, and examines the persuasive power that is being harnessed. What impact is it having on your free will, and is there anything that can be done to resist it?
This is often repeated by developers and it reeks of hypocrisy. Of course management must be implicated, but so must be the developers. Innocent developers are not simply helpless cogs in the machine coerced by management.
This blameless attitude held by many developers permeates the software industry. Whether it's the Volkswagen emissions scandal, ad-tech, or widespread online tracking - these were conceived, built and implemented by developers. And yet developers think they stand apart blameless from the consequences of their shoddy practices.
I wonder if the Fujitsi developers, far removed from the Post Office staff, have ever stopped to consider that the software they wrote ruined the lives of so many people.
At least half of HN will recoil in horror, but PHP was designed for web programming and nothing else. The standard library will have almost everything you need. Deployment is easier than many other languages. It can be as simple as uploading your PHP files to a folder located on your hosting provider.
"Something which is not easy to compromise or hack."
Well, this is dependent on the skill of the programmer and takes time to learn. The alternative is to pull in external dependencies i.e a framework that tackles security issues like authentication, database access etc. But learning to use a framework will also be a time sink (but less time-consuming that building from scratch).
"The closest I can think of is a static site generator with some kind of self-hosted database but I'm not aware of any."
Static Site Generators (SSG) do not use databases and would not be suitable for a dynamic CRUD app. Even a 'simple' task such as signing-in to your CRUD app (if needed) is not possible with a SSG unless you plug in an external dependency.
Remember, if you go down the low-code or no-code tool approach you'll always be tied to the low-code platform who will host your CRUD app.
Photoshop has unrivalled features - not just photo editing, but also digital painting, animation and even limited video editing. At one time, Adobe even added 3D features to Photoshop (which they later removed). Photoshop also supports a massive market of third-party add-ons like plugins, brushes, scripts, effects, LUTs etc.
In a different comment, I mentioned that no other software can rival Photoshop in learning resources. So yes, Photoshop is a monster in features, bloat, in clunky UI - and still dominant in design and photography fields.
I don't like Adobe and don't use their apps any more, but their apps continue to dominate the design, illustration and publishing fields. That is unlikely to change any time in the near future.
I'm using the Affinity apps - the apps are successful and thriving, but making little dent on Adobe's influence on the industry. (Affinity proves an app doesn't need to displace or overtake an existing app, but can carve out their own successful market segment.)
Adobe were caught-out with the success of Sketch and Figma for UI design, and with the Procreate painting app on the iPad. My impression is that Adobe's alternatives (XD and Fresco for the iPad) don't share the same "mindshare" among designers as those other apps.
However, there are some Adobe apps like After Effects that simply don't have any serious competition. Also, there are thousands of tutorials for Adobe apps that continue to make them attractive to learn. I wouldn't be surprised if there are more tutorials for Photoshop than any other software (or even programming language) in existence.
Interesting aside: The file specification for .sketch files is available on the Sketch website. This means Adobe XD and Figma can import Sketch files. The reverse is not true: neither Figma or XD publish their file format specifications.
This is my impression too. Adobe XD has always been in 'catch-up' mode to rivals Sketch and Figma.
I was sceptical a complex, feature-rich design tool could be possible in the browser, but Figma proved me wrong. Not only that, Figma has proved to be serious competition to rival Sketch which is a native desktop Mac-only app (with all the speed and functionality advantage of a native app.)
Both Sketch and Adobe XD are also hampered by the fact that sharing designs or collaborating with others is harder compared to Figma. Sketch and Adobe XD were designed with the focus on single-user desktop app use, not the multi-user (cross-platform) collaboration scenario common today.
Both Sketch and XD allow you to share designs by uploading screenshots or files to their 'cloud' or hosting services. But editing is still required in the desktop app - unlike Figma where the browser is the app (although there are Figma Electron desktop apps for offline use).
Adobe XD has a feature called 'co-editing' where multiple users can edit a file at the same time - but each user must have the XD app installed.
Figma is even encroaching on the territory of other online tools like Miro. For example, Figma can be used as a digital whiteboard - ideal for a mixed team of developers, managers, designers and any other stakeholders. This is simply not possible in Sketch or Adobe XD.
The 3D animated film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) has a refreshing 3D/2D hybrid visual look that breaks away from the 3D aesthetic common across the industry. I suspect in the future we'll see more animated films with a 2D aesthetic but created with 3D software.
Aside: Disney produced lots of behind-the-scenes for their 2D animated films in the 50s and 60s. Here's one on the MultiPlane Camera - a camera setup that gave 2D animation greater depth:
Walt Disney's MultiPlane Camera (1957): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdHTlUGN1zw
Here is a related study on the impact of COVID on movie-going in US:
Exhibition At A Crossroads (Nov 2021) PDF: https://thequorum.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Exhibition-...
About the study: "For Exhibition to thrive, it has to win back those who used to, but no longer go to the theater. This study looks at who those people are and what would get them to return"
---
All respondents in the study were asked to self-identify into one of five groups below. (Which do you identify with?)
Avid movie-goer: frequently go to the cinema/move theater
Infrequents: only sees one or two movies in theatres - no change change due to COVID
Reluctants: returned to theaters in spring, stopped when Delta variant emerged
Hopefuls: Same as the 'reluctants' above. Returned to theaters in spring but stopped when the Delta variant emerged
Likely losts: haven't been to theaters since the pandemic began; don’t see themselves returning in the future.
---
Could upgrades to the theatrical experience would bring people back? Respondents in the study rated the following features positively:
- More space between seats
- Newer seats
- Ability to order food from seat
- More large format screens
- Enforcement of phone usage
- Fewer commercials