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paedubucher

152 karma · joined October 5, 2018

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paedubucher··on Where did Ted Unangst's website go?
Thanks, that's useful for his old posts.

But does anybody know if there will be more from him? Did he take his website offline on purpose?

paedubucher··on NoStarch: No Login Link?
OK, now I end up in a Cloud Flare error page: Bad gateway.
paedubucher··on NoStarch: No Login Link?
Did they just re-design their website and removed the login button? I cannot find it, and I'd like to access the eBooks I paid money for. Are they running some A/B tests and I'm keep getting the same version?
paedubucher··on [dead]
In the context of version control, some formatting rules work better than others.
paedubucher··on Learning Algorithms
Maybe for the next project; together with Haskell.
paedubucher··on Learning Algorithms
I haven't read it, nor do I own it, but "Algorithm Design with Haskell" might fit: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/algorithm-design-with-h...
paedubucher··on Learning Algorithms
One issue I have with CLRS is that array indices usually start at 1, but sometimes they use 0, because it works better in that particular case. Some functions I used in Erlang (lists:sublist/3, lists:nth/2) use 1-based indices, too. I thought that 0-based array indices (and exclusive upper bounds) were quite a done deal in computer science (https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD08xx/E...).
paedubucher··on Elixir for Humans Who Know Python
> Python has some functional capabilities, but in my experiences with Python devs, those are little used and even shunned.

I like to use things like filter, map, reduce or list comprehensions, but I see very few of those in my coworkers' code bases.

When Python introduced pattern matching, it was rather a pattern-aware switch/case, which does not return a value, as such a construct in a functional programming would do.

> I went from Ruby to Elixir, and even with my basic Clojure experience, it was an effort.

I tried out Elixir twice so far, and since the last time, I worked through 300 pages of SICP. I still have to twist my mind when I'd like to process nested maps or the like in Elixir now.

> It was worth it, but I think the apparently similarity of Elixir to Ruby is actually a negative.

However, Ruby provides a lot of higher-order functions, such as group_by and the like. If you're used to functional-style Ruby code, the transition is easier.

paedubucher··on Why is there so much useless and unreliable software?
One pattern I noticed in the workplace: People are mocking things like LISP, Haskell, or Erlang, but get a hard-on when their bread language (e.g. Python) introduces new syntax for, say, pattern matching (rather a pattern-aware switch/case, because it isn't an expression).
paedubucher··on Local man switches to Arch, tells no one
I hereby publicly announce that I use Arch Linux. I really do so for more than five years now, and I'm not thinking about switching. OK, maybe to OpenBSD for a change now and then.

PS: Did I mention, that I use Arch Linux?

PPS: Did I mention, that I'm thinking of switching to OpenBSD?

PPPS: OK, back to Arch Linux, I'm not tough enough for OpenBSD.

PPPPS: Did I mention that I'm back at running Arch Linux, by the way?

paedubucher··on Go: Don't Change the Libraries in 1.18
Brad Fitzpatrick stated in one of his talks, that a version of Go coming with generics will be called 2.0 eventually. Maybe they do the version jump if there are backward-incompatible changes done to the library in 1.19.
paedubucher··on The Programming Language B (1973)
Is this some kind of C--? scnr
paedubucher··on Columbo: an origin story (2018)
When I read Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment" in school, I mentioned to my teacher that the investigator reminds me of Columbo. I only remember my teacher answering me, that Columbo is one of the few crime series to be of good quality.

Almost fifteen years later I read this:

> “The Columbo character was based squarely on Porfiry Petrovich, the astute but meandering lead investigator in Dostoevsky’s Crime & Punishment.”

Which makes me kind of happy :-)

paedubucher··on Evaluating necessity of Covid-19 vaccination in previously infected individuals
Glad to see that I'm not the only one thinking this way.
paedubucher··on Evaluating necessity of Covid-19 vaccination in previously infected individuals
If you are immunocompromised, you're not only vulnerable to COVID-19, but to a plethora of other viruses going around all the time.
paedubucher··on Evaluating necessity of Covid-19 vaccination in previously infected individuals
It's not about health, it's about being considered a high-IQ person by Paul Graham, who'd like to only have vaccinated people at conferences: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1359577831236378627
paedubucher··on Evaluating necessity of Covid-19 vaccination in previously infected individuals
Getting a vaccination just for "the points" looks like a bad idea to me, because "the health" should be the only point to be considered.
paedubucher··on Tests Are Not Specifications
When you read the entire section of the book, Martin claims that those tests main purpose is to serve as a normative documentation. The developer can read the test case and then figure out what was meant to be programmed.

While it might be illuminating in some cases, it might be not helpful or either misleading in other cases.

It's like arguing that the main purpose of magazines is to lit a fire with them, because some of them are very flammable.

Tests are good to ensure that some property of the system that held true before still holds true after some modifications to the system has been made.

paedubucher··on Tests Are Not Specifications
This (my) little rant is of course hyperbolic, but I tried to make two points:

1. The actual specification is sometimes better reflected by the implementation than by some test cases. 2. Some test cases don't help you understanding what's supposed to be computed.

Of course, counterexamples could be made. Imagine a board game with a test function testing specific moves. Those test cases will help you understand the implementation a lot.

paedubucher··on Codecov breach impacts GoDaddy, Atlassian, P&G etc.
Ironically, our company started using Codecov as a measure to improve security. I don't know how far a high code coverage correlates to a secure code base, but the security incident certainly had adverse effects.
paedubucher··on Perfect Motherfucking Website
Upset? This is a very accurate and sober analysis.
paedubucher··on Scala projects are difficult to maintain
Go ticks all those boxes, including "easy to learn".
paedubucher··on Scala projects are difficult to maintain
Wow, thanks! It's always good to see if one's intuitive concerns are actually well-known computer science problems.
paedubucher··on Scala projects are difficult to maintain
I am really a beginner of both Scala and functional programming. I took the first Coursera course on Scala, and I got really frightened when I noticed that you can express many things in either the functional or in the object-oriented paradigm. One example is pattern matching vs. polymorphism. When you mix up those ideas throughout your code base, it might become really hard to understand.

This is just a thought that I had, and I wonder if that's actually a relevant issue in practice.

paedubucher··on Learning Without Burnout
I actually got in touch with the author because of this remark, because this subject wasn't even discussed in the article at all. It looks like virtue signaling to me. Such remarks really make me cringe.
paedubucher··on How do you spend the five minutes a build takes?
Thanks for all the replies, which are hardly satisfying for my employer.
paedubucher··on How do you spend the five minutes a build takes?
I meant "build" in the broadest sense. Could also be provisioning a VM or building a docker image.
paedubucher··on Switzerland votes against electronic ID system provided by private companies
> The 7 member Executive Council is composed of the top 7 candidates from each election.

The executive council is elected by the parliament and also contains candidates that haven't been member of that parliament. This election takes part "seat by seat", so every member has to be explicitly re-elected.

paedubucher··on Theo de Raadt 'Re: new: lang/zig'
Interesting thought, I'll keep my eyes open.

Funny, because Rust is rather a side-note/example in Theo's post...

paedubucher··on Theo de Raadt 'Re: new: lang/zig'
Not willing to use something others suggest doesn't make it your enemy.
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